DJ Ben Fong-Torres

Last year I wrote about how under-represented Asian programming is on American media outlets. [Link] About 5% of Americans are of Asian origin. While that is a smaller group than African-Americans (12.6%) or Hispanics (16.4%) that's still 14 million people. So in light of that demographic data. Ben Fong-Torres is one of those names in radio that you don't know, but you really should.

Before we start the story let me tell you that Ben Fong-Torres is alive and well today. His own website is here. I first encountered his his name when he was managing editor at GAVIN. He was there from 1993 to 1997. He left that position to write the book The Hits Just Keep On Coming: The History of Top 40 Radio, which is a must-own among radio men. He wrote four more books since then, including Becoming Almost Famous, which brought his tally to 9 books I believe.  Note about that last title... his character does appear in the film Almost Famous, he's portrayed by actor Terry Chen. Did I mention he was also a DJ?

Let's back up.  In 1966 Ben graduated from San Francisco State University with a B.A. in radio-TV-film. While enrolled there he was DJ on KRTG-AM, the universities closed-circuit AM station. What got Ben into the music industry, and therefore radio, was Rolling Stone magazine. He was one of their original writers in 1967. He wrote for the magazine until 1981. In the mid 1960s he was a night announcer on KFOG-AM. But in 1970, while still writing for Rolling Stone he became a DJ for KSAN-FM.

Ben remained at KSAN from from 1970-1980 arguably the station's peak years. After Rolling stone he joined the San Francisco Chronicle, where he was  radio columnist until 1992. He came back in 2005 to write the bi-weekly column "Radio Waves." In 1994 he began hosting the program Fog City Radio, on KQED-FM. If that's not enough Reel Radio lists that he has guest DJ's on KUSF, KIOI, KPOI, KTIM, KVYN, KFRC, and KRQR.

The Gavin College Panel

I found this deep in my archives. It's a complete list from 1994 of all the GAVIN reporters to their College Radio chart. At the time, it was very similar to the CMJ CORE Chart. (that fax # is no good by the way.) You can see that The document from 1994 was being faxed to me in 1997. Love that old technology.

You can download all 4 pages HERE

Gavin ceased to exist in February of 2002 so I think it's safe to release this now. I recall that in 1998 the website www.arancidamoeba.com released the CMJ panels publicly and caused a bit of a stink. I don't have any of those shit-stirring intentions. The website credited the leaked information to Team Clermont, promotions company in Athens Georgia. I cant speak for Antone's intentions. But I can say that it's very novel information to a college radio station. College stations are by definition local, insular even. Usually their concept of the industry, and their role in it is vague. So to see a list of reporters is like opening Pandora's box except the person opening the box has no idea what they're looking at.

So I chose to wait for this list to go stale. Arancidamoeba vanished in the Spring of 2008 having had essentially no updates for a decade. Leaving panels back in the hands of trade magazines, or the few that are left. Being from 1994 I cant confirm that it was precisely correct in 1997, nor in 2002. These things were somewhat fluid. The list of 64 stations is as follows, it has 100 watt stations, 100,000 watt stations and even a closed cable station. I have preserved old calls and typos as is, the meta data is behind the link. My only mystery is that the print out says there are 68 records... I only count 64.

KALX, KCMU, KCOU, KCPR, KCRW, KCSB, KCSJ, KDVS, KFJC, KFSR, KGLT, KGRG, KJHK, KSJS, KTRU, KTXT, KUCI, KUGS, KUNV, KUSF, KVMR, KVRX, KWBU, KWVA, KXLU, KZSC, KZSU, WBNY, WBRU, WCBN, WCDB, WDCR, WEGL, WFDU, WFMU, WICB, WITR, WMNF, WMSE, WMSY, WMUA, WNYU, WPRK, WQFS, WRAS, WRFL, WRIU, WRSU, WRUV, WSMU, WTSR, WTUL, WUJC, WUMS, WUNH, WUSB, WVTK, WVFS, WVKR, WVUM, WWVU, WXCI, WXYC, and WZBC.

Damn you Bill Gavin!

My major complaint of radio is it's increasingly homogeneous content. Brands are trademarked and xeroxed coast to coast, programs are syndicated, playlists centralized and tightened, DJs are voice-tracked and sat-cast. I have examined the history of radio and I have arbitrarily selected a precipice and a guilty party.Bill Gavin was in San Francisco when he took the Billboard list of the top 30 selling records and turned it into a radio show at KNBC. Then he started writing to DJs across the country and asking them to send him their top 10 lists. Many complied. Radio stations reached out to Bill and asked him to consult for them with this "top 10" data. KYA went for it as did KCBQ in San Diego. This collated list became known as the Bill Gavin Record report. For anyone that actually enjoyed regional diversity this was the beginning of the end.

Before the Gavin report the most important sources for information on hits were juke boxes and Dick Clark's American Bandstand. Bill took those concepts and went big and homogeneous. His sheet was serviced weekly by mail. Bill was looking at it as a radio programmer. His tip sheet was to improve listenership by playing the right music. There were other charts out there, Bill's were just better.His tip sheet was not like the trade magazines like Billboard Magazine and George Albert's Cash Box.

Cash Box had been running since 1942 and collated jukebox play. It was focused on vending machine owners. Billboard was much older, starting in 1894 but was initially marketed to the bill posting industry. It branched out into media as they were billboard buyers. Only in 1961 did they re-focus on the record industry. Their first music chart launched in 1940, Btu it mixed sales AND airplay. Bill got into programming with the playlist for the show Lucky Lager Dance Time. In 1941 Lucky Lager sponsored their teen-targeted program on KFAC. It was very similar to the Lucky Strike Hit Parade running since 1935. But Bill had a hand up on the competition. Bill had a Top 1o countdown. Lucky Strike just followed the Billboard Chart. Bill didn't want to ape Billboard.

The program was carried on 48 West Coast stations. What made the program odd was that it was scripted out of 1330 KFAC-AM but then hosted locally by announcers on the local stations. Bill was known to critique local hosts if he felt they weren't right for the program. It was carried by KMOD, KGO, KSEI, KTRB, KGW, KPOI,KVOA, KSFO. Bills tip sheet begot the end of local programming and the rapid expansion of both Top 40 radio, and radio consultants. In 1945 KFAC dropped the program to go all-classical but Bill wasn't ready to let go. His tip-sheet grew into a trade magazine.

Bill Gavin died in 1985 at the age of 77. His eponymous trade rag floundered in the late 90s as radio chains like Infinity and Clear Channel refused to participate in their conference and made their own centralized playlists. In February of 2002 it's British parent corporation pulled the plug. Lucky Lager is still bottled today and is at least available regionally on the West coast.