Dees remembers listening to Bill Cosby on the radio and practicing the comedian's delivery. It was smooth and familiar, he said, like he was speaking to the audience directly.
"No one even knows what original radio sounds like," he said. "People don't even get the weather anymore. There's not a school for talent teaching anymore."
But times have changed, and Dees has changed with them. The era of big radio personalities has given way to podcasts, and while technology has improved and expanded, familiar voices have died out.
With All Number 1 Hits, Dees hopes to tap into the feeling that drew him to radio when he was young. By bringing in new hosts such as his son, Kevin, and Joe Kieley (whose late father was the program director at KIIS-FM for many years), Dees is hoping to keep the radio personality tradition alive.
But he's also adding modern twists through social networking components such as Facebook and Twitter accounts, something that more stations should be doing, he said. Scouring YouTube for videos and tweeting status updates is part of daily life now -- why not bring it into the mix?
When 16-year-old Cyrus came into the studio last week for an interview, she had just finished tweeting to fans. Before shaking Dees' hand, she tucked her smart phone under her neck and offered a hello.
"Why fight it?" he asked. "Last week, one 13-year-old sent out 10,000 text messages."
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alicia.lozano@latimes.com
