Techniek en USA radioformats ofwel hoe.......

[Gast]

.........in de VS bedenkers en verkopers van radioformats in de 60er en 70er jaren eisen stelden aan hun klanten mbt de manier waarop het gekochte format via de AM zender de lucht in moest en hoe om te gaan met de audioprocessing bij het specifieke formt, in dit geval "Beautiful Music" ook wel "muzak-liftmuziek of schmaltz.

Toen ik in 64 de middengolf ontdekte opende zich voor mij ook al de werld van musicformat, waar Caroline en London min of meer een top 40 format hanteerden ben ik ook door de jaren heen een groot liefhebber van het Beautiful Music format geweest. Zeezenders die dicht in de buurt kwamen waren Invicta-KING-390-BritainRadio-355 en het NL talige Dolfijn.

Beautiful music is anno 2012 nog het best te beluisteren via WKT http://wktz.jones.edu/

Opgedeeld in 2 artikelen hier het bijbehorende leesvoer:

Eerst uitleg over het format volgens Wiki

Beautiful music From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search Beautiful music (sometimes abbreviated as BM, B/EZ or BM/EZ for beautiful music/easy listening) is a mostly instrumental music format that was prominent in American radio from the 1960s through the 1980s. Mood music, easy listening, and the often derogatory terms Muzak and elevator music are other common terms for the format and the style of music that it featured. Beautiful music can also be regarded as a subset of the middle of the road radio format.

Contents [hide]

1 History

1.1 Growth as a radio format

1.2 Declining years

1.3 Beautiful music today

2 See also

3 Further reading

[edit] HistoryBeautiful music initially offered soft and unobtrusive instrumental selections on a very structured schedule with limited commercial interruptions. It often functioned as a free background music service for stores, with commercial breaks consisting only of announcements aimed at shoppers already in the stores. This practice was known as storecasting and was very common on the FM dial in the 1940s and 1950s.

Many of these FM stations usually simulcast their AM station and used a subcarrier (SCA), to transmit a hitch-hiker signal to a store receiver by subscription. The signal was usually a slow-moving audio tape of 'background music' or Muzak-type service, which was independent of the simulcast AM signal.

Some FM stations made more income from these music subscriptions than from their main programming. WITH-FM, in Baltimore, Maryland (1950s and 1960s), had to keep its FM carrier on the air until 2 a.m. for restaurant subscribers, and could not sign-off the main FM carrier until that time and thus had to run a repeat of its previous day's evening concert on its main FM program line.

[edit] Growth as a radio formatOne of the first Beautiful Music radio stations in the U.S. was KIXL (pronounced "Kick-sil") in the Dallas-Ft. Worth, Texas area. As early as 1947 it had pioneered playing orchestral music on AM radio (1040), and later on FM (104.5). The station played that format through a name change to KEZL (as in "Easy Listening") in 1973, but ended its long run with a change to Adult Contemporary in 1976.

In 1959 Gordon McLendon, who had interests in Top-40 radio in Dallas as well as other markets decided to "counter-program" in San Francisco since several Top-40 stations were already there. Taking a clue from KIXL in Dallas, McLendon surprised everyone with the establishment of a Beautiful Music AM station named KABL (a tribute to the famous San Francisco Cable Cars) which became a successful legend in the city through the 1990's. It then experimented with combining elements of Big Bands and soft rock until its demise in the early 21st Century. However, it was reborn as an Internet Radio Station where it can be heard today.

In the early 1960s, the Federal Communications Commission adopted a standard for transmitting and receiving stereo signals on a single channel of the FM band. In addition to delivering stereo sound, FM broadcasting provided a clearer sound quality and better resistance to interference than AM, thus being the ideal vehicle for broadcasting the beautiful music format. In Baltimore, Md. programmer Art Wander developed a beautiful music format for the 50,000 watt NBC affiliate, WBAL-AM, 1090khz. The station format launched in the fall of 1960 featured music sweeps of lush instrumentals with subtle comments from their staff announcers: Perry Andrews 5am-10am, Molly Martin or Alan Campbell, Mid-mornings, Jay Grayson, Jim West and Paul Shields in afternoons and evenings. The format was suspended for sports and talk when FM stations in the area became the popular beautiful music and easy listening of the day.

