Jay Blackburn has died. He created The Loop (WLUP) in 1977.

[Barefootom]

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/sanantonio/obituary.aspx?page=lifestory&pid=145073669

Jay Blackburn, who created The Loop in Chicago in 1977, died Friday.  Jay was one of the last of the radio doctors who traveled around the country building up radio stations so they could be sold for a better price.  He practiced his craft at stations from El Paso to Seattle to Puerto Rico.  While the conversion of WSDM to The Loop was his most visible success story, selling for a then-record price of $5 million in 1979, not every project worked out so well.  After turning over the keys to 92WMAD in Madison, a station that would eventually be taken over and shut down by the bank, he told me "sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't."  A fitting epitaph. Rest in peace, Jay.

Here's a link to his obituary in the San Antonio Express-News: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/sanantonio/obituary.aspx?page=lifestory&pid=145073669

[HadYourPhil]

He put WQRK together in early 1973 in Norfolk, VA. Very strange but entertaining Top-40, and the most compressed FM I ever heard!!