What Killed Beautiful Music?

[Hoxie]

I'm grateful to the guys on this board who gave me an education (a ways back) about the now-defunct "beautiful music" format. It got me intrigued, and I'm back with a couple of questions for the experts.

What killed off "beautiful music"?... was it a case of industry giants chasing the youth demographic? Or did ratings go into a secular decline as the audience simply aged and died out?

And wasn't KJOY the traditional local leader in that format? Didn't it draw good ratings for a long time?

I guess I'm wondering if the format died a long, lingering death or if it was killed by an abrupt shift in corporate programming strategy.

 

[michael hagerty]

I'm grateful to the guys on this board who gave me an education (a ways back) about the now-defunct "beautiful music" format. It got me intrigued, and I'm back with a couple of questions for the experts.

What killed off "beautiful music"?... was it a case of industry giants chasing the youth demographic? Or did ratings go into a secular decline as the audience simply aged and died out?

And wasn't KJOY the traditional local leader in that format? Didn't it draw good ratings for a long time?

I guess I'm wondering if the format died a long, lingering death or if it was killed by an abrupt shift in corporate programming strategy.

Hoxie, it was mostly the audience aging out. "Beautiful Music" stations hit their peak in most markets in the mid-to-late-70s, fueled largely by older adults (50+) tuning away from old-school AM middle-of-the-road stations (KOGO, KFMB) as they modernized their music to stay relevant to an 18-49 or 25-54 audience.

By the time the mid-to-late-80s rolled around, that was a 60+ audience, and getting older every year. That gets tough to sell to advertisers.

KJOY (KJQY)'s best fall book was 1985. Number one overall (12+) with a 9.4. Number 3 in 25-54, number 11 in 18-49.

Five years later (fall '89), KJQY is third overall (12+) with a 6.5---that's a third of its fall '85 number gone. It was down to 12th in 25-54, and 15th in 18-49.

In the year between the fall 1989 book and the fall 1990 book, KJQY shifted to Adult Contemporary. That book? Tied for 4th overall (12+) with a 6.0. Yes, that's down half a point from when they were beautiful, but look at the demographics---number 2 25-54 and number 6 18-49. Which immediately made them a viable commercial force.

 

[semoochie]

I think the biggest killer of the Beautiful Music format was Adult Contemporary. It absolutely wiped out the former's bottom end! Finally, there was something between it and Top 40. It had solid ratings with Women 18-34 but AC took away all of that! Later, they changed from playing modern versions of everything back to 1890 to(somewhat)more contemporary songs(B/EZ)but the pendulum had already started.

 

[davideduardo]

I'm grateful to the guys on this board who gave me an education (a ways back) about the now-defunct "beautiful music" format. It got me intrigued, and I'm back with a couple of questions for the experts.

What killed off "beautiful music"?... was it a case of industry giants chasing the youth demographic? Or did ratings go into a secular decline as the audience simply aged and died out?

And wasn't KJOY the traditional local leader in that format? Didn't it draw good ratings for a long time?

I guess I'm wondering if the format died a long, lingering death or if it was killed by an abrupt shift in corporate programming strategy.

I owned an international Beautiful Music syndicator in the early to mid 1980's which provided services to Latin America. The content was very similar to that of Bonneville or FM 100 or Schulke except that a large percentage of songs were instrumental covers of Spanish language hits and the vocals were predominantly in Spanish.

At our peak, we had 87 stations in 15 countries using the service.

Here is a page from my resume about Music en Flor: https://davidgleason.com/1981-1985-Musica-en-Flor.htm

As the 80's progressed, we found that the format was aging. We made every effort to make sure that the music was predominantly made up of covers of more contemporary pop music and the vocals were Latin American CHR ballads that fit the format, not nostalgia songs.

But in general, the interest in mostly instrumental music was declining. Just as CHR in the US and England seldom saw instrumental hits in that decade, we noted that in general tastes in music were changing. Record labels almost totally stopped doing instrumental albums, and the cost of custom covers of hits became much more expensive.

By about 1987 our client base had declined to just a dozen and I pulled the plug. The decline was slow, but quite simply the music itself lost listener interest. Of course, there were still older listeners, but advertisers were not looking for them.

The simple answer: the audience didn't just age out; it declined in number as instrumental music stopped being of interest.

 

[davideduardo]

I think the biggest killer of the Beautiful Music format was Adult Contemporary. It absolutely wiped out the former's bottom end! Finally, there was something between it and Top 40. It had solid ratings with Women 18-34 but AC took away all of that! Later, they changed from playing modern versions of everything back to 1890 to(somewhat)more contemporary songs(B/EZ)but the pendulum had already started.

AC began in the early 70's, while Beautiful Music lasted well into the 80's. But AC, first known as "chicken rock", was pretty much the more adult songs from Top 40 and initially was a 25-44 target. As time went on, the Beautiful Music 35-54 listeners became 50+, and AC became 18-49 and the sales demos for instrumental fans aged out.