In 1963, Marlin Taylor created a custom-designed beautiful music format at Philadelphia's WDVR-FM, and within four months, WDVR became the #1 rated FM station in the Philadelphia market, becoming not only one of the first big successes in FM broadcasting but instrumental in establishing the viability of the FM band. WDVR was a resource for mature listeners who were driven away from AM radio at the time when WFIL and WIBG (and others) were going to rock 'n' roll programming. WDVR's many large roadside billboards made the adult audience aware of the new station.

[edit] Declining yearsPeters Productions was one of several radio format syndicators -- including Schulke Radio Productions (SRP), Bonneville Program Services (BPS), and Century Broadcasting -- who created automated tape reels for hundreds of radio stations across the U.S. during the 1960s and 1970s. The company supplied music tapes as well as pre-recorded announcements of the time of day, and other announcements used to promote the format. Peters' beautiful music format was first called "Music Only For A Woman" and later "Music Just For The Two of Us." Peters was the first beautiful music syndicator to sell out its library in the late 1980s to Broadcast Programming, Inc. -- known in the industry as BPI -- which snapped up several other syndicators within the next few years. (BPI, later part of Jones Radio Networks, is part of Dial Global as of 2012.) Bonneville, which had acquired the SRP and Century catalogs in the 1980s, itself sold its beautiful music related assets to Broadcast Programming in November 1993.

Some beautiful music stations did make a successful transition into adult contemporary formats, although often not without call letter changes to drop the identity of being a so-described "elevator music" station. Many of these stations marketed themselves as playing much of the same songs, just the actual versions from the original artists.

Beautiful music stations took a major hit in the late 1980s and early 1990s as country music entered mainstream popularity and moved to the FM dial (prior to this time, country was a format relegated to AM radio). Many beautiful music stations, especially in rural areas, dropped the format for country around that time.

[edit] Beautiful music todayThe beautiful music format did not die completely. Today's smooth jazz radio stations maintain the structure and style of the beautiful music format. And although today there are only a handful of true beautiful music stations still on the air, the format still lives on a few non-commercial radio stations, including WKTZ (90.9 FM) in Jacksonville, Florida, which is owned by Jones College and also streams its programming online. WKTZ plays many pop-standard selections and some big band material, as was common on many beautiful music stations during the 1960s and 1970s. Other non-commercial stations offering the beautiful music format include KLUX (89.5 FM) in Corpus Christi, TX, KHOY (88.1 FM) in Laredo, TX, KNCT-FM (91.3 FM) in Killeen, TX and WJMJ (88.9 FM) in Hartford, CT. WREK (91.1 FM, Atlanta) plays big band and cocktail jazz on Saturday evenings (6PM - 10PM), as a homage to the format and its roots.

Some commercial beautiful music stations do still exist as well, often in areas with large retiree populations, and are often very popular in the markets they serve, especially with older listeners, such as CKOT-FM in Tillsonburg, Ontario, Canada. An annual influx of vacationers from colder climates has helped such stations as "Wave 101" WAVV (101.1 FM) Marco Island (Naples), FL. Most of the non commercial beautiful music stations that still exist are primarily in markets with major resorts that attract vacationers from colder climates who come for relaxation. One exception is WGCY in Gibson City, Illinois which serves rural areas in Central Illinois with mostly instrumental beautiful music. Today most stations that play beautiful music are either characterized as nostalgia, smooth jazz or easy listening.

Beautiful instrumental music can also be found on Internet radio feeds such as Live365's (BEAUTIFUL instrumentals). Using Bonneville and SRP veterans, Sirius XM Satellite Radio programs a dedicated beautiful music channel, Escape, for its subscribers, and such services as Music Choice and DMX provide the format as part of their offerings to cable and satellite television subscribers. Muzak also provides several beautiful music channels which are described as "environmental" background music channels.

