Later owned by Bonneville. I was referring only of the Beautiful Music years. I have never listened to or studied AC. As I recall they went to AC then the AM came back a year later with the KMEO calls to EZ for a while. Around 1989, 1990. Lot of A/F combos did that. But once you had heard Beautiful in stereo it sort of seemed very second-rate to go back to mono. Like we were being patronized or something. Though the format worked well enough on AM. By the mid 80s the number of EZ/BM listeners had dropped from about 20% to 10% nationally so owners went with formats drawing larger percentages.
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Which Beautiful/Easy Listening Orchestras Were Better or Worse Than Others and Why
- Thread starter cc333
- Start date
Yes I agree entirely. That was the one. The remake is OK but lacks the punch and atmosphere and funkiness of the original. Generally true I have found about stereo remakes in general.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
While that is a valid personal opinion, you need to remember that the vast majority of BM "listening" was in the background. In fact, a lot of stations in smaller markets had to sell advertisers on the prestige factor, because there was little to no measurable direct results.
Yeah, you're right. KMEO's ownership history was more complicated than I recalled.
Bonneville took over on May 1, 1991.
So the slow morph to AC actually came under Westinghouse.
Westinghouse had it from November 18, 1985 until selling to Bonneville.
Scripps-Howard owned it from May 29, 1980 until selling to Westinghouse.
B&D Broadcasting had it from June 1, 1976 until selling to Scripps.
Southwestern Horizons, Inc. owned it from August 23, 1968 until selling to B&D.
I did three months of fill-in work on KMEO's successor, KPSN, in fall of 1993 when the morning newsperson was on maternity leave, and I came back frequently the next couple of years as her vacation relief.
I just looked on Street View and that dumpy little building is still there---now a plumbing, heating and cooling company.
By the time I came back to the frequency in September of 1997 to do mornings with Charlie Van Dyke, Bonneville had sold it to Nationwide, it was KGLQ and we were in brand-new studios with a view of Camelback Mountain.
And within two months, Jacor had arranged to buy all of Nationwide's stations.
With your knowledge and interest in Beautiful Music, if you ever have the time, I would welcome a "Story of Beautiful Music" section on WorldRadioHistory. What I am thinking of is a narrative peppered with links to full articles in different trade journals or inserted pictures of ratings tables and trade ads.
Many folks give album rock the credit for "exploding" the use of FM from the later 60's on, but I think that Beautiful Music, made more widely acceptable by Taylor and Shulke, pushed FM into many homes and businesses.
As a listener starting around 1959, I realized that the "good music" format had two negatives: First, it depended too much on covers of "old" songs from the 30's and 40's with less modern arrangements. Second, a few years later when FM stereo was introduced, too much emphasis on those albums that overemphasized stereo separation.
When I built my first independent FM in 1966 and created a Latin equivalent format, I avoided orchestrations that sounded old. More Muriat, less Mantovanni, and no Lawrence Welk. And lots of contemporary recordings of Latin American standards but in fresh styles. I was in a market with an average age more than 10 years younger than the average U.S. market, so I tried to make it appealing to anyone over 25... not just those over 40 or so.
It depends. For a while in the later 60's my Beautiful Music station was on in every upscale restaurant, store or boutique in the market and lots of people had it on in offices, at home as "mom" supervised the maids, and even when couples got together for dinner.
Our style of not allowing jingles, no "loud" hard sells, and only 20" spots made the ads unintrusive. We got very favorable responses from advertisers. For example, Lufthansa ran special copy for a "limited time only" round trip to one of its destinations in Germany which covered a once-weekly flight on four successive weeks. We were asked to revert to the "old copy" after just two days as they had sold out the four flights totally at a cost of about $2,500 each!
My feeling is that the format was for brand awareness and image. It was not for price/item and "big sale" announcements as much as creating top of mind awareness in an atmosphere that benefited the product.
No doubt... In the first ten markets where FM topped the ratings, it was a Beautiful Music station that did so (WEAT/West Palm Beach and WOOD-FM/Grand Rapids each hit #1 in Apr/May 1970 as the first #1 FMs.)
Thank you, I would like to do what I can. For me the music came first as far as an avenue for study and I was writing about it in the early 1980s. Then when it disappeared from the airwaves or I should say terrestrial airwaves I realized there was a whole story in its development on radio.
