rip bill drake

Sad day in the world of radio. A giant has left us.

From Mercury News

Bill Drake, who set the tone at hundreds of pop stations with a radio format that placed music—rather than disc jockeys—at the center of the broadcast, has died.

Drake died of cancer Saturday at West Hills Hospital in the San Fernando Valley, his domestic partner Carole Scott said. He was 71.

At the height of his career as a radio programming consultant in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Drake championed a streamlined format that came to be known as "Boss Radio," which made announcers' personalities secondary to the Top 40 hits they were spinning.