Bring Back EZ Listening Format....Please

[Mark_Giardina]

Not that I’m nostalgic but I would love to see the return of a Bonneville format style of music that the old WEZO used to play. I mean here in Rochester you have several stations virtually playing the same songs day in and day out. I enjoyed the so-called “background music” of WEZO, especially at work.

Of course this format would have to be featured on an FM station because the available AM frequencies that could switch to this type of format have signal problems. ( 950 or 990) And I personally don't want to hear hissing or any other noise coming from my radio, just music. As for HD on AM, its more like BS and AM. Or as others put it, AM stereo. That turned out to be a real successful idea didn't it?

And there are those who say why format a station for older listeners? Well because if you look at the statistics, radio isn't gaining many younger listeners today that's because they are not bothering to listen to radio. Instead they are downloading music on-line. As for satellite, I'm surprised that's still around. While both XM and Sirius boast of increasing their audience, their stock has taken a nose-dive on Wall Street. That should give people a hint what serious investors think of satellite radio. Eventually every satellite radio station is going to have to play commercials because how else are they going to afford the high salaries they are paying some of their announcers, plus cover other expenses? Satellite Radio is starting out like cable TV did years ago. And look at Cable today. A zillion channels, many of them carrying the same channels, playing the same movies or reruns and bombarded with ads for All-In-One or infomercials.

Okay enough commentary and ranting for today. It's off to work I go .

 

[Yeziknoradio]

Not that I’m nostalgic but I would love to see the return of a Bonneville format style of music that the old WEZO used to play. I mean here in Rochester you have several stations virtually playing the same songs day in and day out. I enjoyed the so-called “background music” of WEZO, especially at work.

Of course this format would have to be featured on an FM station because the available AM frequencies that could switch to this type of format have signal problems. ( 950 or 990) And I personally don't want to hear hissing or any other noise coming from my radio, just music. As for HD on AM, its more like BS and AM. Or as others put it, AM stereo. That turned out to be a real successful idea didn't it?

And there are those who say why format a station for older listeners? Well because if you look at the statistics, radio isn't gaining many younger listeners today that's because they are not bothering to listen to radio. Instead they are downloading music on-line. As for satellite, I'm surprised that's still around. While both XM and Sirius boast of increasing their audience, their stock has taken a nose-dive on Wall Street. That should give people a hint what serious investors think of satellite radio. Eventually every satellite radio station is going to have to play commercials because how else are they going to afford the high salaries they are paying some of their announcers, plus cover other expenses? Satellite Radio is starting out like cable TV did years ago. And look at Cable today. A zillion channels, many of them carrying the same channels, playing the same movies or reruns and bombarded with ads for All-In-One or infomercials.

Okay enough commentary and ranting for today. It's off to work I go .

I have to agree, but unfortunantly, (to quote a source in the Buffalo market):
"The advertisers won't bite!"
That's why 107.7 went country when it did (as WNUC, then later, sports, now Lake FM)

I can also tell you that in Canada, Smooth Jazz in Hamilton Ontario is below a 2 share in that market.

How well did "Buffalo's Unique way to relax" do? Only well enough to flip to Alice, and a few other formats after that.

I'd love to see someone put an easy favorites station together, (easy favorites, much prefered over smooth jazz)
But where's the owner, and sales team with enough faith to give it another go...?

 

[Mike Sheridan]

I agree but had to cringe when I saw your post. There is one guy who verbally likes to beat anyone up that proposes anything that might appeal to the upper demos!

You are right there is way too much sameness on the air these days.

I remember when my Uncle got his big luxury car. He had one of the early FM Stereo factory radios. He had the beautiful music station playing and man it sounded rich!

We used to have a radio in the kids room when they were really small tuned to the beautiful music station to help mask the noise and help them sleep.

Ah for the days wien there was a station for every mood!

 

[JakeLongwell]

I just have to say it's nice to see some people putting Beautiful Music in a positive light. Believe it or not, I'm younger than most of the posters on this board, and I too miss that format.
Growing up in the 80s, I can recall WZSH, WJYE, WEBF Olean (complete with their 11:15 pm sign offs), and WRHP in Syracuse.
One of the last stations in the region to keep this awesome music playing was WRRN in Warren/Jamestown. And they probably would have kept it going a lot longer, but I was told by someone at the station when they switched to Oldies that the reason they changed was because the company who was supplying them with automation reels had discontinued the "muzak" genre.
If you have digital cable from Time Warner, you can still hear Beautiful Music. But somehow, it's just not quite the same, is it?

 

[Element9]

Yes, Beutiful Music had a certain panache. It also was great for inducing sleep and "setting the mood."

I always enjoyed hearing the Schulte Strings play their special version of Hendrix' "Foxey Lady." Quite inspiring.


