Tom Rounds

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Tom Rounds
Born(1936-06-06)June 6, 1936
Los Angeles, California
, U.S.
Occupation(s)Radio broadcaster, DJ
Known forFormer world record holder for longest time without sleep

Tom Rounds (June 6, 1936 – June 1, 2014) was an American radio broadcasting executive, founder and chief executive officer of Radio Express in Burbank, California.

Biography

Early years

After first entering the broadcasting profession at the campus radio station of

Randy Gardner.[2] Rounds became a regional celebrity following the stunt, and eventually rose to lead the station as program director.[3]

KFRC San Francisco

Monterey Pop Festival by one week.[4][5][6][7][8][9][10]

Rounds left KFRC in the Fall of 1967; his decision to move beyond the restrictions of AM radio was documented on the front cover of the first issue of Rolling Stone magazine, with the headline "Tom Rounds Quits KFRC" on the upper right beside a large photograph of John Lennon.[3]

Music video and rock festival pioneer

Upon resigning from KFRC, Rounds joined Amherst classmate Peter Gardiner in a new video production company based in Los Angeles called Charlatan Productions. The company is acknowledged as being among the first to focus exclusively on the use of cinematography and music together in the form that is now ubiquitous among major music acts, the music video.[11] Rounds led the company to successfully produce several dozen "artist-promoting films" for acts such as Jimi Hendrix, Steppenwolf and The Animals, working with many record companies to produce the early videos.[12]

The company also included Ron Jacobs, and with him Rounds continued to be involved with the promotion of large scale music events in markets associated with Bill Drake. In 1964, Rounds and Jacobs had joined with another Honolulu entertainment entrepreneur, Tom Moffatt, to form Arena Associates. This company was responsible for bringing mainland music acts to the newly built

New York Times as "a resounding success in both organization and programming, making it the first significant major pop festival held on the East Coast". Times reviewer Ellen Sander noted that the Miami festival truly represented the full spectrum of popular music acts, rather than relying on the presence of a few headlining acts to generate revenue.[15]

Watermark and American Top 40

Strawberry mogul Tom Driscoll was also involved in the formation of another of Rounds's businesses. In 1969, again with backing from Driscoll, Rounds and Jacobs formed

ratings and helped generate advertising revenue.[16] The program reached audiences at over 500 radio stations in the United States by the 1980s. In 1990, Rounds announced the introduction of American Top 40 syndicated programming into the Soviet Union, adding that country to the list of seventy where the program was heard at the time.[17] The show is still in syndication, hosted by Ryan Seacrest and distributed by Premiere Networks, a division of the American media conglomerate iHeartMedia.[18]

Radio Express

After Watermark was absorbed into the American Broadcasting Company in the early 1980s as ABC Watermark, Rounds became responsible for the promotion and syndication of American Top 40 and other programs outside the United States.[18] His independent company Radio Express was created in 1985 and currently produces and syndicates World Chart Shows hosted by Lara Scott and PJ Butta, among other programming. The company also handles syndication outside the US for American radio programs such as The Rick Dees Weekly Top 40 and American Country Countdown, as well as for major international special events such as the Live 8 and Live Earth concerts. Rounds continued to head the company, which claims on its website to have established relationships with over 5,000 radio stations in 140 countries, until his death following complications from surgery on June 1, 2014, at the age of 77, two weeks before the death of his former associate Casey Kasem.[19][20]

References

  1. ^ Jacobs, Ron. "49 Years Ago Today". Retrieved 21 May 2011.
  2. ISBN 978-0-15-603135-6
    .
  3. ^
    OCLC 496123438
    . Retrieved 21 May 2011.
  4. OCLC 84588
    .
  5. OCLC 47777589
    .
  6. ^ Mankin, Bill (2012-03-05). "We Can All Join In: How Rock Festivals Helped Change America".
  7. ^ Santelli, Robert. Aquarius Rising - The Rock Festival Years. 1980. Dell Publishing Co., Inc. Pg. 16.
  8. ^ Lang, Michael (2009-06-30). The Road to Woodstock (p. 58). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
  9. ^ Browne, David. (2014-06-05). “The Birth of the Rock Fest”. Rolling Stone.
  10. ^ Kubernik, Harvey and Kubernik, Kenneth. A Perfect Haze: The Illustrated History of the Monterey International Pop Festival. 2011. Santa Monica Press LLC. Pg. 54.
  11. ^ "In Memory: Peter Gardiner (1937-1968)". Amherst College. Retrieved 21 May 2011.
  12. ISSN 0006-2510
    . Retrieved 21 May 2011.
  13. ISSN 0006-2510
    . Retrieved 11 June 2011.
  14. ^
    ISSN 0277-4860
    . Retrieved 11 June 2011.
  15. ^ Sander, Ellen (January 12, 1969). "The Miami Festival: An Inspired Bag of Pop". The New York Times.
  16. ^ Marcucci, Carlo. "Celebrating 40 years of American Top 40". Radio & Television Business Report. Archived from the original on 3 July 2010. Retrieved 21 May 2011.
  17. ^ Puig, Claudia (January 17, 1990). "U.S. 'Countdown' Radio to Debut Back in the U.S.S.R." Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 17 June 2011.
  18. ^
    ISBN 0-02-864895-1
    . New York City: Schirmer Books, 1999.
  19. ^ "Radio Express: Our History". Retrieved 21 May 2011.
  20. ^ "Tom Rounds, Rock Festival and Radio Pioneer, Dead at 77". Rolling Stone. 3 June 2014.

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tom_Rounds&oldid=1158349945"