Beautiful Music Radio

[johnbasalla]

At the time, FM usage wasn't very high. Beautiful music was easy because it could be automated, and the AM rock jock could periodically change the reels or rotate the carts.

FM didn't even become standard in vehicles until either the 1982 or '83 model year.

My first car was a 1978 Chevy. It had both AM & FM in it.

 

[Radio Bob]

In 1973 I started a AC FM in Bellevue Ohio. Right out of the gate people complained about the music even though it was AC like tie a Yellow Ribbon and some Beatles songs like Do you want to know a secret. After a few years I gave in and with a friend in Toledo we copied the beautiful music format of a station there song for song. People in our town loved it and a whole bunch of businesses jumped on but seven eight months later they started complaining that even though everybody like the music they didn't get results for their advertising so they cancelled saying " I guess radio just doesn't work". At that point I had learned my lesson and switched to straight Top forty. All of a sudden the Beautiful music lovers started buying again and we did well.

 

[johnbasalla]

In 1973 I started a AC FM in Bellevue Ohio. Right out of the gate people complained about the music even though it was AC like tie a Yellow Ribbon and some Beatles songs like Do you want to know a secret. After a few years I gave in and with a friend in Toledo we copied the beautiful music format of a station there song for song. People in our town loved it and a whole bunch of businesses jumped on but seven eight months later they started complaining that even though everybody like the music they didn't get results for their advertising so they cancelled saying " I guess radio just doesn't work". At that point I had learned my lesson and switched to straight Top forty. All of a sudden the Beautiful music lovers started buying again and we did well.

Thanks. This was an interesting story.

 

[Kent]

My first car was a 1978 Chevy. It had both AM & FM in it.

FM didn't go from unavailable in cars to universally available in one auto year. Technology rarely works that way. Much like HD Radio, it got a gradual rollout, first as an optional package and later as standard across all models with more expensive models having it in the basic package first. The 1978 Toyota my mother had didn't have FM until Mom got on Dad's nerves enough to get him to buy a converter. Dad didn't get upset very often, but irritating him was pretty easy. So, I'm sure it didn't take Mom too much work!

Something else about beautiful music is, while it was generally cheap to operate for a new medium, no one can say it wasn't successful. Like all products, it eventually outlived its viability, but people used it. Offices loved it, and retail establishments could play it without worrying about upsetting or driving out customers. People obviously listened on their home stereos, too.

 

[Santa fe]

Somewhat related to beautiful music was that storecasting services like Muzak were a significant revenue source back then, especially for free-standing FM stations like 107.9 and 93.1. Storecasters would lease a station's subcarrier to deliver the background music heard in stores and restaurants. At 107.9, it was an on site, self-contained box, really a jukebox that played special low speed metal discs produced by Muzak. Occasionally, someone from Muzak would come out and change discs. Other installations fed the audio over phone lines. Operators were required to check a special monitor each time they took transmitter readings to make sure it was on. If it was silent for a long time, they had to call Muzak; they were prohibited from touching the equipment. Now we have probably gone past even satellite delivery and stream such services on line.

 

[DavidEduardo]

I'll grant you my dad was always somewhere between frugal and outright cheap. He supported our family and my mother's, which was dirt poor. So, we always lived well below his means. Other than air conditioning, which was absolutely essential in the summer months in Texas and Oklahoma, he would not pay for any extra options, period. If we'd lived in St. Louis instead of Tulsa or Dallas, he wouldn't have sprung for A/C either! We didn't have a car with power windows until I was in college, and, even then, it was because that car's lowest priced model included power windows. Prior to 1986, we had a 1978 and 1981 model cars that had only AM. I inherited the 1981 when I turned 16. Dad broke down and put an FM converter in it when we bought the 1986 Chrysler (which we bought in Spring '86 when the dealerships were blowing out '86 models to make room for the 87's), but it didn't work well. It was FM that sounded like AM: in glorious mono and with pops and cracks all over the place. The only difference was that the station didn't fade when you went under a bridge. I remember my high school girlfriend exclaiming, "Hit a railroad track, and it changes stations!"

Interesting story and it reflects, even today, how many budget minded folks are very sensitive to the costs of add-ons, whether they be for cars, the higher priced model of a TV, the ice-make in the refrigerator or wherever.