-9-

 

[dampier]

XM Radio's Escape easy listening channel is one of the most popular of their niche formats, and gets plenty of attention even while Sirius continues to overlook the format. I am well outside of the easy listening demo (39) yet I grew up listening to WPXY when it was Pixie 98 as well as Jerry Warner's time checks and golf stories on WEZO. Poor Jerry Warner was basically left languishing on the old WISH-95 WZSH before the format finally died here in greater Rochester.

I count Paul Mauriat as one of my favorite artists, and truly enjoyed the format.

Since then, I have slowly acquired through friends, connections, and musty old reels, a good part of the entire core Bonneville easy listening library for my own enjoyment. Artists like Lex DeAzevedo, largely unknown outside of the LDS community, recorded hundreds of songs just for the format. Ronnie Aldrich and John Fox also made up a huge part of the Bonneville library, and most of their stuff has been buried awaiting rediscovery.

Unfortunately, the biggest impediment to the format is the fact it is going to sound stuck in the 1960's-1985, because a large part of the library was recorded just for the format and never commercially released. By the mid 80s, the format became stagnant and listeners went elsewhere. XM Radio's Escape sounds like the radio equivalent of Cuba - stuck in time. They've been left to adding some solo piano and Richard Clayderman stuff, who is one of few artists still releasing decent stuff.

Arrangements of today's contemporary artists would be far tougher than it used to be as well. How hard was it to do instrumentals of the Carpenters or the Beatles. Can you imagine The Milkshake Song done by Richard Clayderman? Today's R&B influenced pop music is going to be tough to deal with, although Celine Dion songs might not.

To relaunch the format, one is stuck with basically one remaining syndicator which has the bits and pieces of custom libraries of Bonneville, SRP, etc. Unfortunately, a lot of it has not aged well having sat on reel masters in basements for years now. You can hear missing ends and anomalies all over XM's Escape core library, for instance.

I am a big proponent of bringing back this music, and nichecasting digital radio bouquets would be absolutely the way to go. It's made for automation anyway. The only problem is building support for the format. If it was perhaps sold as a "lounge/easy" type of format, you could catch some of the "cool" factor among younger audiences, but it would not the same sound as the traditional EZ stations we grew up with in the 70s and 80s, but that would still be better than nothing.

And... easy listening radio is nothing like smooth jazz or nostalgia formats. It's always been a very unique format, especially when you consider how many others custom arrange and record music specifically for it!

 

[Yeziknoradio]

The 90's - Color me bad's All for love fits the format (without the lyrics), and I know it exsists, because I heard it while passing through a high end shopping mall in Toronto Canada earlier this year. It is possible that the tempo may have been slowed down a bit to better fit the format, but I'm not sure.

There's also some modern tunes out there, that I was impressed to hear, (again, with piano, or some form of instrument replacing the lyrics) but I seem to have forgotten the song titles and original artists.

 

[Mark_Giardina]

We might have stumbled on to something here because judging from the reaction so far there appears to be a number of you who agree that such a format might actually work in the market where you live.

I mean after all what does a station pulling down less than a one share have to lose by switching formats?

So what if your audience is older? As long as a station has even a three share these days any good salesperson can sell it. And the Bonneville format can’t be any worse than some of the repetitious crap I hear on the radio today.

As I mentioned earlier perhaps with the pending sale of the CBS cluster, or maybe one of the other monopolies will sell off one of their less profitable FM stations to a local group of investors and that group might just go with the E Z listening format in the near future.

 

[Element9]

We might have stumbled on to something here because judging from the reaction so far there appears to be a number of you who agree that such a format might actually work in the market where you live. I mean after all what does a station pulling down less than a one share have to lose by switching formats? So what if your audience is older? As long as a station has even a three share these days any good salesperson can sell it. And the Bonneville format can’t be any worse than some of the repetitious crap I hear on the radio today. As I mentioned earlier perhaps with the pending sale of the CBS cluster, or maybe one of the other monopolies will sell off one of their less profitable FM stations to a local group of investors and that group might just go with the E Z listening format in the near future

Highly UNlikely. If anybody is going to take a chance, it'll be a local shop.

Seriously. Folks, this is an interesting thread and mildly revealing at that, all warm and fuzzy for EZ, BM, whatever. But let's not get silly here. This is far from a scientific poll. Eight people think EZ is a good format. Eight RADIO people. Eight GEEK-A-ZOIDS (much like me) who think Schulke might work in their markets. OK, I'm game. Put it on YOUR station, after YOU spend a bunch of cash buying it and then servicing the debt.

Note well: I'm not saying your wrong. I'm saying there are better ways to make money, inform and entertain listeners. Like Standards or Oldies. The EZ, BM or Holiday For Strings format is a lot different than Standards or Music Of Your Life.

