Radio people, more often than not, tell their history - their stories - in bars, not on paper. The tales they tell aren't about industry wide initiatives, results and consequences, they're more personal: about places they worked, people they knew and things that happened along the way. Between the lines of these stories a picture appears of a time gone by - when radio was an important part of American life, disc jockeys were stars, and their listeners cared about them.

Today, as the first decade of the 21st century is coming to a close, the definition of media is changing at a pace that's almost unrecognizable. It's an exciting time, with unlimited possibilities and opportunities for re-invention. But, it would be sad to forget, or worse yet, to never know what came before and how and why it set the stage for the future.