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Once radio became portable and FM was introduced, music began to dominate the medium more than ever. This eventually led to the creation of format radio, by which station managers (rather than disc jockeys) control the station’s hour-by-hour music programming. Of course, in the late 1930s, music had been radio’s single biggest staple, accounting for 48 percent of all programming. However, most music was live, which many people considered superior to recorded music. The first disc jockeys demonstrated that recorded music could attract just as many listeners as live music.

As early as 1949, station owner Todd Storz in Omaha, Nebraska, had experimented with format radio and music. When Storz and his program manager noticed that bar patrons and waitresses repeatedly played certain favorite songs from the forty records available in a jukebox, they began researching record sales to identify the most popular tunes. Drawing from jukebox culture, Storz hit on the idea of rotation: playing the top songs many times during the day. By the mid-1950s, the management-control idea combined with the rock-and-roll explosion—and the Top 40 format was born. Although the term Top 40 derived from the number of records stored in a jukebox, this format came to refer to the forty most popular hits in a given week as measured by record sales.

As format radio grew, program managers combined rapid deejay chatter with the best-selling songs of the day and occasional oldies—popular songs from a few months earlier. In these early days of format radio, managers created a program log that deejays followed and sectioned off blocks of roughly four hours throughout the day and night. Management would vary the format for each block to appeal to listeners’ interests, and thus attract more advertising dollars. For instance, a Top 40 station would feature its best deejays in the morning and afternoon periods, during listeners’ commutes to school or work. Management also made savvy use of research. For example, if statistics showed that teenagers tended to listen to the radio mostly during evening hours and preferred music to news, then stations marketing to teens avoided scheduling news breaks during those hours.

The expansion of FM in the mid-1960s created room for stations to experiment, particularly with classical music, jazz, blues, and non–Top 40 rock songs. Many noncommercial stations broadcast from college campuses, where student deejays and managers rejected the commercialism associated with Top 40 tunes and began playing lesser-known alternative music and longer album cuts.