Where did all the beautiful music all go?

[chrish]

I am also 57, loved Beautiful Music then and love it now. There are a lot more of us than you think.
It all comes down to the nitwit 25 year old media buyers.
Have you tried to watch any network TV show in the past 10 to 15 years, and they
wonder why television viewing keeps deteriorating Its called programming to idiots,
which is what the schools are putting out these days

 

[BlueHen]

It all comes down to the nitwit 25 year old media buyers.
Have you tried to watch any network TV show in the past 10 to 15 years, and they
wonder why television viewing keeps deteriorating Its called programming to idiots,
which is what the schools are putting out these days

Well, what can you expect when the people doing the programming these days grew up on Beavis & Butthead?

 

[davideduardo]

It all comes down to the nitwit 25 year old media buyers.

Media buyers do not determine thee age groups a campaign targets. They just negotiate rates. Targeting is generally specified by the client as an agency directive. And the fact is that there are essentially no buys in radio for audience over 54.

And beautiful music would get an audience mostly over 50 or 65. Add the fact that there has been nearly nothing commercially recorded in 20 years, and the format is dead.

 

[gr8oldies]

A couple of examples I can think of and one owned by a chain that also owns newspapers and TV stations, WHIO-FM (now WHKO) in Dayton, OH. They saw the writing on the wall with the aging demographics and even though ratings were still strong, they found a format hole that you could have fit a mack truck into, FM Country. They made the flip in 1989 and have been number one almost every book since. A station in Piqua which had always been BM re-imaged toward Dayton, even hired some of WHIO-FM's announcers, but the format only lasted there another year or two before that station went A/C, then oldies. Cox bought them and after a few years as an 80s flanker, they are now WHIO-FM...as a news/talk simulcast.

WXTZ in Indianapolis dropped the format wholesale...they might have been better off to have slid into a soft AC groove instead of flipping to classic rock.

I look at soft A/C as being the grandchild of BM more so than smooth jazz. It attracts the numbers and demos that B/EZ attracted in the 70s and 80s. When I was 18, I couldn't imagine listening to BM and that was 1975.

In Indiana I remember seeing billboards for WMDH in NewCastle (Muncie area) and the "Music for the Two of Us" auto-format. I guess it could have been the perfect "after -the-date-and-back-to-my-place" format. At 8am though...no way!

 

[semoochie]

I thought that WAS the date!

 

[hammondo]

At 8am hearing BM andd John Doremus felt like "class."

I was looking for a place to get steak and eggs. In Chicago, it felt like this is what "the people who made it" were listening to; "The World's most beautiful Music." Not some schlub on a top 40 station.

 

[cyberdad]

John Doremus....

I think there are still tapes....or perhaps more correctly, voice tracks...from his old shows being used out there. I remember hearing him while driving through Iowa or Minnesota about a year or so ago. Might have been on KNXR out of Rochester, but I really don't remember.

I guess this puts him in the league of Wolfman Jack. Gone....but still broadcasting.

 

[hammondo]

Doremus tapes - could be.

He was certainly LIVE on WFMF (100.3) in Chicago. He was tape (or disk) on 2 zillion other stations. No voice tracks - full produced programs with spaces for ads, just like Jim Ameche and Ralph Emery.

 

[cyberdad]

Doremus indeed did broadcast live on WFMF. He also had live gigs on WMAQ and several others, if memory serves. I believe he perhaps was also a "Music Unlimited" host on WGN. His company also produced in flight audio entertainment, among other things.

I also recall his syndicated programs on disk. My point was simply that when I recently heard him, I was unclear whether I was hearing a 20-30 year old disk, or whether these may have been more recently "recycled" into voice tracks.

Gone...but still broadcasting.

 

[hammondo]

Just a ps on Doremus;
He died in 1995 from the results of Alzheimer's at age 63.

Both Ralph Emery and Jim Ameche are gone, too.

 

[jh]

Doremus tapes - could be.

He was certainly LIVE on WFMF (100.3) in Chicago. He was tape (or disk) on 2 zillion other stations. No voice tracks - full produced programs with spaces for ads, just like Jim Ameche and Ralph Emery.

It was fully produced from voice tracks. John recorded the tracks, which were shipped to KNXR in Rochester MN, where the programs were put together. KNXR apparently still has all the tapes, and continues to run JD for several hours every night.

 

[hammondo]

At WFDT Columbia City, IN - no tracks, but fully produced programs on 10 inch reels. I've also seen Doremus' show on disk.

 

[sharklover]

There is still beautiful music but it's mostly on sat radio and other satellite resources.

1)XM's Escape channel 78 is programmed by Marlon Taylor.He programs it like he did the Bonneville format mostly instrumental to a couple of vocals.

2)Dishnetworks B/ez channel 973 this is programmed by Muzak and sounds like the Schuluk b/ez format.It's all instrumental lush no vocals there is a small selection of solo piano thou but it's mostly lush.

3)Music Choice's B/ez Channel

4)DMX's B/ez channel

There are still a couple of b/ez sites online.

Wktz(Jones.edu)They even have a playlist.Their one of the few still on the FM dial in Jacksonville Florida.They depend on donations but the've been playing b/ez since 1964.

365 live has several beautiful music channels.

There is Klux.They have a playlist as well.

Knct plays b/ez during the day and classical at night.

I myself have over 1200 b/ez songs on my computer and my ipod and listen regulerly to Escape,Dish 973,Wktz,Klux and my many cds.

Yes it's terrible that for the most part you can't find this music on terrestrial radio anymore.That's why I pay 12.95 a month to listen to Escape on Xm and it's worth it.I have the car hook up and the boombox so I can enjoy it in my car or at home.

