History

(Thanks to Myron Jones for compiling our history)

The First 50 Years

AIMS – an acronym for “Association of Independent Metropolitan Stations” — “independent” proscribing affiliation with a network program supplier and “metropolitan” requiring a member station servicing a metropolitan market of not less than 500,000 population.

Forward

In the late ’40s, with the emergence of television, radio was in dire straights from a position of being a major national media. Many thought it to be dying, to be replaced by television much as the automobile abolished use of a horse and buggy as transportation.

Audiences of the major network affiliates, then the mainstay for programming, were in rapid decline, though a formerly considered “sub class” of radio stations, the “independents” without network affiliation, were enjoying increased audience awareness, if not stature or image among the agency community. Independent music stations were limited usually to playing syndicated transcription music or phonograph records. In place of announcers, these stations had “disc jockeys” (then a relatively new term). Advertising agencies were not accustomed to using independents for their upscale clients, noting the programming environment (phonograph records and few known performers) and the fact that independents generally offered limited coverage with smaller facilities in an era when power and coverage were considered prime requisites.

This was an AM-only world. FM stations were few and far between, with virtually no popular appeal, except when broadcasting play-by-play sports, where FM served to relay signals for AM rebroadcast, saving line changes. The time was right to “reinvent” radio, as a new generation of radio entrepreneur came to believe they could do anything with a radio station. The two we believe to be the prime movers, and indeed the prime mentors of this new generation, were Todd Storz, KOWH Omaha, an early AIMS member who many believe invented Top 40 radio and Gordon McLendon of KLIF Dallas[1]. Storz, with a sharply defined format, achieved spectacular ratings, which he boldly advertised nationally, attracting scores of imitators. McLendon, the most demonstrative, creative and colorful of this dynamic duo, enjoyed embarrassing the competition by “positioning” their stations in his advertising, and with his large budget news department, far superior to other news operations.

The following bio of Todd Storz, with a reference to AIMS[2], reveals, “as America’s most listened to independent station”, that Storz likely started the radio revolution of the 50’s which would soon evolve into radio’s second “Golden Age”, with AIMS members in the vanguard. (See roster of ’50s members.)

[1]: Both Storz and McLendon were sadly deceased in the prime of their careers. This writer could not confirm McLendon as ever being an AIMS member. We know Todd and Gordon were friends who met frequently at Chicago’s famed Chez Paree supper club. We also know that McLendon was an avid competitor to Storz by Spring 1956, programming his father-in-law’s WNOE New Orleans.

[2]: This writer met with Todd Storz at WTIX New Orleans in April 1953 (likely the time of the AIMS meeting mentioned in the following article); a chance meeting that paid extravagant dividends in the years to come.

Additional Reading