The music developed on network radio. The networks could reach so many people that advertisers were willing to spend their dollars on large studio orchestras. The same size ensembles which played Classical music but instead offered weel-sounding and sometimes striking instrumental versions of popular music so advertisers could reach the public in a dignified yet not too highbrow a manner. So in the late 20s and through the 30s and later it , with of course dance bands, came to define music on radio. As it became available on commercial recordings and ETs made for broadcasting, stations could mix and match the work of various kindred artists from recordings in programs devoted to orchestral with some choral music. These started during the world war as ways to soothe war-weary anxiety and jittery nerves and grew from there. Until with the whole idea of "adult" music stations form the mid and late 1950s it became a significant radio genre. Though the first stations devoting themselves primarily to such programming date from 1948.
When FM radio was developed its advantages were best shown by instrumental programming so that proliferated on FMs which did not duplicate their AM programming and on stand-alone FMs. Both Classical and Popular orchestral music. 83% of the music broadcast on such FM stations was instrumental. The figure is from 1958. At that time and for many years after that when most people thought of FM they thought in terms of instrumental music. Most of the FMs that made money or even broke even before the 1970s did so with Beautiful Music. The album rock stations which started from 1966 to 1968 played to a steady but relatively small market for many years. Was not until 1979 that AOR and Top 40 stations on FM had more listeners than Beautiful FM stations. You know what they - people tend to rewrite history in their own image and to the victors belongs history. For the last 35 years there have been few of us who have taken any interest in preserving and writing and talking about the Beautiful Music radio genre.
While I started out 45 years ago studying it to inform myself I soon wanted to also tell the world what I had found out. Much of it has not been from trade journals or learned tomes but from personal interviews with people who were involved such as yourself David. I consider myself not an academic historian but rather someone telling a story of the way it was.
Thank you. During the 1980s the younger agency became less and less willing to advertise on Beautiful stations because the aging demographic of the listeners was poison to them. So even if such a station were rated in the top 5 or at #1 12+ M-S they instead looked at the age 24- 49 numbers where the same might be instead in 11th place! So attempting to draw younger listeners many Beautiful outlets tried adding AC vocals, sports, contests, more personalities, current instrumentals with dance beats and so on. On some stations they were only a few vocals per hour away from being AC anyway. It was a slippery slope. But they wanted the younger listeners. Time buyers would buy 4 - 5 AC stations but only 1 EZ station. They did not want to lose their established listeners but in fact did when the vocals and rack became too numerous for them. But they were often rewarded by drawing new young listeners who wanted vocals instead. So that is h
Most markets had one or more Beautiful FMs in the top 5, often at #1, sometimes 3 in their top 10 in the 70s. Some markets had between 30 to 40 % Beautiful listening. Some 8% or less. All averaging to about 20% nationally in the U.S. at the format's peak 1975 through 1981. Fewer Beautiful AMs in the 1960s made the top five and very few #1s. So proved much more popular on FM because the sound and the approaches to it were more commercial.
By the 1980's, the "sales demo" was 25-54 or some subset. 25-49 was not part of most printed ratings books then. 18-49 was, as were 18-34 and some subsets.
RATINGS - Early ratings - 30's to 70's Crossley C.A.B. Hooper Pulse A.R.B. has number of sample books from different years.
And that was when they became AC or some variant of AC.
Buyers would buy based on rank and CPP in the target demo. If a Beautiful Music station did not appear within the depth of the buy, none got on. A few agency buyers tried not to duplicate formats, as they would duplicate cume.
You might want to look at the ratings numbers in Arbitron from 1976 onwards at DUNCAN'S AMERICAN RADIO - Arbitron ratings 1975 - 2002 - All Markets
Some did transition. But most that were with the syndicators just switched format. For example, the Beautiful Music station I managed in Puerto Rico just could not grow any more, so at the end of 1978 I flipped to all salsa. No transition, just a few hours off the air and then right into a new format.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
While that is true, ratings services could only measure people tuning in, not whether or not they were actually listening. Beautiful Music as a format was designed for passive listening, which is why what David said about "prestige" advertising rings true. The main reason why you saw multiple stations show up was the result of intensive external advertising, and was probably more a case of someone seeing a television ad and believing -- correctly or not -- that it was "their" station being promoted ... so they wrote down those call letters in the diary.
I am not saying it wasn't a successful format, Dick. I am saying it wasn't a success for the reasons you appear to believe.
In the late 60's I did some amateur research on my Beautiiful Music station, Teleonda 95. We found that there were three types of listeners:
- Pure background. A pleasant noise to make the home or work environment pleasant.