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Vervolgens het artikel over de technische eisen die gesteld werden om het uit te zenden:

The Beautiful Music Radio Format: An insider’s Perspective

By Dennis R. Ciapura

Fine music formats, like Classical, have historically given rise to intensely loyal audiences, but no format has ever enjoyed the breadth and depth of response as the format we came to call Beautiful. Beautiful Music was a ratings force in the marketplace from about 1970 until the mid 1990’s. During that quarter century run many of the basics of the science of radio format design were developed by the pioneers who made Beautiful a national phenomena like none the industry has seen before or since.

While most major markets had "good music" stations like WGAY from the early 60’s on, the real genesis of Beautiful Music as a format scientifically designed to be nearly addictive for its listeners was born of the genius of an ex Paramount TV executive and Harvard MBA named Jim Schulke. Schulke was keenly aware of how carefully controlled stimuli could affect human behavior. He also knew that Muzak modulated the tempo of music designed for the workplace to improve productivity by gradually increasing tempo from morning until the lunch hour then starting the cycle again through the afternoon. Schulke took this philosophy a giant step forward by developing a very structured system of controlling every facet of the format’s construction and presentation.

Schulke’s company, Stereo Radio Productions, later Schulke Radio Productions, or SRP as it became known, offered a format that would enable FM broadcasters to achieve significant ratings at a time when AM still ruled the airwaves. SRP’s Beautiful Music format was constructed in 15 minute segments in a process called "matched flow". The musical selections in each segment were artfully matched and sequenced so that each segment flowed like a continuous performance. At it’s best, the results were nearly hypnotic. Listeners would stay tuned for 8 hours or more per day when typical radio Time Spent Listening, or TSL, was a couple of hours. This extended TSL was critically important because the bottom line ratings imperative was (and still is) Average Quarter Hours of listening, or AQH. AQH was the product of cumulative audience (CUM) and TSL. So, for a given size of audience, extending the TSL directly inflated the AQH, and the client station’s revenue!

But, SRP’s format control extended beyond the music itself. Schulke was obsessed with protecting the integrity of the format’s presentation, or format execution. To be an SRP client station the station’s owner had to agree to certain overall format constraints and execution points. Commercial content was limited to 6 minutes per hour. Most stations were averaging 18. Commercials were also to be run at reduced volume level, -6dB, and commercial acceptance policy was very strict. Whenever possible the client stations were expected to accept only straight voice spots, or those with very soft music and moderate tempo. Nothing "jarring" was allowed. If a station absolutely had to run a slightly strident commercial to protect an account, the high frequencies were rolled off to tone it down.

Part of the rationalization for running the commercials at –6 dB was that there is a 3 dB center channel buildup compared to the level of either the left or right channel because the center channel is comprised of left and right together. Also, since the music was uncompressed its average level was often less than that of the music. So, the spots were limited to -6 dB to ensure that they were never louder than the music. Another effect of this, whether intentional or not, was that on radios playing a low volume levels, as was often the case when Beautiful was played for background, the spots would virtually disappear.

Announcers were, of course, very carefully selected. Except for the brief news reports, virtually every word they spoke was very carefully scripted. Particular attention was paid to the image ID’s and great emphasis was placed on call letter recall, important to ratings recognition. To enhance recall and imaging, call letters were changed to lifestyle oriented monikers. Good examples were WLIF in Baltimore and WLYF in Miami.

"W L I F, Baltimore, we call it LIFE" or, "When you’re listening to beautiful music you’re listening to W L Y F, Miami, LIFE".

The key targeted demographic was women 25-49. They had enormous buying power and were much sought after by the ad agencies for many product lines. What came to be called housewife time (10 A – 3P) was especially important because Beautiful made excellent background music in the kitchen and around the house. So, if those radios stayed tuned to an SRP client station the quarter hours of listening would pile up at a terrific rate. Therefore, anything that could annoy females was avoided like the plague.

Schulke was adamant about audio transmission standards. Client stations were to employ no compression whatsoever so that the full dynamic range of the music was preserved. Distortions of all kinds were to be passionately avoided and SRP client stations were expected to have top notch tape decks, control room consoles and transmitters. Also, the lack of audio compression reduced the average volume level of SRP stations on the air, which meant that higher antennas were required to maintain wide signal coverage without objectionable background noise.

