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Where did all the beautiful music all go?

R

ruger22com

I worked on the air for WCZY-FM & AM (Cozy) in Detroit for several years in the mid 70's to early 80's when there were 3 (3..count em) three beautiful music stations in the market at the same time, and we (COZY) dominated the ratings at #1 in 25-54 women and #1 35+ adults with WJR-FM a close second and WWJ-FM way behind.
We had a great Program Director in Bob Gaskins, and the fantastic Corporate Support of then owner John bayliss (before gannett bought him out and screwed everything up...leave it to a newspaper chain huh?).

The other day I was thinking about today's trends in listening, and wondered how an updated BM format would do. I have a feeling it would do extremely well IF a source for music could be found and matched to the air talent whose execution made it such a ratings monster). Even though most of the real pioneers of that format are now dead (tom churchill, Jim Schulke, etc.) I am curious as to whatever happened to all the music?

SRP, Churchill, bonneville and some others went to europe and created some amazing music for the format, all custom updates of popular music of that era. and I wonder where has all this music gone? I know bonneville bought SRP in 84, but whatever happened to the music, and also the great stuff churchill productions created?

Is there a library that still exists for this genre of music?

any ideas?

Thanks
-Bob martin
 
I would say that Beautiful Music was wiped out mainly by the Adult Contemporary format. The latter took away most of the former's younger audience and the middle eventually aged out of saleable demos. I think you'd be hard pressed finding enough people under 55 who want to hear instrumental versions of their favorite songs or even that many who want relaxing music.
 
No "format" wiped out beautiful music. The stations abandoned Mantovani because the target age group (age 55 oldest) no longer wanted Mantovani.

The reason why beaut music stations went kaput was that the listener base got OLDER.

I'm amazed at how often this needs to be repeatedaround here and on the "oldies" boards. Read posts by David Eduardo. He's got it right.

I have over 2000 beautiful music songs in my i-pod and close to 6000 oldies there, too. My beaut music is programmed like "the fm 100 plan." I play LOTS of 50's oldies in my oldies section. Screw radio. The forgot me, and I only listen to WGN, Chicago for news.
 
Beautiful Music used to appeal to Adults, virtually all of them from 18 on up. When Adult Contemporary came along, the vast majority of younger listeners opted for the latter instead of the former. After that, it was just a matter of time before their older listeners aged out of the money demos.
 
Smoochie said; Beautiful Music used to appeal to Adults, virtually all of them from 18 on up.

____Incorrect. I'm 57. The majority of people MY age NEVER listened to beautiful music in 1967 or 1977.

Nobody 18 wanted to hear BM in the 1960's. You were FORCED to hear it in dentists offices and supermarkets.

The people that BM appealed to are NOW in their late 70's/80's. THEY were in their 30's and 40's in 1967 and '77 and LIKED that kind of music.

The prime audience for BM was around 60 when all those BM stations opted out in about 1985. WHY? Those peole "no longer count" for national ad buys.

The same story applies for stations that play music of the 50's and early 60's today.

The AGE of the audience is what fueled the CHANGE from "beautiful music." Not that those same age people wanted AC music. The music CHANGED to attract the "correct age tto market to" people. NOT to keep the older people listening.
 
Before AC, there wasn't really any viable middleground between Top 40 and Beautiful Music. As a result, many young women opted for the more relaxing, less hectic sound of the latter. It was a different time.
 
Semoochie,
Back then there was MOR (middle of the road) Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Jo Stafford, etc. No internet, no i-pod.

Top 40 Rock
MOR
Country
Beaut

No all-news, few religious, no nostalgia, some r&B and some ethnic.
That was about it.

Beautiful Music was for background in stores and for "over 55" age group.
 
In the 60s and especially 70s, most of the MOR stations were no longer playing much Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Jo Stafford. They were playing increasing amounts of the lighter Top 40 songs and maybe a little country. These AM stations in the 60s and 70s sounded very much like ABC's Timeless Classics sounds today. As my 80-year-old mother noted recently while listening to Timeless Classics: "That's the music that I listened to 30 years ago."

