Billboard Radio Monitor was a weekly music trade publication that followed the radio industry and tracked the monitoring of current songs by format, station and audience cumes. The magazine was a spinoff of "Billboard magazine" and was mostly available through subscription to people who work in the radio industry as well as music chart enthusiasts. It was developed in Columbia, Maryland, initially by Alan Smith and Jonas Cash, principals of the music company called AIR. AIR created music listening competitions for radio programmers in five different musical genres and were looking for a "qualifier" for the contests. The contests involved testing new songs' potential by having radio programmers listen to and respond to each song's hit potential using a national chart as the qualifier. After using Radio and Records chart for the first 10 years of the competition, AIR developed the BAM, and went into partnership with "Billboard Magazine" to produce and market the magazine. As members of the Board of Directors, the AIR principals continued to improve its features over the next eight years under the new name of "Billboard Radio Monitor".