- "Company". Listened to louder, the songs were recognized and were part of passing time in similar environments, but much more foreground.
- Passionate listeners. They knew the lyrics to many songs would sing along with some, would even play with the volume when favorites came along.
Interestingly, even though we were the first FM in the country and first stereo FM too, nobody mentioned sound quality or stereo as a reason to listen. All were very clear that it was about the music itself.
"Passive listening"? Not sure what that would mean. All listening to anything would be "passive" since we ourselves are not making the music! By that criteria wouldn't all concert music be "passively" listened to since its audiences for the most part were not dancing to it? Or singing along? Why would listening to say Mick Jagger or the Boston Symphony or to Urubamba on the radio be any less "passive" then?
All ratings systems have had their shortcomings yet time buyers have always for reasons of their own put great faith in them. The reason I cite ratings figures is to show statistically how massive and substantial the audiences for this radio format was 1950 into the 1990s.
All stations advertised and Beautiful outlets less than most. Less money give-aways and less promotional stunts in general. So don't understand how you could say the only reason they showed up as much or as successfully in ratings diaries and ratings call was only because they, or some of them, advertised.
All the people I have spoken to over the years and often formally interviewed from the early 1980s have willingly discussed their listening to and enjoyment of the Beautiful radio format and why. I was a Beautiful Music radio listener since 1958 and I later found out what I heard over WMMW FM at that time was Muzak which was in fact designed to really be background music! That was instrumental and would have counted as Beautiful Music even though it was not designed itself for listening. But regular AM and FM stations - were playing mostly cuts for commercial LPs which the public was purchasing in quantity - wereIn the 1960s paid attention to many Beautiful outlets supporting themselves through over the air advertising rather than background services to business and commercial clients. Just as I also, like most people, tuned in and listened to Classical stations, MOR, Top 40, Jazz as well. Not sure why you would insist we somehow listened to any one of those genres any more "passively" then we did to any others. We enjoyed and listened to them all. Which is why the ratings services often counted us.
Sorry somehow I posted that reply before it was finished.
I meant to mention that Beautiful Music was from the 1940s through the 70s a successful recording genre which was why during that time popular instrumental music of all kinds flourished on radio. It was what most people were buying to listen to in their homes.
I’d be interested in seeing specifics on what those markets and radio stations were to back up that claim.
When there came a change it was a conscious decision to go with AC or Country or whatever they considered a more mass-appeal format. Yes because many were automated it was a matter of a different syndicated format but involved also a different more news and personality type of approach as well. Stations realized that Beautiful Music was not attracting many new younger listeners because it had become largely a nostalgia format - the recording companies had stopped producing product to support it mostly by 1970s because such records in that genre had, except for those of a few very established artists, stopped selling. In small part because the audience had turned to listening to it on Beautiful radio! Also as I mentioned advertisers were shying away. So stations pulled the plug and went with a broader more youthful format. Even those in the top 5 of their markets and many of which were still doing well.
The earliest Crossley ratings reveal the early 30s popularity on radio of mostly instrumental formats of early network programs such as A & P Gypsies, Chase and Sanborn Choral Orchestra, Palmolive Hour etc. which were 50% to 100% instrumentals. Studio orchestras or dance bands.
Thanks to you David I have been able to study Duncan's reports one by one for the last 15 years. Not that I have always understood everything in them but I have been able to discover and learn much from them. Thank you.
Besides personal interviews, all I have are the published ratings, mostly Arbitron. Yes I can cite them market by market but goodness that would take days and the writing of a small book!! And market you are particularly interested in? From 1976 see Duncan's American Radio reports though he only deals with the ARB-rated stations. But that was what most agency buyers went with at the time.
As you were replying, I was indeed looking at the first 1976 Duncan report that David has available. A perusal found very few markets with one or more in the top 5, or three in the top 10. Phoenix was the outlier with a top three in the format. Combined 12+ 1/4 hr, I didn’t see any market that could claim 30 to 40 percent listening to the format. At best I’d see around 20 total share points going to BM, basically as you said. Given, it’s just one book. But what stood out to me were the number of markets that by 1976 had already seen many stations drop the format. If I have any point to make, I’d consider the peak of the format (number of stations and total share) to be perhaps the five years or so prior to your consideration of the 75-81 era as such. Enjoying your insight and thoughts on the format, Dick.
Tangent: so Michael, does this mean you worked for Joel Grey / Larry Hevner?