Legendary Radio Programmer John Rook Dead at 78

RADIO ONLINE | Friday, March 4, 2016 | 4:16pm CT

John Rook

Sad to report the death of legendary radio programmer and executive John Rook. He died last Tuesday of natural causes at age 78. During the sixties, Rook worked at stations in Denver, Salt Lake City, Pittsburgh, Chicago and Los Angeles. He was best known as PD at WLS-AM/Chicago, where the station reached an audience of 3.8 million weekly. After leaving WLS to form a radio consultancy in 1970, rival WCFL-AM beat WLS in the ratings after retaining Rook's services.

Rook left WLS to head American Independent Radio or AIR, which became Drake-Chenault, a Los Angeles-based company formed by top 40 creator Bill Drake and his partner Gene Chenault that syndicated "Hit Parade" and "The History of Rock and Roll." Rook then formed "programming db" with radio programmers Chuck Blore and Ken Draper, followed by his own consultancy John Rook & Associates.

In 1977, John Rook & Associates was named "Radio Consultant of the Year" at the Bobby Poe Convention. In 1994, Rook was voted by the readers of Radio & Records as "One of most Influential Programmers of the past 20 years." As a programming consultant, Rook later consulted WHYI-FM (Y100)/Miami, WIFI/Philadelphia, KIMN-FM/Denver; WGCL/Cleveland; WZGC-FM (Z-93)/Atlanta, KRBE-FM/Houston and WBAP/Dallas.

Rook moved to North Idaho in 1983, where he purchased a small horse ranch south of Coeur d'Alene, while becoming the owner of several stations in Spokane, WA. In recent years, Rook offered radio commentary at JohnRook.com and was a guest on and consultant for Talk radio.

A GoFundMe campaign, John Rook Memorial Fund, has been set up to assist Rook's sister, Dorothy (Dot) Rook, with additional expenses moving forward at gofundme.com/gbsn92ss.