Date of Review:

01/23/1999

Published Work:

The Hits Just Keep on Coming: The History of Top 40 Radio

Reviewer:

John Smyntek

Source:

KRT News Wire

Review Excerpt:

Ben Fong-Torres tells how (Omaha radio station owner) Todd Storz and his program director, Bill Stewart, noticed how patrons at a bar kept playing the same few songs on the jukebox. Stewart copied the titles on the box and came up with 30 tunes (which he later upped to 40) ... The station shot from last to first in Omaha in two years. By the early 1960s, the dominant broadcaster in almost every radio station was a Top 40 station.

Fong-Torres does an admirable job of chronicling the on and off-air personalities that made Top 40 work. It's pleasant nostalgia for people in their 40s and 50s who car-cruised their teen years away to the radio.

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