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58 years of Beautiful Music comes to an end
- Thread starter KilowattKat
- Start date
Were I not a radio geek with a lot of both international exposure and experience working in r&b and jazz stations, I would fit exactly into the target of what you were programming in Reno. No Sinatra (instant tune-out for me) and no Andy Williams and MOR crossovers in general.
We have to remember that Top 40 started at KOWH before rock ´n roll began to dominate the format so the term "Top 40" is not synonymous with the rock era and is, actually, just a term for station formats that play just the current (and today recurrents and a few very fresh golds) hit songs.
I was 8 years old when Rock Around the Clock came out, and became a radio listener around the time of Buddy Holly. My experience with older music came, occasionally, in the car with my parents. But since my parents always had things to chat about, they seldom used the car radio.
Over the years, mostly from old Hollywood movies, I have heard and seen the Big Band and crooner era music and find some songs to be "entertaining but not fascinating".
I suppose that if my mom had a collection of 78's that she played at home during the day, I might have some affinity for the music, but that was not the case. The reality is that there is a door as thick as those at a bank vault between that musical era and my incipient musical experience.
Which means that, for the most part, people who would listen to standards today are in their 80's. Not a viable market... even if there are some rare and unusual younger people who have acquired a taste.
MID-80s and up, David.
Good example---my Mom loved standards. She'd be 101 if she were alive. My second mother-in-law was a big Elvis fan. She'd be 90. She was 23 when Elvis hit and he had more in common with the Country and Western music she liked than any of the Sinatra/Perry Como/Peggy Lee set.
And that's the other thing---even if the 85-plus crowd were salable, they weren't all into the same thing. Sinatra and Nat King Cole fans had a place to hear their music on the radio long after fans of Hank Williams and Marty Robbins had a place to hear theirs.
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WDPN is owned by Don Peterson, who also owns CHR WDJQ “92Q”. The call sign is derived from his name.
To be very honest, WDPN feels like it is nothing more than obligation to the ownership to keep running (like WBTC used to be under James Natoli). I wouldn’t be surprised if WDJQ makes Don more money by an order of magnitude.
We are all creatures of our age. I am 63 and love the 70’s (Age 11-21). We all relate to certain decades based on where we were and what we were doing. The music of whatever that era was sticks with you until you die.
Most of us. Clearly, there are exceptions, or this thread would have been over pretty quickly.
National accounts that seek seniors with that whole gamut of goods and services that are senior-specific use cable TV and other "one buy for the whole country" media. Add in a few things like the AARP magazine for stair lifts and pop-up recliners, and there is no need for radio which is much harder to buy.
When WCLV threw in the towel on adult standards WRMR in 2004 and sold the license back to Salem, their most loyal advertisers were a senior home health care provider, The Original Mattress Factory and a carpet cleaning service. And that was it. The format couldn’t be sold on the radio a full generation ago.
Kind of off topic, but I am curious:
Am wondering what type of music you like to listen to in your free time, or what stations you like to listen to these days. Or, do you just create your own playlists from streaming services. You were saying that you came of age about the time of Buddy Holly, so maybe you also liked Elvis or rockabilly music like Carl Perkins or Bill Monroe.
We hear a lot about what kind of music is not right for radio, or what kind of music should not be played because it doesn't fit the current demographic of listeners under 49 years old. But, we seem to have many members of this message board who are older than age 49. If they were active in broadcasting, and they still like music, they must be listening to something.
In your area of California, do you listen to internet radio? Or do you get stations from Mexico that play a regional Mexican format? Also, Mexico has its own artists that sing standards, kind of like USA has Sinatra. Mexico, for example has Vicente Fernandez from the 60's. Argentina, for example, has a lot of standards singes like Leonard Favio from the 60's. JMO -- Daryl
While most of the B/EZ listeners are considerably older, there are some of us who learned to appreciate that type of music at an early age, being exposed to it from our parents and grandparents. I am 54 here and began listening to B/EZ music at 14 yo.
A little more than ten years ago, several friends of mine who share a common interest in the Beautiful Music format operated a group of internet-based stations offering the genre; we had a total of 16 stations operating concurrently. With the exception of one older guy in New Orleans who was in is early 70s, the rest of us were considerably younger, with our ages ranging from 29 to 45 at the time. So while I do acknowledge that most of the B/EZ listeners are older...and as a result the format is not saleable...the idea that I've seen floating around here on RD and elsewhere online that B/EZ listeners are all 75+ years old or already dead is preposterous.
A little more than ten years ago, several friends of mine who share a common interest in the Beautiful Music format operated a group of internet-based stations offering the genre; we had a total of 16 stations operating concurrently. With the exception of one older guy in New Orleans who was in is early 70s, the rest of us were considerably younger, with our ages ranging from 29 to 45 at the time. So while I do acknowledge that most of the B/EZ listeners are older...and as a result the format is not saleable...the idea that I've seen floating around here on RD and elsewhere online that B/EZ listeners are all 75+ years old or already dead is preposterous.