Was it only a few threads past that we were debating the validity of Oldies and 50's and 60's formats?

We're aging gracefully, aren't we.
-9-

 

[Yeziknoradio]

We might have stumbled on to something here because judging from the reaction so far there appears to be a number of you who agree that such a format might actually work in the market where you live. I mean after all what does a station pulling down less than a one share have to lose by switching formats? So what if your audience is older? As long as a station has even a three share these days any good salesperson can sell it. And the Bonneville format can’t be any worse than some of the repetitious crap I hear on the radio today. As I mentioned earlier perhaps with the pending sale of the CBS cluster, or maybe one of the other monopolies will sell off one of their less profitable FM stations to a local group of investors and that group might just go with the E Z listening format in the near future

Highly UNlikely. If anybody is going to take a chance, it'll be a local shop.

Seriously. Folks, this is an interesting thread and mildly revealing at that, all warm and fuzzy for EZ, BM, whatever. But let's not get silly here. This is far from a scientific poll. Eight people think EZ is a good format. Eight RADIO people. Eight GEEK-A-ZOIDS (much like me) who think Schulke might work in their markets. OK, I'm game. Put it on YOUR station, after YOU spend a bunch of cash buying it and then servicing the debt.

Note well: I'm not saying your wrong. I'm saying there are better ways to make money, inform and entertain listeners. Like Standards or Oldies. The EZ, BM or Holiday For Strings format is a lot different than Standards or Music Of Your Life.

Was it only a few threads past that we were debating the validity of Oldies and 50's and 60's formats?

We're aging gracefully, aren't we.
-9-

It also boils down to what it may or may not take away from sister stations in a market.
In Canada, the rule is that a company can only own 2 AM and 2 FM, but in the states, a company can own up to 60% of a market.

If Easy favourites can be done without taking too much away from sister stations in the same market...

The Philly market has just tossed Smooth Jazz away hinting that it can't...
(you may have to scroll down)
Link: http://www.fybush.com/nerw.html

 

[JIBGUY]

The demos of Beautiful Music is actually OLDER than those of "Adult Standards" format. With my stations (WJIB-740 Boston & WJTO-730 Coastal Maine), I had been doing BM there for quite a few years,butwhen I morphed them gradually to Adult Standards, the listenership got younger, and in much more quanity; ratings have gone up quite a bit. This is somewhat strange as the adult standards songs I play on the stations are older than I am; I play a lot of 40's and early 50's, and I mix in very little of anything from the 90's and 00's. - For BM, there ARE still CD's available in specialty on-line music stores, of recently-done orchestra versions of songs from the past 20 years.- Remember when Rochester had THREE competing BM stations?-WEZO and WVOR and WROC-FM? (or maybeWROC-FM was gone before WEZO came along around 1971 or so.

 

[JIBGUY]

one more thing....
Most BM stations discontinued....
NOT JUST becasue of old demos, and
NOT JUST becuase of agencies run by mindless 28-year-olds were ignoring it,
BUT ALSO because most local salespeople are young, and they don't believe in it, therefore no enthusiasm to sell it. To them, an easier sale would be for any other station in the cluster.

 

[Yeziknoradio]

one more thing....
Most BM stations discontinued....
NOT JUST becasue of old demos, and
NOT JUST becuase of agencies run by mindless 28-year-olds were ignoring it,
BUT ALSO because most local salespeople are young, and they don't believe in it, therefore no enthusiasm to sell it. To them, an easier sale would be for any other station in the cluster.

Unfortunantly, the original founder of CJEZ in Toronto Canada passed away a few years ago, but I gather, if he were to post here, he'd have similar points to make.

I still beg to differ, in respect to select time slots though.
Why not run BM from late evening until shortly after midnight?
Wouldn't there be a market for that at the very least? (doing so on an FM standards station, respectfully.)
I'm 30 something, and I miss hearing the format for that timeslot (at the very least) very much.
It was also nice hearing a LOCAL personality cover the 3 E's in a creative manner that doesn't distract the format in any way.

 

[JakeLongwell]

I agree with the poster who suggested making the EZ format available on a digital subchannel. Here's a thought. Maybe the stations that were formerly known for the format, such as 96.1 in Buffalo and 101.3 in Rochester, could bring it back on their 3rd stream. After all, 96.1 is said to be putting smooth jazz on their HD-2 channel, so why not beautiful music on HD-3? This is, of course, assuming HD radio catches on, and doesn't end up going the same route as the 8 track tape.

