The new version expanded the story with fresh interviews, insightful narration, more music, and a host of innovations—all in a modular format which allowed stations more programming flexibility.
The revised show was also completely remixed and re-edited from scratch, using a homebuilt control room assembled together by engineer Mark Ford at the company headquarters in Canoga Park, California, and a library of thousands of LPs and 45 singles.
The program employed a systematic approach covering each year with a focused half-hour as well as separate segments devoted to key artists or trends.
[9] Among other things, Theroux had Drake-Chenault chief engineer Mark Ford assemble two kinds of annual montages: one of each chart-topping hit of a given year (in sequence) and the other of other key songs there was no time to play in full.
[9] The riveting nature of Theroux's much-bootlegged ending later inspired a series of hits medleys by many artists, including Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Stars on 45, and Jive Bunny & the Mixmasters.
[citation needed] The 1978 edition of "The History of Rock & Roll" debuted as a marathon broadcast over more than 400 domestic stations[10] and another 400 overseas, and won Billboard magazine's "Top Special Program of the Year" award.
[11] Following the success of the 1978 release, Drake-Chenault created a shorter, edited version, marketed as "The History of Rock & Roll: The Early Years."
Not wishing to increase the size of the program, and with an attempt to place greater emphasis on the current musical trends, the controversial decision was made to severely cut back the sections devoted to the 1950s and early 1960s (prior to the advent of the Beatles).
Such an undertaking would require 35-plus additional years of the rock era to be covered (including new interviews, updates, and a new narrator brought in to supplant the existing pre-1981 material, since Bill Drake died in 2009).
In 1997, Gary Theroux revived "The History of Rock 'n' Roll" as a daily 2 ½ minute syndicated radio feature which he hosted, wrote and co-produced with Jeremy Goldsmith and Elliot Peper at Tabby Sound Studios in New York.
Nearly every fast-paced episode interweaves three key hits by a spotlit artist with comments by that star and whatever minimal narration is needed to complete each story.
Hosted by a team of disc jockeys including Tony Pigg, Meg Griffin, Jimmy Fink and Mike Harrison, it otherwise bore little resemblance to the Drake-Chenault version.
The program concluded with The History of Rock and Roll Time Sweep, a 45-minute collage of number one hits from January 1956 (Dean Martin's "Memories Are Made Of This") to November 1977 (Debby Boone's "You Light Up My Life").