Can you remember what you were listening to in junior high? Odds are good you can. Studies say the most important period for forming musical taste is when you are about 12 years old. For Boss Boss Radio Program Director John Van Camp, his musical sweet spot was the early seventies.

“You can be so transported by a song. And as you get older, you get to where you actually ache for these younger years,” Van Camp said, “it’s comforting to have this music take you back to a simpler time, a less stressful time.”

This was the inspiration behind Boss Boss Radio–to recreate classic radio without completely recreating it. Internet radio is obviously different from broadcast radio, but with The Boss, you get the best of both worlds.

“I wanted to create not a tribute station to my youth, but a station that we thought would have been a natural progression of radio the way we thought it should be, yet playing the music of that of our day.” stated Van Camp.

Beginning August 1st, 2012, Boss Boss Radio focused on the classics and spotlighted the hits of the 60s and 70s. And the masses wanted more! Boss Boss expanded to include 80s and 90s hits in their expansive repertoire.

According to Van Camp, the goal was to appeal to a wider audience. Along with the combined musical knowledge of the Boss Boss Radio team, Van Camp was able to find the perfect sound. At the start of Boss Boss, internet radio was a bunch of jukeboxes, meaning that a playlist was compiled and played on the air with no live disc jockey. Van camp wanted to reinvent how we listen to internet radio.

When Boss Boss Radio began in 2012, the market was closed to a lot of very talented people due to the playlist format of internet radio. To alleviate this challenge, disc jockeys were immediately brought on to create a real radio station with the convenience of online listening.

This is what sets The Boss apart from its competitors who lack the personal touch that Boss Boss Radio offers. This format is what goes in between the records and between those records are those personalities that add something to the whole program.

“That was really the key; we were always going to be what we call a personality station,” Van Camp said, “Every station we’ve built here at the Boss Radio network, it’s been a huge priority having on-air personalities, live hosts, and then we were able to do so because of the internet.”

From Van Camp and one partner to now,  “Boss Boss Radio has now had disc jockeys from around the world. Boss Boss has brought together the greatest mix of “Boss Jocks,’” who combined have hundreds of years of on-air experience.

We have enjoyed on-air jocks from as far away as Australia, Britain, and Germany, and one who currently reports in from Canada! We also have Boss Jocks from coast-to-coast including Pennsylvania, Texas, and Northern and Southern California.”

Boss Boss Radio is the mothership of the other stations now streaming from the Boss Radio network. On August 1st, 2012 at 5 a.m. The Boss went live with The Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back” streaming to all who would listen. What started as The Beatles to Blondie has now grown into The Beatles to Bon Jovi as the playlist expanded to 80s and 90s classics. Boss Boss Radio airs this playlist in chronological order about six times a year, with each year introduced with the hits that follow. When it is not in chronological order, The Beatles to Bon Jovi remains the main music repertoire.

So where will Boss Boss go next?

Boss Boss Radio currently simulcasts to K-Tahoe, a radio station in Lake Tahoe California. But Van Camp doesn’t want to stop there. Van Camp hopes that Boss Boss Radio, as well as the other radio formats will stream on FM stations around the world. The dictionary defines the word “radio” as terminology for a science of transmitting radio waves across the air, but the definition of radio has expanded far beyond that today.

“When people say radio is dead, terrestrial radio might be dying a slow and painful death, but radio itself is actually blossoming,” Van Camp explains, “that’s important for everybody to understand. It’s an audio product, we consider it to be radio.”

For Van Camp, transporting his listeners to that special place in time, on whatever platform available, is top priority.

“I would like our listener to come to us and be transported to another time in their mind,” Van Camp conveyed, “but not for nostalgia’s sake. For the sake of being able to live, entertained, as they want to be entertained, by people who are their friends. And that’s, that’s really what this is all about. And we try and stretch that across to all of our stations”

So tune in to Boss Boss Radio for The Beatles to Bon Jovi and beyond! And for more Boss hits check out our family of stations to see how the Boss network has grown with something for every listener. Happy listening!

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