When Adult Contemporary came along on FM, they were playing music very similiar to what the full service/personality AM stations were playing, just without all the news, sports, talk. Maybe somewhat more upbeat music, of course it got more upbeat as time went on, while the AM stations moved to talk programs.

The demise of beautiful music formats wasn't just because of the ratings "demos" getting "too old." At the small non-rated market station I was with, we finally dropped easy listening in 1987 due to a lack of ad sales. Most of the small town business people that liked the music and had it on in their stores had retired. The younger people they sold their stores to didn't like that music, turned it off in their stores, and really didn't see any results when they advertised. We switched to a fairly light adult contemporary, which was an immediate success. The station evolved into Hot AC over the years, and is doing quite well.
 
Many markets had a half dozen Beautiful Music stations in the 1970s and they weren't programming to 55+. They were programming to Adults who wanted to relax. They had "killer" numbers in 25-49!
 
JH, you brought up a very good point. I actually have a copy of the Billboard Book of #1 AC Hits (from around 1999 or so) and it's very interesting to see how the composition of the chart changed in just a few short years. During much of the mid- and late-'60s, there was not a good deal of crossover between the Hot 100 and Billboard's AC (then called Easy Listening, Middle-Road, Pop-Standard) chart. In 1967, there was only one song that hit #1 on both charts - "Somethin' Stupid." Starting in about 1969, however, and through the '70s, the composition of the Hot 100 and AC charts were much more similar, thanks to adult-appeal artists like the Carpenters, Manilow, Newton-John, 5th Dimension, John Denver and Bread having success in both formats.

Does anyone know why this happened? Was it a case of the adult appeal MOR stations growing younger and wanting to reach an audience that had grown up on rock, or was it a case of Top 40 growing "older"? Or was it both?

As far as BM/EZ today, some might argue that Smooth Jazz is today's version of BM/EZ. Just like with BM/EZ stations in the 70's, many of the songs that now get airplay on Smooth Jazz are instrumental covers of well-known songs - the difference is that SJ uses saxes and drum machines instead of harps and string sections and that SJ sounds funkier and more uptempo. Several stations that carry the "easy listening" banner today, like WDUV, seem to play a lot of Smooth Jazz for their instrumental content (if they have any at all). WOEZ in Knoxville also had a similar music mix before recently adjusting its playlist to be more Standards-oriented, and they still play a fair amount of SJ.

I think the rise of Music of Your Life and other Adult Standards formats also may have played a role in the downfall of Beautiful Music, trying as they did to position themselves as the "oldies" station for the pre-rock generation that BM/EZ stations also targeted.

Also, in reading old articles about BM/EZ stations that decided to move to AC or something else, like WEAZ in Philly, one thing I've noticed a lot is that the reason many of the station owners gave for flipping was that they did research that showed their listeners simply did not like instrumental music any more and preferred to hear the original versions of popular songs as opposed to instrumental covers. I seem to recall from listening to WJOI in Detroit (the former WWJ-FM) growing up in the '80s that they were about 50/50 instrumental/vocal then and were playing lots of soft rock and oldies mixed in - they even played Madonna! And WJOI was the last station of its kind in Detroit, since WJR-FM (became WHYT in 1982) and WCZY had both flipped to CHR/Top 40 hit formats by then. (As such, it was very successful.)
 
Semoochie said; Many markets had a half dozen Beautiful Music stations in the 1970s and they weren't programming to 55+. They were programming to Adults who wanted to relax. They had "killer" numbers in 25-49!Chrisinmi

NOT in the 70's. AM's were still VERY dominant. Only the fm100, Bonneville and Schulke bm stations were "killer." In Chicago for example, WLOO the FM100 station was always #1 or 2 and the Bonneville station, WLAK was about 9 or 10. The other stations in the top 10 were ALL AM.

Chrisinmi said; I think the rise of Music of Your Life and other Adult Standards formats also may have played a role in the downfall of Beautiful Music.

IIRC MOYL started pretty much after BM was already going down.