 

[Yeziknoradio]

I agree with the poster who suggested making the EZ format available on a digital subchannel. Here's a thought. Maybe the stations that were formerly known for the format, such as 96.1 in Buffalo and 101.3 in Rochester, could bring it back on their 3rd stream. After all, 96.1 is said to be putting smooth jazz on their HD-2 channel, so why not beautiful music on HD-3? This is, of course, assuming HD radio catches on, and doesn't end up going the same route as the 8 track tape.

Or, (borrowing an idea out of Canada as an example), to go the way of DAB. (Digital audio Broadcasting) That had a very short life.

 

[passtheword]

Ok...I realize this thread is what now...almost 8 yrs old, lol, but I came across it a few minutes ago doing a search on google. If there are any of the people who originally posted on this thread still around (or anyone else interested), please contact me at my website below. A friend of mine and I are attempting to revive the beautiful music format via the internet...doing stations as locally-based, not-for-profit enterprises in order to preserve the format and share it with new listeners. So far, there are four of us doing online EZ/BM stations and a fifth station is now in the process of being put together. All four (soon to be five) of our stations are tribute stations of former beautiful music FM's in our respective areas. We're looking for just one person in each major city in America to be willing to "step up", start, and operate an online beautiful music formatted station in his/her own area. That's all it really takes...just for ONE person in each major city across America to say "yes" and do it; it CAN be done! As we know, the beautiful music format will never return to the broadcast airwaves, but we can preserve it over the internet.

The following are our stations' websites and Facebook pages to give you a better idea of where we're going with all of it:


WEZI-DB: Memphis, TN "WEZI Radio"
http://www.weziradio.com
http://www.facebook.com/weziradio

WQEZ-DB: Birmingham, AL "Beautiful QEZ"
http://www.qezradio.com
http://www.facebook.com/qezradio

WRSA-DB: Cullman/Huntsville, AL "Beautiful 97"
http://www.beautiful97.com
http://www.facebook.com/beautifulrsa

WZEZ-DB: Nashville, TN "EZ93"
http://www.wzez93.tk
http://www.facebook.com/wzez93

 

[Mike Sheridan]

I hope I don't get shot for mentioning this but Sirius/XM has a beautiful music channel. It's called "Escape".

As for "Older Demos" I used to listen to Beautiful Music in my late teens on Miami's WLYF "Life Stereo 101.5 all music, all the time..." I remember my uncle just bought a new Olds Toronado with an FM Stereo radio. He had WLYF playing and to my ears it sounded luxurious. WLYF had killer ratings by the way.

 

[frankberry]

www.amityvillecommunityradio.com has a beautiful music internet stream.

 

[Prescott Joe]

There ARE people, like myself, that really enjoy the EZ/BM genre to this day.
I'm 52 and have enjoyed the format all my life. It was what I grew up hearing
from those closest around me. I moved to Prescott, AZ in part, because of
KAHM, FM 102.1. Even with Lew Silverstein's recent passing, the owner of
KAHM, they still intend to keep the same general format, tweaking it now and
then to make it more contemporary. I've listened to the stations you mention
above, online from time to time. They make it possible to enjoy the EZ/BM
for the vast majority of people who enjoy the format. If I didn't already live
in an area that had EZ/BM over the air, I'd consider your offer.....

 

[passtheword]

There ARE people, like myself, that really enjoy the EZ/BM genre to this day.
I'm 52 and have enjoyed the format all my life. It was what I grew up hearing
from those closest around me. I moved to Prescott, AZ in part, because of
KAHM, FM 102.1. Even with Lew Silverstein's recent passing, the owner of
KAHM, they still intend to keep the same general format, tweaking it now and
then to make it more contemporary. I've listened to the stations you mention
above, online from time to time. They make it possible to enjoy the EZ/BM
for the vast majority of people who enjoy the format. If I didn't already live
in an area that had EZ/BM over the air, I'd consider your offer.....

Many people believe the EZ/BM audience is composed of the "over 70 crowd". However, that isn't the case. All four of us doing the online stations I mentioned in my post are under 50 years of age. I am 45 here; my friend who operates WEZI in Memphis is 47. The other guys are in their 30's; one is 31 and the other is around 37, 38 years old. I have another friend doing an online EZ/BM station based out of Tucson called The Oasis" which has a more modern approach to the format; he is 32. I regularly hear from my listeners who tell me they are in their 30's and 40's. I heard from a woman a few weeks ago who told me she regularly listens to my station and she is 30 years old. Obviously, the vast majority of 30- and 40-somethings don't listen to EZ/BM, but there are a lot more people in those age brackets listening to EZ/BM than what is typically attributed. btw, we're looking for someone to take on a station for Phoenix...maybe a tribute station for KMEO "Cameo". We'll sign you up if you're interested. My friend in Tucson has offered to assist anyone who might be willing to start an online EZ/BM station elsewhere, including Phoenix.