When bureaucrats in Washington changed the laws that govern radio some 70-odd years ago, a goateed doctor from Kansas named John R. Brinkley headed down to the Texas/Mexico border and built the world's most powerful radio station. When bureaucrats in Washington changed the laws that govern radio two years ago, a Dallas dealmaker named R. Steven Hicks wandered into Austin and began building what may turn out to be America's most powerful radio network. This is the story of these two maverick visionaries and their impact on the American ear. This, my friends, is the tale of Texas radio and the really, really big beat.

Jim Morrison really got it right with "The Wasp: Texas Radio and the Big Beat" (L.A. Woman). What is it about Texas that turns successful businessmen into radio maniacs? Maybe it's the crazy water, drawn from Mineral Wells. Or maybe it's the radioactive dirt that attracted thousands of squatters to Comanche County. Or maybe it's the sky, that huge gaseous expanse that spreads out from the tar-filled waters of the Gulf to the Pampers-clogged barbed wire fences of the West, a canopy so endless that folks just feel the need to fill it with something - anything. Even skinny old radio waves. Or maybe it's the fact that Texas is just so damned big. In the old days, radio was the best way to get the word out to folks in Dime Box and Utopia. These days, Texans spend so much time in the car that they're forced to listen to radio, because when it comes to entertainment, radio beats nothing at all.

Perhaps Governor W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel had the answer. O'Daniel was one of the most popular Texas radio personalities in the Thirties, the man who brought Bob Wills onto the airwaves and penned the immortal ballad "Beautiful Texas." Yet it's one of O'Daniel's other songs that reveals the true passion of the men involved with Texas radio. The name of that immortal tune? "My Million Dollar Smile."

Radio brought a million dollar smile to the face of Dr. John R. Brinkley 70 years ago. These days Steve Hicks is doing a lot of million dollar smiling. Strike that. Billion dollar smiling.