ABSTRACT
One of the most crucial transition points in the mid-1960s emergence of rock was the flowering of new, free-form FM radio. Tom Donahue’s depiction of AM as a “rotting corpse” would indeed turn out to be prophetic, as the success of FM rock rendered AM music stations virtually obsolete by the end of the 1970s. AM radio, and its tightly controlled Top 40 singles format, had been the driving force in popular music since the mid-1950s, but as the AM frequencies became increasingly crowded in the early 1960s, the Federal Communications Commission put a halt to AM license applications and began to encourage expansion of the previously underused FM dial. The spectacularly successful concept of Top 40 radio spread quickly from city to city and almost overnight rock and roll music became an industry as record sales boomed.
