Nope. There has never been any such requirement. You could sell a new car today with an AM-only radio if you wanted to
-
Get involved.
We want your input!
Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.
After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.
After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/
Thanks in advance and have fun!
RadioDiscussions Administrators
What Killed Beautiful Music?
- Thread starter Hoxie
- Start date
According to Wikipedia they cover a good portion of the southeastern US. I wonder how true this is. I found an old closed thread about this station, but the last post is from 2013, basically saying you usually hear the signals of both Rebelde and Enciclopedia fighting it out in the southeastern US. With the Canadian stations on that frequency being heard up north
I've found as far as radio is concerned, take Wikipedia with as many grains of salt as possible. On a good propagation night, Enciclopedia is heard in much of the Southeast U.S. (not necessarily at casual listening levels) and is usually mixed with the Radio Rebelde 1kW outlet. On the Key West, FL SDR, one can hear both Radio Enciclopedia and Radio Rebelde.
Unlike the UHF requirement for TV, there was never an FM requirement for radio. It was discussed, only. Many of the owners of the earlier FMs also had the big profitable AMs. They did not want their personal ox to be gored, and preferred that FM remain secondary so they did not push the FCC when the decree to stop simulcasting went into effect.
WRTH, in its final 2022 edition, lists 1 kw for each and that is based on information provided by the Cuban government.
Based on information provided by the Cuban government? Hmmm... 🤔
10kW sounds about right.
KABL in 1959 was a good example of an early instrumental based format. Back then, they were considered an extension of MOR, and generally called "Good Music".
In my hometown of Cleveland, we had WDOK-1260 doing all instrumental in the early 60's, with FM WDBN from a deep suburb also beginning such a format somewhere after 1961 or 1962. Because I owned an FM radio due to my part-time go-fer job at WJMO and WCUY, I followed the other FMs somewhat obsessively.
In that pre-FM stereo era, I even partook of the WDOK AM & FM stereo "specials" where one channel was on AM and the other on FM. Of course, they used some of those early albums that emphasized stereo separation by recording the left and right channels with no ambient leakage across the sound studio... very dramatic, and rather annoying at times.
And in the earlier 60's we had stations like WOCN in Miami and KPOL in LA and WPAT in NYC that did the format on AM, eventually adding or building an FM to simulcast. Some were original, others were "instant copies" of the very successful KABL-960 AM in San Francisco (KROW Becomes KABL (May 1959) | Bay Area Radio Museum)
I owned my first "good music" FM in Quito in '65 and it did very well with what we'd call Beautiful Music today. Sets of 3 songs, instrumental bookends for either a vocal or a Latin American "folklore" song, with 6 20" breaks an hour. But it was very definitely based on Paul Muriat and Mantovanni and Percy Faith and their Latin American equivalents. We crushed an AM station, Radio ColĂłn-920, which had been the instrumental station for nearly a decade with its Noon-2:30 PM and 6 PM to 11 PM broadcast schedule.
What is important is that we saw syndicators jump up and dive in when simulcasting was nearly eliminated. Before, it was each station on its own, but then we got some creative organizations that found that a lot of FMs needed easy and cost-effective programming that could be done with board ops or even left in "the back room" and automated.
With the simulcast rules in effect we got syndicators... many of them. And they competed with each other to get a lead in the field. That is how we got "matched flow" and custom music and names like "Wish" and "Life" and "Wave" and the like. We also got local tie-in names like "Peach" in Atlanta, "Jib" in Boston and "Koit" in San Francisco... the latter two being under Pete Taylor's management for the Kaiser interests.
There are few of the earliest programmers left. I recommend visiting Marlin Taylor's website at Home | Marlin Taylor where he has some wonderful stories about the development of the format as well as ones about custom music recorded in England and even his many years doing the Sirius/XM Beautiful Music channel. Marlin is one of radio's "good guys" and reading his stories (or buying his book https://www.amazon.com/Radio-My-Lov...42904742&sprefix=marlin+taylor,aps,301&sr=8-1) is worth the time.
Last edited:
For many years, totalitarian governments ranging from Cuba and Nicaragua to China and Russia have given very accurate station listings to WRTH due to the over 70 year non-political nature of that publication.
I had an aunt who lived most of her life in San Francisco who just loved KABL, it was her favorite station. I thought it was strange only for the reason she that refused to watch anything on Ch 2 (KTVU) Why?? Because she said it was from Oakland! Apparently she never played close attention to KABL's top and bottom of the hour IDs! Maybe it's because she live on (s)Nob Hill!
Thanks, Scott! My mistake. Maybe they were still discussing it when I left radio for TV. So it was competitive pressures, and simplicity of inventory and assembly that resulted in AM/FM radios being standard in new cars.
KABL buried its Oakland origins in its legal ID: KABL, Oakland, 960 on your San Francisco dial. In the air everywhere over…San Francisco.”
What was the market, Semoochie?
Love it!
It's Portland OR but I'm sure that's not for where I saw the ratings. It's been decades so I don't remember clearly.
When I stopped buying new cars about 30 years ago, AM/FM car radios were still far from standard equipment, at least on economy models.
My dad would get company cars every couple of years. GE wouldn't pay for options, so the first car we had with a FM radio as standard was an early 1980s (I'm thinking 82) Ford Granada.
The car was a POS - there were flames coming out of the catalytic converter the day he turned it in - but it had FM.
