Jonas Cash, Pioneer of Independent Radio Promotion, Dies at 81
Roy Trakin, provided by
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Longtime record promotion executive Jonas Cash, who founded the influential radio programming competition AIR (Active Industry Research) in Baltimore-Washington, MD, died at age 81 in his Columbia, MD home.
“He was not just a promotion executive, but a real artist development guy,” says veteran promotion/marketing exec Michael Plen, who recalls how Cash helped him break Wall of Voodoo’s “Mexican Radio.” “If he believed in a record, he’d go all out.”
AIR established competitions for radio programmers in five different musical genres in 1983, testing new songs’ potential by having programmers listen to and respond to each song’s hit potential using a national chart as the qualifier. The overall winner in picking the hits would receive a car.