David Tate

Who is David Tate?

David Helene Tate 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 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.