Drake-Chenault

The company was founded in the late-1960s by radio programmer and deejay Bill Drake (1937–2008),[1] and his business partner, Lester Eugene Chenault (1919–2010).

The baby boomers gravitated to the better audio quality, fewer commercials and "hipness" of the free-form rock stations.

Older FM listeners embraced the lush sounds and fewer commercials of beautiful music stations.

The early syndication format suppliers included Bonneville, Schulke, Triangle, IGM, TM, Drake-Chenault and others.

Drake-Chenault (D-C) entered the business only to record music on tape for the RKO FM stations.

The original 48-hour History of Rock and Roll, which had been created for KHJ, was made available nationwide, and was followed by other syndicated "special" programs.

Bill Drake and Gene Chenault tapped Kefford to spearhead the next growth phase for the company in 1977.

The plan of having the two once-solid companies occupy the same building and compete while sharing administration, production and other support departments to reduce expenses didn't work.

While some attribute satellite radio programming as the reason for their demise, debt service smothered the companies and they were ultimately broken up, with BPI Programming and Jones Radio (later absorbed by Oaktree Capital Management's Triton Media Group) picking up the pieces.

His original format for the special consisted of a series of half-hour or hour-long themed segments, mostly spotlighting key hitmakers (Elvis Presley, The Beatles, etc.)

"Our crew worked day and night on the production," recalled Theroux, "resulting in the girlfriend of one of our engineers complaining that she never got to see him.

To explain what he'd been up to, the engineer made a copy of the A montage element tape reel, took it home and set it up to play for her while he went out and picked up a pizza.

The resulting 45-minute montage inspired a whole series of later medley hits by everyone from Elvis Presley to The Beatles, Stars on 45 to Jive Bunny & the Mastermixers.

Theroux's landmark rockumentary debuted as a weekend marathon broadcast over more than 800 foreign and domestic stations and went on to win Billboard magazine's "Top Special Program of The Year" award.