K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
I saw that happen a few times myself. There was a tendency of Beautiful Music announcers to become isolated from other genres of music. Perhaps a misplaced belief that the format would go on forever and they would never need to do anything else.I can remember back in the late 80s a station in my area was sold and switched from Beautiful Music format to A/C. They kept the overnight guy and he struggled mightily. You could hear the frustration in his voice as he tried to announce names and songs of artists he was unfamiliar with. I think he lasted a week before he quit or was let go.
Growing up, I was exposed to a lot of variety in music. I was forced to watch Lawrence Welk every week but I was not restricted from listening to top-40 stations on my radio, plus my mother liked uptempo middle-of-the-road so I also heard Herb Alpert, Perry Como and Frank Sinatra. And that first station's owner did a six-hour Big Band program ahead of my original weekend shift so I got to know Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, and the like. And as I said, I was also a fill-in on the nightly Classical program (mostly because I ended up the producer of same five nights a week and the owner would sometimes forget to record his voicetracks for same).
The past few decades, I haven't been as much into current music (although I can tolerate most of it) but since I'm a Classic Hits programmer and won't be moving ahead once the 80s stop being the focus -- I figure I have at least another decade of usefulness -- it doesn't matter as much. At least I was never one of those Beautiful Music guys you described, trying unsuccessfully to adjust to a changing musical world.