This is a review of Ben Fong-Torres book The Hits Just Keep on Coming I wrote and published on Amazon. If you are a history of radio fan like me you may find this is worth picking up. I am honest about what works and does not work in this book.
I want to really like this book. I am a
huge radio fan. I write a blog http://offaithandradio.blogspot.com/
on radio and faith issues. I have a job where I can listen to radio
of my choosing for 8 hours or more a day. I have read several radio
and TV history books. This review is part of trying to publish in
this area. I am a fan. As much as I am a fan of radio, I wanted to
be a fan of this book.
There are lots of reasons this book is
a good reference book on a little written about topic. Fong-Torres
gives his personal connection to top 40 radio. Like Fong-Torres, if
you like radio you have played DJ with a hairbrush. I have. He then
goes on to trace the early rise of DJ s. Pr-recorded music took
awhile to get to radio. Records meant firing the orchestras many
station used. Eventually DJ s playing popular records grew into what
we call the Top 40 format.
Fong-Torres then takes you through the
early days of Rock and and Roll. Alan Freed gets good mention. How a
Top 40 was developed from record sales gets mentioned. The writer
includes Top 40 charts from from 1947-1997. Ben Fong-Torres goes on
to exhaustively list everyone of notoriety in this format. I was
surprised how many I knew. Fong-Torres later takes up the subject of
the transition to Fm from Am. You can barely hear music on Am
anymore. HD radio could change that. He even touches on MTV. The book
is too old to cover what I believes is the demise of Rock videos and
the rise of the internet.
Fong-Torres even includes a cd of DJ
samples. He has many of the masters on this CD with the magic of the
“patter.” A DJ a good song and great audience could be an awesome
thing to hear. Sadly, today we rarely hear more than song title
announcement.
Still my big question. Why can't I
love this book? It's a great study of a time and age of radio that
still speaks to us today. It suffers from two problems. I feel
Fong-Torres does not define Top 40 radio. Maybe you know it, when you
hear it. He should have given it a try. Second this book is boring.
By page 240 plus he has run out great stories. He does a lot of
endless telling of where guys were and call sign. “He went from
KILT in Houston to KXX in Nevada.” Wake me up when the listings
stop. Maybe he could have discussed the rise of the format over and
against its demise, but 1997 may have been early for this. As a
reference this book gets an A, as interesting book it gets a C Plus.
