RadioBanter - Founding father of Top 40 seriously ill

Last week, Aaron Barnhart of the Kansas City Star reported that
Richard Ward Fatherley, one of the pioneers of Top 40 radio,
was seriously ill from injuries sustained in a fall.

Fatherley as a program director at WHB, one of the stations
at which Todd Storz installed the first Top 40 formats.

Barnhart's post is at:
http://blogs.kansascity.com/tvbarn/2010/02/fatherley.html

There is an error in in the article. At the time, WHB was a
10,000-watt station at 710. Barnhart has probably confused it with
WHB's present home with 50,000 watts at 810. WHB and KCMO, which is
now at 710, swapped frequencies in 1997.

But there is much there that is illuminating. I did not know, for
example, that Fatherley also was a key player in launching the
album-rock format on KYYS (now KSRC) on the former WDAF-FM in 1974.
"KY 102" continued to be a success into the new millenium, but
has since been replaced.

In the early 1990s, Fatherley also was the "voice" of
easy-listening station KFEZ, which had been rebuilt
after a flood damaged its transmitter site in 1990.

Fatherley's own site commemorating WHB,
www.worldshappiestbroadcasters.com, is still up and running
at this time.

--
Mark Roberts - E-Mail address is valid but I don't use Google Groups
If you quote, please quote only relevant passages and not the whole article.