But, more than that, the sources of music dried up. Record labels could not sell anything except a bit of Pourcel and Muriat, and many of the orchestra leaders and arrangers died. And the current hits of the later 80's did not make for good covers... an instrumental of "YMCA" was not very appealing.

 

[semoochie]

AC began in the early 70's, while Beautiful Music lasted well into the 80's. But AC, first known as "chicken rock", was pretty much the more adult songs from Top 40 and initially was a 25-44 target. As time went on, the Beautiful Music 35-54 listeners became 50+, and AC became 18-49 and the sales demos for instrumental fans aged out.

But, more than that, the sources of music dried up. Record labels could not sell anything except a bit of Pourcel and Muriat, and many of the orchestra leaders and arrangers died. And the current hits of the later 80's did not make for good covers... an instrumental of "YMCA" was not very appealing.

Young women didn't stay with the format "well" into the '80s. The ones that were still there left after AC softened about 40 years ago!

 

[michael hagerty]

I think the biggest killer of the Beautiful Music format was Adult Contemporary. It absolutely wiped out the former's bottom end! Finally, there was something between it and Top 40. It had solid ratings with Women 18-34 but AC took away all of that!

Not sure that can be backed up with facts, Semoochie.

Sticking with KJQY, and looking at the Fall, 1980 book (when Radio & Records included audience composition analysis ) shows 45.2% of KJQY's audience was 55+, and another 43.9% was 35-54. That leaves 10.9% for literally everything else, so it's doubtful there were "solid" ratings to be had in Women 18-34.

One factor I didn't mention in my first post (by the way, KJQY's best book was fall '84, not fall '85---sorry for the typo) is the arrival of New Adult Contemporary/New Age stations in the late 80s. Those absolutely hurt Beautiful Music in markets that had them---but it ate at the heart---25-54 females. One largely instrumental, relaxing format taking share from another, more stale one.

 

[gr8oldies]

I think the biggest killer of the Beautiful Music format was Adult Contemporary. It absolutely wiped out the former's bottom end! Finally, there was something between it and Top 40. It had solid ratings with Women 18-34 but AC took away all of that! Later, they changed from playing modern versions of everything back to 1890 to(somewhat)more contemporary songs(B/EZ)but the pendulum had already started.

Seems a lot of Beautiful Music stations morphed into soft A/C. WHIO-FM, Dayton (not the current News/Talk WHIO-FM, which was WPTW-FM, also Beautiful Music) was heading that direction, but found a hole for FM country a mile wide in 1989 and flipped. The book at the end was still very respectable but 55 plus. In many markets, a rimshot picked up the BM format, sometimes even the calls, but usually that didn't last.

 

[gr8oldies]

AC began in the early 70's, while Beautiful Music lasted well into the 80's. But AC, first known as "chicken rock", was pretty much the more adult songs from Top 40 and initially was a 25-44 target. As time went on, the Beautiful Music 35-54 listeners became 50+, and AC became 18-49 and the sales demos for instrumental fans aged out.

But, more than that, the sources of music dried up. Record labels could not sell anything except a bit of Pourcel and Muriat, and many of the orchestra leaders and arrangers died. And the current hits of the later 80's did not make for good covers... an instrumental of "YMCA" was not very appealing.

I once heard Beautiful Music a cover of Wings' "Mull of Kintyre", with vocals.

 

[michael hagerty]

Seems a lot of Beautiful Music stations morphed into soft A/C. WHIO-FM, Dayton (not the current News/Talk WHIO-FM, which was WPTW-FM, also Beautiful Music) was heading that direction, but found a hole for FM country a mile wide in 1989 and flipped. The book at the end was still very respectable but 55 plus. In many markets, a rimshot picked up the BM format, sometimes even the calls, but usually that didn't last.

Jhani Kaye drew the blueprint for a successful transition from Beautiful to AC with KOST in Los Angeles. He invented the whole "Continuous Soft Hits" approach.

But not everyone went that route. In Phoenix, KQYT (Quiet 95) went first to a simulcast with its AM sister KOY, which was a more traditional personality AC, common on AM stations in the 1970s and 80s. When that failed, in 1987, they went CHR as Y95.

Westinghouse's KMEO held on until the early 1990s and it was kind of grim to hear their attempt to transition. They took Don Henley's "The End of the Innocence", edited out the vocals and played it as a 2-minute Bruce Hornsby instrumental. This kind of thing went on for months. Finally, Westinghouse sold to Bonneville, which immediately flipped to AC as KPSN (Sunny 97). But several other Phoenix stations flipped at the same time and what should have been a three-way battle in the format ended up being six AC stations.

After a catastrophic first year, Sunny flipped to Oldies and did quite well for about five years against KOOL, which was in receivership.

