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Something different -- Seattle/Tacoma radio ratings from 1977
- Thread starter TexasTom
- Start date
A lot has changed since 1977. I'm guessing that the number of MOR stations in the Seattle/Tacoma area wasn't all that unusual for a major market in that era.
I'll eventually post ratings from 1980, and I think that by then we'll see MOR dropping noticeably.
KPLZ did have Casey, but not until he moved to Westwood One and was doing Casey's Top 40 in 1989.
KXA still broadcast 1,000 watts off a t-wire on top of the old Rhodes department store (the current site of Benaroya Hall) in downtown Seattle until 1985 (t-wires were functionally obsolete as main antennas by the 1930s as most stations, save for a handful of small underfunded independents like KXA, moved to towers.)
I think they made it to 1980-81 as a classical station. The fact that FM suffered from multipath on old radios and KING-FM’s tower was on Queen Anne Hill located with the TV station made an AM classical station more viable. Even with a 1kW T-wire! Something tells me KXA played more popular pieces while KING-FM played the more esoteric stuff at the time.
The impression I got from listening to the JFK coverage is that their on-air sound was a bit livelier than your typical FM classical station at the time, even in 1963. It almost sounded more like a cross between classical and personality MOR than straight up classical. The personality on duty had something of a sense of humor and the jingles were the same ones for Winston cigarettes, Pepsi, etc. you'd hear on the mass-appeal music stations, combined with the typical spots aimed at affluent listeners for airlines and such.
A lot of Beautiful Music stations played some light classical pieces at the time (as opposed to anonymous studio orchestra covers of Top 40 songs) so the line between that format and classical seemed to be a lot more blurry at that time. KXA sounded like it was toeing that line at times.
I think the name for it was Pops. They were Classically trained orchestras that played popular music. Here's a legendary example from the 1970s:
P.S. KXA had just flipped to Oldies when this album came out. It was doubtful KING-FM had the humor to play such a thing
Ah, yes. They even reached the Billboard Hot 100 with a cover of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" in the summer of 1964.
Yet T and L wires were very common in much of Latin America well into the 70's.
It's true. As network programming switched over to television in the 1950s and 60s, many radio stations had to scramble for their own programming. So nearly all the big AM stations started playing MOR Middle of the Road music. I think the term meant it wasn't the rock and roll that young people were listening to but it also wasn't classical or Rudy Vallee or operetta. The core artists were Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Nat King Cole, Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald, Perry Como and Andy Williams.
And for the bigger stations, music was just one element in the format. DJs would have the freedom to talk a bit, there were newscasts at :00 and :30, there was live sports, maybe there were even a few talk shows. Not from phone calls, that came later. It might be a show for homemakers, a news and opinion show, an interview show.
Over time, MOR stations began adding some softer contemporary artists, Barbra Streisand, Dionne Warwick, Love Me Tender by Elvis, Yesterday and Michelle by the Beatles. By the 1980s, most MOR stations had moved over to Full Service Adult Contemporary.
Look at Billboard Easy Listening charts from 1967 and 1970 and you'll see how much the format evolved in just three years. In 1967, it was mostly "traditional" MOR artists, and only one song during the year ("Somethin' Stupid") reached #1 on both the Hot 100 and Easy Listening charts. Fast forward three years and you have the Beatles and the Supremes (and Diana Ross as a solo act) making the chart along with a new crop of contemporary soft-rock artists with appeal that crossed the generation gap, like the Carpenters, Bread and James Taylor. Traditional MOR would have a comeback when the first Music of Your Life stations started appearing by the late '70s.
They didn't last quite that long, as they dumped the classical format a year or two before I graduated from high school. So I'd guess that they dumped classical in 1978 or early 1979. I believe that they dropped the classical format when they became co-owned with KYYX(FM).
It was Classical from the late 1950s to the late 1970s. When there's more than one Classical station in a market, some stations specialize in one form of the genre or the other. Some are heavy on the best known works (the Classical 'Top 40'), In the early days of Seattle FM, KISW were Baroque Chamber music specialists before 1971 and rock n' roll history. KXA's niche was Pops
KXA switched to Oldies after Pat O'Day bought the station once KXA got the 24/7 greenlight (they were still a daytimer.) They remained Oldies until 1982 when it simulcasted 7pm-6am with then Top 40 KYYX (it was popular with kids with hand me down cars with stock AM radios until they saved enough to get something Kraco.) The simulcast ended in September 1982 when KYYX went New Wave. In 1983, KXA went brokered religion as "Good News 770 KXA" a cost cutting move as Pat was reorganizing into Madison Park Broadcasting. KXA was sold to KRPM in 1985. It's last music format as KXA was a MOR/Soft AC format called "Love Songs 770 KXA" before switching to KRPM (AM) in 1986 and Country where it remained for the rest of the 1980s.