I was talking to a friend who has an electrical contracting and service company and he told me that "the younger people" tend to have more of a "we want to enjoy it NOW" attitude. When buying AC's here in the desert, the desire for SEER 18 to 20 is much higher with those under 40 than with older... and particularly retired... folks. He does not see that as a reflection of greater tech awareness or a way to consume less energy "for the planet" but as an attitudinal issue.

We see that today with the instant TikTok gratification vs. lengthy documentaries on traditional TV (two extremes) and I suppose that the old attitude of "if I don't much like that song, the next one will probably be good" dealing with radio has changed.

 

[Kelly A]

As I recall, I hated B.M. (the music version) throughout my youth, high school, and college. Fortunately, by that time it had thankfully faded in the dustbin of history. When I first was looking for a radio job a B.M. station offered me a gig swapping automation reels and doing some light production.
My response was: (and I'm not kidding or paraphrasing): "Thank you for the kind offer, but after the first hour of having to listen to this tripe, I'd probably be looking for a ballpoint pen to stab my eardrums with."
I took a job at a country station which wasn't much better musically, but at least the listeners with missing teeth were nice on the request line and the music didn't make me feel like I needed to self-lobotomy.

 

[Kelly A]

I was talking to a friend who has an electrical contracting and service company and he told me that "the younger people" tend to have more of a "we want to enjoy it NOW" attitude. When buying AC's here in the desert, the desire for SEER 18 to 20 is much higher with those under 40 than with older... and particularly retired... folks. He does not see that as a reflection of greater tech awareness or a way to consume less energy "for the planet" but as an attitudinal issue.

We recently replaced one of our three heat pumps at the house with a new Bosch Inverter 20 SEER unit. Because it's an inverter style and produces cool or heat all the way down to -5F without needing to activate the heating coils. And the thing is so quiet because the fan coil and condenser fans run only at a speed according to the load on the system. We're so pleased with the energy savings and efficiency, I'm going to have the other two American Standard heat pumps replaced with the same Bosch Inverter units this fall. And I'm not even under 40!

 

[DavidEduardo]

We recently replaced one of our three heat pumps at the house with a new Bosch Inverter 20 SEER unit. Because it's an inverter style and produces cool or heat all the way down to -5F without needing to activate the heating coils. And the thing is so quiet because the fan coil and condenser fans run only at a speed according to the load on the system. We're so pleased with the energy savings and efficiency, I'm going to have the other two American Standard heat pumps replaced with the same Bosch Inverter units this fall. And I'm not even under 40!

We have 3 variable speed units that are rated 18-20, and most of the year they run so quiet that we can hear vent noise louder than the units themselves.

I'm impressed with the Bosch units, but ours are only 9 years old, so still have 4-6 years on them. Then it will be the inverter style.

But both of us are "tech aware". I do not think you see the same with more mainstream (better word than "normal") people in the different generations.

This kind of attitude towards change and improvements is one of the hardest things to research as most people don't ever think about the underlying conditions that create overall awareness and, then, the perception of "need". It makes cross-generational radio formats very hard to work on; a good example is in the perception of the job of deejays and the need for them at all.

 

[JJSPC]

Several beautiful music choices in Milwaukee for a time in the early 70's. WTMJ-FM 94.5, WMVM 95.7, WISN-FM 97.3 and WEZW 103.7

 

[Gregg.]

IIRC in the late 60's and early 1970's WLAC FM, WSM FM, and the old WFMG (Gallatin TN) were close to beautiful music although there were some MOR songs that sometimes were played. Would an occasional vocal like Sinatra, Martin, Tony Bennett and the Ray Conniff singers "disqualify" a station from being a BM? If so than drop WLAC FM

The Beautiful Music format may have begun with all instrumentals. But by the end, those stations still in the format, such as WDUV Tampa and WPAT-FM New York, were airing 50% instrumentals and 50% vocals.

Maybe at that point, the official name changes from "Beautiful Music" to "Easy Listening." When the format was mostly instrumental with only a few vocals per hour, I think both terms were interchangeable.

 

[DavidEduardo]

The Beautiful Music format may have begun with all instrumentals.

When it started being called "Beautiful Music" it was one vocal and 3 to 5 instrumentals per quarter hour.

But by the end, those stations still in the format, such as WDUV Tampa and WPAT-FM New York, were airing 50% instrumentals and 50% vocals.

And that was in the very late 1980's. The real strong years of the Beautiful Music (under that name) format were 1968-1988.

Maybe at that point, the official name changes from "Beautiful Music" to "Easy Listening." When the format was mostly instrumental with only a few vocals per hour, I think both terms were interchangeable.