Chrisinmi also said; research that showed their listeners simply did not like instrumental music any more and preferred to hear the original versions of popular songs as opposed to instrumental covers.

I bellieve the boomers are the ones who preferred to hear the original versions in contrast to the WWII generation who loved the instrumentals.
 
I'll rephrase: AM stations generally had the best ratings until 1978 when FM gained parity. 5 years earlier, Beautiful Music stations, including AMs, tended to do well in most demographics. A lot of young married women, with no music based AC available, used it for background. I'm not saying it was #1 in teens and 18-34s but the numbers were respectable and increased dramatically in 25-49. Actually, they might very well be #1 or 2 in Women 25-34 at that time.
 
Let me answer the question of what happened, from my inside perspective as I was on the air at both WCZY-FM & AM (Am very shorted lived due to terrible signal on AM) from 6 months before the FM became "Cozy" til A week before the format change to top-40 several years later.

What killed the "Beautiful Music" format was simple...newspapers. HUH? what?....o.k. First a little history.
WCZY-FM&AM were owned by the late John Bayliss (yes, of the bayliss foundation). John purchased a 100kw fm's in each of the top seven markets at the time...mostly failed MOR formated stations. After he purchased them, he rebuilt the stations that needed rebuilding with state of art studio and transmitter facilities (This was an amazing company to work for...spending on top of line facilitys was no problem!)
Then, the stations went out and hired announcers who were (rare at the time) experts in executing a warm one-to-one communication style. Heavy tv and outdoor campaigns were run, aimed directly at women with an image like "sit back, have a glass of wine, a good book and relax with cozy..easy listening".....a max of 8 minutes of commercials (nothing jarring) were run in max 2 minute breaks every 15 minutes. The ad rates were very high to make up for the low inventory. drivetiem was warm and friendly, relaxing with traffic, news and weather info. End result...after 3 quarterly books, Cozy was #1 in 25-54 women (the prime selling demo) and the money was rolling in.

For those who say Beautiful Music was only Elevator music for "old Folks" and the audience got too old to sell, never read an arb book from the time. In Detroit around 1980 the Number 1 (czy-fm) Number 2 (wjr-fm) and number 4 (wwj-fm) stations in 18+ WOMEN were beautiful music stations running TM, SRP, Churchill and Bonneville formats (CZY NEVER refered to it as "beautiful music" by the way, it was always promoted as "easy Listening". It was this way for several years too. WJR-AM and the rockers had the men, but BM's owned females (This was also when Howard Stern was at WWWW-FM and was getting slammed in the ratings.)

So how did newspapers Kill beautiful Music? John Bayliss sold his entire major market radio chain to gannett (who at the time only owned newspapers). Even though the BM stations held top ratings and were sold out...gannett, who had no idea what the word programming was....brought in new managers who immediately decided that Rock was king, and they had to DOUBLE the commercial loads to maximize profits (You should have heard the GM's saying: "gee..imagine what a #1 femaile station would do if we doubled the commercial units available" with no thought that those ratings were dependent on the formatics). Most of the formats were changed, and the identities lost, the ratings died and so did the sales for a long, long time.

Radio, then and now, is a business where general managers are always looking for the next "big thing" and are convinced the audiences die every two years. So, when the bayliss (now gannett stations) rolled over to new formats, most large markets BM outfits followed suit. Of course, later on Jim Shulke died, and Tom Churchill sold out to Bonneville, so only one real syndicater remained. Then the magic fomats and other "eazy" varieties started appearing and grabbed the women, and the concept of "those elevator music stations" died a quick death.

But this is a little history....and shows how bad management from a newspaper chain, actually killed one of the most successful formats in radio history. Today, smooth jazz formats have very much taken the place of BM and are appealing to the same audience. But it is because of the atmosphere these stations create that women flock to them, and always will. NOT the individule songs and artists they play.
-Bob Martin
 
hammondo said:
Beautiful Music was for background in stores and for "over 55" age group.
Click to expand...

It's a shame beautiful music isn't background in stores today. I've walked out of stores where the "background music" is so annoying you can't hear yourself think.
 
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