I would say it was a combination of market demand (music on AM was dying) and the components to build an FM radio had become cheap enough for carmakers to make the AM-FM the stock radio of the day.
No, but your question was "...in my market...might some percentage of the 25-34 segment of 18-34 women choose B/EZ as a second or third option."
The obvious answer is that some percentage probably did choose B/EZ as a second or third option. But we can't know what that percentage was or whether it was their 2nd, 3rd or any number choice because the demos aren't broken out that way (or weren't then---today that's called P1, P2 and P3 listening.)
But that's very likely what you see in Memphis and San Antonio---some percentage of women chose it, but most 18-34 women either didn't listen or listened so infrequently or for such a short time that it came in tenth in the demo overall. And in markets where 18-34 women had more choices, B/EZ doesn't appear in the top ten for the demo at all.
So now, let's look at Portland, OR. I ruled this out yesterday without checking the demo ranker because there were four AC stations.
The B/EZ, KUPL-FM, had a great book---number one with an 8.8---a full point ahead of the second place station, KMJK-FM.
We can't go earlier than the fall, 1983 book, because that's where R&R's Ratings Report began top ten demo rankers, but here are the top ten stations in women 18-34 for that rating period:
1. KCNR-FM (CHR)
2. KINK-FM (AOR)
3. KMJK-FM (CHR)
4. KGW-AM (AC)
5. KJIB-FM. (Country)
6. KRCK-FM (AOR)
7. KWJJ-AM (Country)
8. KKRZ-FM (AC)
9. KUPL-FM (B/EZ)
10.KGON-FM (AOR)
So, in Portland, enough 18-34 women listened to KUPL often enough and long enough to manage 9th place. But above it, they chose both CHRs, two of the market's three AORs, the leading AM AC and the leading FM AC (which was 16th overall in the market), and both Country stations (one AM, one FM). KUPL-FM edged out the 3rd AOR, KGON.
So what didn't make the top ten for women 18-34 that book? KUPL-AM (Big Band), KEX-AM (AC), KXL-FM (B/EZ), KKSN-AM (AC), KXL-AM (News), KYXI-AM (News), KPDQ-FM (Religion), KSKD-FM (CHR), KKEY-AM (Talk), KYTE-AM (AC) and KPDQ-AM (Religion).
And again, we don't know what the signal limitations were for some of those stations or how specifically they were programmed. Was KGON less female friendly than KINK and KRCK? Why did KGW-AM do so well, but KEX-AM and KKSN-AM not (KYTE was near the bottom 12+)? Beyond that, no surprise that Big Band, News, Talk and Religion were no-shows in the top ten for women 18-34.
Again, Semoochie, if you put seven stations in a market, one CHR, one AC, one Country, one AOR, one B/EZ, one News/Talk and one Religion, yeah, you can get the B/EZ into the top 5 18-34 women. But it'll likely be number five behind the CHR, the AC, the Country and the AOR. But it's in a small enough market and a product of lack of choice, so it doesn't indicate anything about any strength in 18-34 women in the B/EZ format.
When I got to Reno in 1977, there were 12 stations---seven AMs and five FMs. There were 200,000 people in the market---120,000 in Reno and 80,000 in Sparks. There were two Country stations---both AM. Two Top 40s, one AM, one FM. One Classical on AM. One AOR on FM. Two B/EZs---one AM, one FM. One News/Talk AM. Two ACs, one AM, one FM. And one very weird FM that blended really bad elevator music with polka music.
Even there, I'm gonna say 18-34 women chose the two Top 40s, the AOR, at least one of the two Country stations and both ACs (the FM first, then my station second) ahead of the B/EZ. Because all that was left was Classical on AM, News/Talk and bad elevator music with polkas sprinkled in.
At best, the B/EZ comes in seventh---eighth if they chose both Country stations. And that was a lousy market in terms of choice.
I started reviewing cars for (part of) a living in 1997---25 years ago. By then, AM/FM was standard equipment.
The newest car I can remember driving that had only an AM radio was a 1983 Chevrolet S10 Blazer. It was a news vehicle for the ABC station in Phoenix. We had I think four 1985 Chevy Celebrities---I just looked those up---AM/FM was standard, so they had them,
However---to Semoochie's point---the 1985 Chevrolet Cavalier still had an AM radio standard in its lowest two trim levels. As did the 1985 Ford Tempo in its lowest two trim levels.
Unfortunately, it's not easy and might be impossible to pin down the last factory AM radio in America. But the "take rate"---the number of vehicles sold with AM/FM radios as either a standard equipment as an option---was steadily rising through the 1980s.
But Duncan's American Radio goes back to the mid-70's with demo rankers, but without shares:
1976 Spring
18-34 AQH
KGW Top 40 10,000
KINK Rock 4,400
KGON Progressive 3,400
KPAM AC 3,300
KEX Rock 2,900
The Beautiful Music Stations were KUPL and KQFM. In 18-49 they did not make the top 5. Only in 35-64 did KUPL rank 3rd, close to the top 2.
There are almost all the Spring and Fall Duncan reports there... filling in 1976 to 1983.
I forgot about Duncan, David. Thank you.
The R&Rs seemed like a good choice because, beginning with fall, 1983, they ranked 10 stations per demo rather than five and broke out by age and gender.
- Status