 

[michael hagerty]

I once heard Beautiful Music a cover of Wings' "Mull of Kintyre", with vocals.

In a supermarket in Phoenix in 1986, I found myself humming along to an instrumental that was playing on the store speakers. Typical elevator schmaltz---couldn't figure out why I'd know it. Then it hit me---it was a cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing In The Dark".

It had clearly gone too far.

 

[gr8oldies]

In a supermarket in Phoenix in 1986, I found myself humming along to an instrumental that was playing on the store speakers. Typical elevator schmaltz---couldn't figure out why I'd know it. Then it hit me---it was a cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing In The Dark".

It had clearly gone too far.

I was working in a restaurant in my high school days in the 70s....and on the Muzak comes a cover of Born to Be Wild.

 

[davideduardo]

Young women didn't stay with the format "well" into the '80s. The ones that were still there left after AC softened about 40 years ago!

Not true. Young women did not ever belong to the format.

I looked at 18-34 rankers for a bunch of major markets from 1975, and in none I could find was there a Beautiful Music station in the top 5. They did OK in 18-49, but that was due to adding 35-49 to the sample and that was where you got mostly forty and over listeners for Beautiful.

https://worldradiohistory.com/Duncan-American-Radio-Issue-Guide.htm and look at the 70's and early 80's books. There are 18-34 rankers for all markets. I have nearly all of Jim's books available, start to finish.

Back then we believed, after looking at diaries, that any Beautiful Music listening by 18-34 came from younger people who were in a work environment where someone else controlled the radio or in a home environment where parents made the choices. Back then, Arbitron tried to emphasize the need for diarykeepers to register not just what they tuned in but also what they heard when someone else controlled the radio.

Note: I was programming WEZR and WEZS for what became E-Z back in 1970. I had a Beautiful Music station in Ecuador starting in 1966 and then had one with FM 100 in San Juan from 1975 to 1979... and then moved into syndication for Latin America. I was part of the independent Beautiful Music alliance that did custom music for groups like EZ, Jerry Lee, KalaMusic and others and we all shared research.

When I did AC in '72-'73, the format was The Morning After and Ben and an occasional novelty like Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road. That was pretty soft, although never confused with The Last Farewell or more MOR sounding songs that were the core of Beautiful Music vocals in the earlier 70's. Like AC, Beautiful changed from the early Shulke and Bonneville days by abandoning a lot of the Mantovanni and adding more contemporary instrumentals and lots of crossover vocals.

 

[b-turner]

It seemed to me the beautiful music format 'lost' it's core as stations tried to add more contemporary instrumentals the core audience did not enjoy. One station in Dallas would mix in a newer instrumental about once a quarter hour. I actually heard Michael Jackson's "Beat It" as am instrumental cover. It was truly laughable and my Dad quickly punched the next station after a few seconds.

I asked him about why he did not particularly care to hear the original version instead of a cover (and I'm talking the traditional beautiful music fare). For his generation it was the song, not the original hit that mattered. For my generation, it was the original that mattered and a cover was typically considered subpar. Anyway, most of the current music didn't make for a good orchestral cover that was 'relaxing'.

That change in whether the original was important may have been the true demise of beautiful music and why some stations opted for soft rock. The desirable demographic had become the generation that preferred the original.

 

[davideduardo]

I asked him about why he did not particularly care to hear the original version instead of a cover (and I'm talking the traditional beautiful music fare). For his generation it was the song, not the original hit that mattered. For my generation, it was the original that mattered and a cover was typically considered subpar. Anyway, most of the current music didn't make for a good orchestral cover that was 'relaxing'.

That change in whether the original was important may have been the true demise of beautiful music and why some stations opted for soft rock. The desirable demographic had become the generation that preferred the original.

If we go way back, in the era of sheet music it was all about the song, not the orchestra or singer. Even as recordings became common, many different bands would cover the same songs.

Only after WW II did we see considerable influence in who the vocalist of the bands was. Yet still, well into the 50's, we had the "Your Hit Parade" TV show with Snooky Lanson and the crew singing the week's top 10 songs. It was funny to hear them do a Little Richard or Buddy Holly song in really MOR style.

I'd say that by the late 50's it was all about the soloist in vocals, but instrumentals could be by anyone. The 60's brought hit instrumentals by groups like the Ventures, but adults went for the songs, not the artists... as you say.

There were plenty of good instrumentals of hits. Anonymous bands like The Hollyridge Strings did Beach Boys and Beatles "songbooks" and sold very well in the later 60's and there were quite a few crossover originals like Love Is Blue and even into the 80's things like the broadly heard Richard Clayderman ones like "Lady Di" and "Ballad for Adeline" that went gold as singles.