 

[dbdigital]

What hasn't been discussed yet is the re-discovery of the EZ listening genre by a new generation of young people starting around the late 1990's and is still going. Apparently, these young people raided their parents (or grandparents) album collection, played them and embraced the music. They re-branded it Space Age Bachelor Pad, split it out into sub-genres and began haunting record shops looking for LPs of the stuff (they liked the large covers). Esquival was their newly-christened guru of the genre.

In fact at one point, Esquival was lured out of retirement to begin work on a new album. Unfortunately he died before he could record it but he did live to see his music re-discovered and enjoyed by a new generation.

Certain artists are in or out among Space Age Bachelor Pad affectionatos. Mantovani and Andre Kostelantz are definitely out. But Arthur Lyman, Percy Faith, Paul Mauriat, Enoch Light and Lenny Dee are enthusiastically in.

In Los Angeles, the highest-rated beautiful music station in the 60's was KPOL-AM. Probably the last station in L.A. to give up the format was KWST-FM in the 70's (now Power 106).

I don't know if a newly-designed version of the Beautiful Music format would make on terrestrial radio but it's certainly alive and well on the internet.

db

 

[Nick Gerard]

AirstreamFM.com is an excellent, professional-sounding online beautiful music station. I frequently have it on thru the living room stereo, much to the chagrin of my wife who's not a fan of "that old-fogey elevator music."

Their downloadable toolbar indicates that the stream is down for a few days for maintenence, but hopefully they'll be back up shortly.

I also really enjoy www.TheFabulousStrip.com . Not a "beautiful music" station per se, but if you enjoy losing yourself in "Rat Pack-style" music nostalgia as I do, you'll love this one. It's run by a guy named Scott Free out of Rancho Cucamonga, California.

Nick Gerard

www.NickOnTheAir.com

 

[klutch00]

In Los Angeles, the highest-rated beautiful music station in the 60's was KPOL-AM. Probably the last station in L.A. to give up the format was KWST-FM in the 70's (now Power 106).

I believe you're mistaken. IIRC the last Traditional EZ to leave the LA market was KXEZ which was at 98.7.

 

[klutch00]

In Los Angeles, the highest-rated beautiful music station in the 60's was KPOL-AM. Probably the last station in L.A. to give up the format was KWST-FM in the 70's (now Power 106).

I believe you're mistaken. IIRC the last Traditional EZ to leave the LA market was KXEZ which was at 98.7.

 

[klutch00]

In Los Angeles, the highest-rated beautiful music station in the 60's was KPOL-AM. Probably the last station in L.A. to give up the format was KWST-FM in the 70's (now Power 106).

I believe you're mistaken. IIRC the last Traditional EZ to leave the LA market was KXEZ which was at 98.7.

 

[klutch00]

I don't know if a newly-designed version of the Beautiful Music format would make on terrestrial radio but it's certainly alive and well on the internet.

I remember when traditional easy listening stations were dying in droves during the early '90s. The greatest liability that this format had is that well over 90% of these stations' playlists consisted of cover versions of popular songs. Why settle for a remake when you can have the original?i I'm not saying that all remakes are bad, but I am saying that if that's when it is done to excess, as the old EZ stations were doing, it's a sign that the format is bereft of originality and innovation and that the material and "artists" are bereft of any real talent! Moreover, the PD and other powers-that-be at these stations were hell-bent on looking for musicians to make recordings just for the sake of doing so. Why not stick with the original? There was nothing wrong with it in the first place! If you were to ask me, these station managers and their collaborators should've been sued for plagiarism! Moreover, these recordings cost several thousand dollars each to produce and the costs to maintain this format was quite high as I understand it. Hence, the ability for stations to recoup their 'investments' took longer. BTW, I've noticed many of the new crop of Smooth Jazz stations playing remakes as well, and I criticize them as well for this. Their only virtue is that they don't do it quite to the same degree that the old EZs did. They, too need to play more original material. Something else to consider is that when stations tried to resurrect a traditional EZ format, they had a hard time attracting a sizable audience and often left the format within a few years, if not sooner. If EZ is ever to be revived, then offer original music by quality artists? A few examples could include the following:

Acoustic Alchemy - at least 90% of their material would be appropriate
Dan Fogelberg/Tim Weisberg - At least five tracks from "Twin Sons of Different Mothers" and perhaps several tracks from "No Resemblance Whatsoever".
Mindi Abair
Henry Mancini - Yeah, I know he did some remakes, but he also did much original material. At least five of the tracks on "Breakfast at Tiffany's" would be appropriate.


Possibly these artists:
Diana Krall
John Tesh
Josh Groban
Mystic Warriors
Andrea Bocelli
Celtic Woman

 

[dbdigital]

In Los Angeles, the highest-rated beautiful music station in the 60's was KPOL-AM. Probably the last station in L.A. to give up the format was KWST-FM in the 70's (now Power 106).

I believe you're mistaken. IIRC the last Traditional EZ to leave the LA market was KXEZ which was at 98.7.

As I remember KXEZ, they played an equal number of vocal artists to instrumentals. But there was a station that had a heavy mix of instrumentals well into the 80's and that was KJOI.

KWST like KPOL was entirely instrumentals which is what I was referring to.

I also don't agree with your assessment of instrumental interpretations of pop songs. There are many artists who see the beauty of a particular melody and wish to re-interpret it in their given genre (jazz, orchestral, etc.) and oftentimes do so with wonderful results. If anything, it can expand the songwriter's and artist's audience. People who would have never listened to, say The Beatles, found themselves humming to "Norwegian Wood" as done by the Hollyridge Strings. If nothing else, the original composers certainly got royalties for these performances.


db