 

[Gregg.]

How about a market where four of five full power FM stations were Beautiful Music? I remember that was the Allentown PA market. 95.1 WEZV Bethlehem (now Rock WZZO), 99.9 WQQQ Easton (now Classic Rock WODE), 100.7 WFMZ Allentown (now AC WLEV) and 104.1 WXKW Allentown (now Top 40 WAEB-FM) all played automated Beautiful Music.

The one outlier was 96.1 WLEV Easton (now Country WCTO), a "Hit Parade" station, airing softer contemporary songs via automation, with a prerecorded voice telling you the artist and title.

 

[Kent]

100.7 WFMZ Allentown (now AC WLEV) and 104.1 WXKW Allentown (now Top 40 WAEB-FM) all played automated Beautiful Music.

If I remember correctly, WFMZ was a holdout long after most other B/EZ stations bailed. That company also owned KKJY 100.3 in Albuquerque and KJYE 92.3 in Grand Junction, CO, both of which also ran B/EZ after most others bailed.

K-Joy in Albuquerque slowly transitioned to smooth jazz before getting sold to a new operator who flipped it to 70's hits when that was the format of the month.

 

[Yabadabado1]

I was one of those "weird kids" in high school that, for the most part, wasn't into the metal/screaming rock music. Even as a teen, I liked the "beautiful music" formats and sometimes listened to them but a lot but mostly was into the 50s/60s pop music. I wrote somewhere on here before of when I applied for an on-air position they had advertised for at WDBN but they pulled a "bait and switch" move on me and tried pressuring me to do sales instead. Politely declined but I was fuming inside.

 

[skiwest]

I occasionally listened to beautiful music when I was a kid and I don't think I was "weird". I would sit in the living room with my dad and listen on one of the beautiful music stations or from a record album. He had a couple albums by Mantovani and Bert Kaempfert that he liked and played often. And then those stations would always do uninterrupted Christmas music starting on Christmas Eve thru Christmas Day.

 

[ILOVERADIO]

I have a distinct memory of, in the mid to late 1960s, a next door neighbor (two houses away) talking to my mother and mentioning that she liked "FM music" best. It seemed to me that Beautiful Music was the only thing, or the only worthy thing, to hear on FM radio.

By the late 60s most of the larger US markets played progressive rock, soft rock, and album rock on FM. It was an exciting time for FM and music radio. Radio seemed to be growing back then.

 

[johnbasalla]

While in college, a few friends and myself would get together every other Friday night for a "Pizza Night". One of the things we would occasionally do was to listen to one of the "Beautiful Music" stations and try to guess what the song was they were playing. Sometimes they would play a faster, orchestrated version of a slow-placed pop hit or a slowed down version of an up-tempo recent hit. We'd, often, get those after concentrating on them. We assume that the ones we didn't get were show tunes.

 

[Mark Roberts]

By the late 60s most of the larger US markets played progressive rock, soft rock, and album rock on FM. It was an exciting time for FM and music radio. Radio seemed to be growing back then.

Even the smallest markets. The first FM station that I recall hearing was KRXL in Kirksville, Missouri, which came on in 1967 with an easy-listening format, which it called "familiar music". In the Iowa-Missouri borderlands, the FM choices were either beautiful music (WHO-FM in addition to KRXL) or preachers (KDMI).

KRXL is still around; it's been a rocker for many years.

 

[K.M. Richards]

The "standard" beautiful music format was a quarter hour set with one vocal as cut #2 or #3 in the middle. The vocals tended to be more Roger Whittaker and Ray Conniff than old crooners, though.

I worked for a station that ran TM's Beautiful Music format in the late 1970s. My recollection was that the vocal reels always had actual soft hits (such as "Beautiful" by Gordon Lightfoot) as the first nine or ten cuts, which I was told was deliberate to allow those songs to play during morning drive ... just load a new reel. I recall that we forwarded past those in other dayparts, but I'm fuzzy on that; where is Dave Verdery when I need him?

Before syndicators like Shulke and Bonneville standardized the format in the 1968-1972 period, there were some stations that played all instrumentals and some that added vocals. There were differences in whether the instrumentals were adaptations of "standards" or covers of more recent pop songs such as the covers of Beatles songs and the like.

TM was heavy on pop covers, especially when recorded by the "TM Orchestra". But a few original versions of pop instrumentals still snuck in, such as "Love's Theme" by Love Unlimited Orchestra.