Early years After first entering the broadcasting profession at the campus radio station of
Amherst College in
Massachusetts in the late 1950s, Rounds then worked at
WINS (AM) in
New York City as a newsman in 1959 before agreeing to travel to
Honolulu with the station's general manager to work at station KPOI. While in Hawaii, Rounds—hoping to gain publicity for his new position as a
disc jockey—set the world record for sleeplessness. The period of 260 hours awake was attained while Rounds was sitting in a
department store window display. The record was broken in 1964 by
San Diego high school student
Randy Gardner. Rounds became a regional celebrity following the stunt, and eventually rose to lead the station as
program director.
KFRC San Francisco Ron Jacobs had been program director at KPOI before moving to
KHJ in
Los Angeles under influential radio programmer
Bill Drake. Drake was seeking to install his signature
Boss Radio format in the
Bay Area in 1964; Jacobs recommended Tom Rounds for the position at
KFRC in
San Francisco. While at KFRC, Rounds began promoting large multi-act concerts to benefit charity and gain publicity for the station and the bands it featured. After holding the
Beach Boys Summer Spectacular at the
Cow Palace in 1966, Rounds and KFRC conceived of a large outdoor festival featuring a fair atmosphere similar to the popular
Renaissance Pleasure Faire. The KFRC
Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival was held in the second weekend of June 1967 at
Mount Tamalpais State Park in
Marin County, California, to support the Hunters Point Child Care Center. Featuring
Jefferson Airplane,
The 5th Dimension,
The Doors and many other acts, it drew nearly 60,000 attendees. The Fantasy Fair produced by Rounds is considered the first
rock festival in history, preceding the more well-known
Monterey Pop Festival by one week. Rounds left KFRC in the Fall of 1967; his decision to move beyond the restrictions of AM radio was documented on the front cover of the first issue of
Rolling Stone magazine, with the headline "Tom Rounds Quits KFRC" on the upper right beside a large photograph of
John Lennon. Rounds led the company to successfully produce several dozen "artist-promoting films" for acts such as
Jimi Hendrix,
Steppenwolf and
The Animals, working with many record companies to produce the early videos. The company also included Ron Jacobs, and with him Rounds continued to be involved with the promotion of large scale music events in markets associated with Bill Drake. In 1964, Rounds and Jacobs had joined with another Honolulu entertainment entrepreneur, Tom Moffatt, to form Arena Associates. This company was responsible for bringing mainland music acts to the newly built
Blaisdell Center.
Mel Lawrence, who had co-produced both the Fantasy Fair and the Monterey festival the following week was also involved with the company. Chief among the financial backers of Arena Associates was Tom Driscoll, heir of the family that owned the
Driscoll's berry producing agricultural group. With the heavy backing of Driscoll, Rounds and Arena Associates produced several concerts. The most prominent of the events was the
Miami Pop Festival, held in December 1968 at
Gulfstream Park, a horse racing venue in
South Florida. The festival, organized by Rounds, Lawrence, Jacobs, and a substantial promotional team, was hailed two weeks later in the
New York Times as "a resounding success in both organization and programming, making it the first significant major pop festival held on the East Coast". Times reviewer Ellen Sander noted that the Miami festival truly represented the full spectrum of popular music acts, rather than relying on the presence of a few headlining acts to generate revenue.
Watermark and American Top 40 Strawberry mogul Tom Driscoll was also involved in the formation of another of Rounds's businesses. In 1969, again with backing from Driscoll, Rounds and Jacobs formed
Watermark Inc., a radio production and syndication company that created a variety of programs which it then distributed to radio stations throughout North America. The program reached audiences at over 500 radio stations in the United States by the 1980s. In 1990, Rounds announced the introduction of
American Top 40 syndicated programming into the
Soviet Union, adding that country to the list of seventy where the program was heard at the time. The show is still in syndication, hosted by
Ryan Seacrest and distributed by Premiere Networks, a division of the American
media conglomerate iHeartMedia.
Radio Express After Watermark was absorbed into the
American Broadcasting Company in the early 1980s as ABC Watermark, Rounds became responsible for the promotion and syndication of
American Top 40 and other programs outside the United States. ==References==