The idea isn't that they are ALL dead. We have repeatedly in this thread and others acknowledged people like yourself (and me) who like the music and the format.
The point is that there aren't enough of us. Not for a commercial radio station.
You refer to your internet-based stations in the past tense. What was your experience with audience?
By the way, @passtheword ---I clicked the link for Lite 99---that's pretty close to what I was talking about earlier, if someone had a means of monetizing 55-75 year old listeners----essentially AC from 30 years ago. It sounds good.
Yes, I thought I had made that clear about there not being enough of us i.e. the format no longer being saleable.
Response was a mixed bag. I did hear from some listeners who told me they were in their 20s, 30s and 40s. One local listener told me he was 35. The youngest one who contacted me told me he was 17. I do hear from older listeners, too...some in their 60s and 70s.
Response was a mixed bag. I did hear from some listeners who told me they were in their 20s, 30s and 40s. One local listener told me he was 35. The youngest one who contacted me told me he was 17. I do hear from older listeners, too...some in their 60s and 70s.
WQEZ, on the other hand----John Fox & His Orchestra's 1979 recording of Little Anthony and the Imperials' "Tears on My Pillow".....
ty! 
Not talking so much about the ages as the quantity. Was it worth your while to do the stream? Were you able to recoup whatever your costs were? If some of those stations were discontinued, why?
My playlist is an amalgamation of eras and genres. It ranges from current stuff like TINI and Morat to some 80's ranging from Pet Shop Boys and Men At Work to Alfredo Gutierrez and Los Corraleros de Majagual to Willy Colón and Raffi Levit to Los Bukis and Temerarios to Garth Brooks, Mary Chapin Carpenter and FGL. There's some Lady Gaga and, gasp, even Brown Eyed Girl and Donna (one of my few 50's songs) and even several of the movements from Holst's "The Planets".
Because of having lived in so many places, from Birmingham, AL to Buenos Aires, AR, I have an eclectic taste that is sort of a sampling of my favorites from all my experiences.
I am too far from Mexicali to get any of the FMs, and I am not particularly enamored of current regional Mexican. I'm more of a Pedro Infante partisan than a fan of current stuff. I find YouTube to be adequate for the songs that I do not have on now-ancient MP3 playlists.
Vicente came on the scene in the in the later 60's, really, and was big all the way into the 2000's. My favorite, "La Ley del Monte", came out in 1976. But Vicente is a ranchera (part of Regional Mexican that includes grupera, ranchera, norteña, banda and the like) artist.
Standards from México would be the ones like Los Panchos, Marco Antonio Muñíz and Agustín Lara... mostly boleros.
The pop / Top 40 artists in Mexico in the 60's were like Los Hooligans, Rocking Devils, Teen Tops, Enrique Guzmán, Alberto Vázquez,, César Costa, Angélica María, Los Apson, and lots more.
Most of those were very late 60's, and were definitely pop... sort of like Bobby Vinton and Paul Anka and Niel Sedaka in US music. Sandro, Leonardo Favio, Palito Ortega, Los TNT and the like were 60's era beginning artists from the "Nueva Ola" or "New Wave". They were core artists to my Top 40 station in Ecuador and I contracted most of them for shows there.
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Some of the guys doing the stations left for other pursuits. Some of the stations went offline due to the increase in music licensing costs. One guy passed away. Myriad of reasons. There are four stations remaining.
QEZ did have around 35 to 50 listeners at one time depending on the time of the day but that was many years ago. Today....maybe 20-25 listeners at any given time. I do QEZ as an extension of my personal web ministry, so I do it for more than just the music.
With Lite 99, it is just a labor of love. I have sold some ad time to local small businesses in order to defray costs. Not a lot. I did have four different ads going concurrently for a couple of months, though.
So, is it fair to say that even removed from a commercial OTA environment, it would take more in resources to attract and maintain an audience of significant size than it's worth (except from a labor of love point of view)?
That seems to be the general idea I'm getting.
What about setting some sort of station using this format as a secondary HD channel to some moderately successful FM station playing a current format? Then many of the operating costs would be covered, and all that would be needed is to somehow get a large enough library to make it interesting (there's copious amounts of older material from the mid 70s and prior, so this shoudn't be impossible).
Is even that practical? I don't know.
Another alternative would be to create a sort of cooperative of Part 15 broadcasters and rebroadcast a centrally programmed internet stream meant specifically to be broadcast over Part 15 radio.
It'd be very niche, and would have virtually no audience whatsoever, but I think it would be a fun experiment to try sometime.
And, besides, there are some precedents for such a thing: Radio Sausalito, for example.
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