AAA radio

[Scott Fybush]

><<On Mon, 8 Nov 2004 11:51:03 -0800 (PST), Cooper Fox <fox893@yahoo.com> said:
>
> > Does anyone know who actually started the AAA format?
> > Or, who coined the term AAA?
>
>This would seem like a question for Mr. Fybush, but in his absence I
>can hazard a few guesses.

The best I can do, alas, is also to hazard a few guesses. I first recall 
hearing the term in use in the early nineties, around the time that WBOS 
was transforming into something we'd now recognize as AAA.

The earliest commercial AAAs were outgrowths of the progressive/free-form 
"underground" FM rockers of the late 60s/70s; indeed, some were the very 
same stations (WXRT in Chicago, most notably). KPIG in Freedom, California 
also deserves note here, being a spiritual, if not a lineal, descendant of 
the seminal KFAT in Gilroy.

The very earliest mention of AAA that I can find in a Google search of 
Usenet archives was in the fall of 1993; stations mentioned in those early 
threads included KBCO, WXRT, WEHM East Hampton NY, WWCD Columbus OH and 
KQPT Sacramento.

It looks as though there was an article about AAA in Billboard in the first 
or second week of November 1993 that served as something of an introduction 
to the format; I don't have the magazines here from that era. Further, it 
looks as though Billboard changed its "eclectic AOR" chart to "AAA" in 
about that same period.

s