Yeah, I heard instrumental covers of Innagaddadavida that were actually well done, but the issue there was that the core did not know the original and the cover was just not "hummable" enough to be a Beautiful Music hit. So we had 100 different versions of Michelle and Yesterday and they got tired.

 

[Signal Geek]

Love reading the comments from the radio pros on this topic of formats aging out. My observation purely as a listener? It appears commercial stations, as a rough rule of thumb, don't play songs more than about 40 years old. Example: in the 1970s, KMPX/San Francisco for years had a Big Band format (largely songs from the 30s and 40s). It was gone by the early 80s. Then by the early 90s, stations that had successfully focused on 1950s-60s rock (in Los Angeles, "oldies" brands like KRLA, KODJ, KRTH) were dumping those tunes. And so on. Fast forward to today, and now stations rarely air songs that were released before 1982. Obviously there are exceptions (Rocket Man, Stairway to Heaven), but you see my point.

 

[gr8oldies]

Not true. Young women did not ever belong to the format.

I looked at 18-34 rankers for a bunch of major markets from 1975, and in none I could find was there a Beautiful Music station in the top 5. They did OK in 18-49, but that was due to adding 35-49 to the sample and that was where you got mostly forty and over listeners for Beautiful.

https://worldradiohistory.com/Duncan-American-Radio-Issue-Guide.htm and look at the 70's and early 80's books. There are 18-34 rankers for all markets. I have nearly all of Jim's books available, start to finish.

Back then we believed, after looking at diaries, that any Beautiful Music listening by 18-34 came from younger people who were in a work environment where someone else controlled the radio or in a home environment where parents made the choices. Back then, Arbitron tried to emphasize the need for diarykeepers to register not just what they tuned in but also what they heard when someone else controlled the radio.

Note: I was programming WEZR and WEZS for what became E-Z back in 1970. I had a Beautiful Music station in Ecuador starting in 1966 and then had one with FM 100 in San Juan from 1975 to 1979... and then moved into syndication for Latin America. I was part of the independent Beautiful Music alliance that did custom music for groups like EZ, Jerry Lee, KalaMusic and others and we all shared research.

When I did AC in '72-'73, the format was The Morning After and Ben and an occasional novelty like Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road. That was pretty soft, although never confused with The Last Farewell or more MOR sounding songs that were the core of Beautiful Music vocals in the earlier 70's. Like AC, Beautiful changed from the early Shulke and Bonneville days by abandoning a lot of the Mantovanni and adding more contemporary instrumentals and lots of crossover vocals.

In the dark recesses of my mind, I seemed to remember HCJB referencing having a BM station in Guayaqull, with religious messages interspersed. My imagination?

 

[davideduardo]

In the dark recesses of my mind, I seemed to remember HCJB referencing having a BM station in Guayaqull, with religious messages interspersed. My imagination?

I do not recall that. My first independent FM, which began in 1966, was in Quito and was also the first FM in Ecuador. I never built my FM CPs for Guayaquil, but I had Música en Flor affiliates in Quito, Cuenca and Guayaquil in the 80's and there was no HCJB Beautiful Music FM in any location in the country then.

 

[michael hagerty]

Love reading the comments from the radio pros on this topic of formats aging out. My observation purely as a listener? It appears commercial stations, as a rough rule of thumb, don't play songs more than about 40 years old. Example: in the 1970s, KMPX/San Francisco for years had a Big Band format (largely songs from the 30s and 40s). It was gone by the early 80s. Then by the early 90s, stations that had successfully focused on 1950s-60s rock (in Los Angeles, "oldies" brands like KRLA, KODJ, KRTH) were dumping those tunes. And so on. Fast forward to today, and now stations rarely air songs that were released before 1982. Obviously there are exceptions (Rocket Man, Stairway to Heaven), but you see my point.

Sorta. The oldies stations didn’t dump out of 50s/60s until 2005 or so. But for the most part, it’s right, and it makes sense. If you want 40-year-old listeners, playing 40-year-old records doesn’t make a lot of sense. And yes, there are exceptions.

 

[semoochie]

Not sure that can be backed up with facts, Semoochie.

Sticking with KJQY, and looking at the Fall, 1980 book (when Radio & Records included audience composition analysis ) shows 45.2% of KJQY's audience was 55+, and another 43.9% was 35-54. That leaves 10.9% for literally everything else, so it's doubtful there were "solid" ratings to be had in Women 18-34.

One factor I didn't mention in my first post (by the way, KJQY's best book was fall '84, not fall '85---sorry for the typo) is the arrival of New Adult Contemporary/New Age stations in the late 80s. Those absolutely hurt Beautiful Music in markets that had them---but it ate at the heart---25-54 females. One largely instrumental, relaxing format taking share from another, more stale one.

It's possible that the samples I saw at the time were not representative of the country as a whole but if that isn't true, where did young women go other than Top 40? These people were raising kids. The last thing I think they would want is more noise and repetition!