David Tate (radio broadcaster)

David Tate, Radio Broadcaster
Born	1952 Washington, D.C., USA

David Helene Tate (born 1952, Washington, D.C.) served as president/CEO of Rantel Research, Inc. of Laurel, MD, a broadcast radio audience marketing company, from 1979 to 1997. Rantel's area of professional specialization was mostly in radio formats targeted at young-adult audiences as measured by Arbitron of Columbia, Maryland. While companies like Arbitron were focused primarily on measuring radio audience listening levels, or audience ratings, Rantel concentrated on measuring the underlying motivations of radio listeners, i.e., why a listener would prefer one radio station over another.

Before serving at Rantel, Tate worked as a journeyman on-the-air radio host (disc jockey) from roughly 1967 to 1973. Tate's first professional radio broadcast experience was as a volunteer broadcaster, as the afternoon on-air host at Christian-formatted WGTS-FM, Takoma Park, MD, from 1967 to 1970. Tate served under the tutelage of WGTS station manager, Joseph Spicer, Ph.D.

During the bulk of the period from the early 1970s until 1979, Tate served as a radio station program director for "popular music" radio stations, where his duties occasionally required him to serve on-the-air as well.

In 1979, Tate co-founded Rantel Research, Inc., with partners Steven A. Smith (VP/Operations, later COO) and Charles E. Helene (VP/Statistics And Analysis). The name, "Rantel Research" stood for, "Radio and Television Research", although Rantel's business activities centered mostly in the radio broadcasting field. The Rantel company was not affiliated with the radio talk-show host, Al Rantel, of KABC-AM radio in Los Angeles, CA.

During its 17-year existence, the Rantel company focused on developing computer software and services for radio audience market research. During this time, Rantel created products and services for about 1100 broadcasters in the U.S., as well as in South Africa, Italy and Australia.

As the Rantel company slowly achieved prominence in radio during the 1980s, it probably became best known for its introduction of computer-assisted data collection and delivery systems, statistical analysis and audience-segmentation techniques, through its development of some of the earliest incarnations of PC-based software applications for the nascent field of radio audience research, during the 1980s and 1990s.

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