In the beginning there were few FM group owners who bought into the Schulke rhetoric, and Sudrink Broadcasting and Southern Broadcasting were among the earliest, largest and most successful. They fully endorsed Jim Schulke’s program execution criteria and supplied their stations with excellent studio equipment and some of the tallest antenna facilities in the country. Dave MacFee, Vice President of Programming for Sudbrink Broadcasting, eventually joined the SRP organization to help other clients to transition of the Schulke approach to FM broadcasting.

Over time, a kind of paranoia developed at SRP about potential audio defects resulting in less than optimum ratings results. A whole belief system emerged, which the station program directors and engineers came to refer to as the "Schulke mystique". For example, excessive bass or compression were believed to turn on males, but turn away females. So, if the ratings were weak in female demographics, the subject station was often suspected of suffering from signal processing problems resulting in compression.

Similarly, since females were known to have better high frequency hearing, high frequency distortion or excessive highs were believed to drive females away. If both demos dropped the spots were too loud, strident or annoying. The Schulke mystique drove the station engineers and program directors crazy. When the ratings were up everything was okay, but any ratings decline was invariably blamed on format execution or technical factors at the station. It was a high pressure environment, particularly for the program directors, but many went on to achieve great success in the industry. Dick Foreman from Sudbrink’s WLIF in Baltimore eventually became Vice President of Programming for ABC Radio Networks and today is a leading station broker.

Another part of the Schulke mystique was the vale of secrecy that surrounded almost everything about the SRP product and the format execution consulting provided to SRP client stations. Employees were expected to treat everything about the format as trade secrets. Station owners were also led to believe that SRP employed special methods in the production of its music tapes that generated stronger listener appeal. The idea was that SRP clients were getting a product that could not be obtained anywhere else, and equally important, could not be duplicated by a client who might want to roll his own.

Ironically, the tapes SRP provided to its clients had some significant problems. For economic and logistics reasons SRP used high speed tape duplication. One-to-one dubbing was not practical because of the enormous amount to time and tape machines that would have be required to supply dozens of clients with hundreds of hours of tape. The problem with high-speed dubbing is that the maximum frequencies the tape machines had to handle were multiplied in proportion to the speed ratio. For example, if the 7 ½ ips client tapes were dubbed at 4:1, the duplication system had to be flat to 60 kHz to if the client tapes were to be flat to 15 kHz. In fact, the SRP tapes were not much good above 10 kHZ. They also had more tape hiss than first generation tapes. There also were low frequency problems, partly due to the need to filter the audio to prevent interference with the 25 Hz cue tones that were used to trigger the station automation systems. These defects were easy for the better station engineers to spot because one had only to compare a few selections from records to the same selections on SRP tapes to reveal the anomalies.

SRP later installed newer duplicators, which ironically had even worse high frequency response when first placed into service. This was eventually corrected and the overall response, noise and distortion of the new system was an improvement. In fact, Irv Joel, SRP’s engineer, had probably developed the ultimate reel-to-reel high speed duplication system. By the mid 70’s SRP tapes finally sounded pretty close to the records in terms of fidelity and had the advantage of having the clicks and pops removed during the mastering process. In those pre-digital days this was a tedious manual process performed with a razor blade! The SRP tapes also benefited from some gentle manual leveling that improved the signal to noise ratio and made the uncompressed broadcasts more practical for automobile reception.

While the station managers, who were responsible for sales, were initially thrilled with the ratings results, they soon discovered that SRP’s brand of Beautiful could be a hard sell to the ad agencies. SRP stations were frequently asking for permission to redo spots for programming compatibility, which the agencies often took as an insult to their creativity. The agencies and direct clients also soon became aware of the low spot levels, and this became a frequent source of contention. The limited commercial avails also became an issue as the stations became more successful. The revenue generation limitations of Beautiful arose from the combination of this limited spot inventory, tight commercial acceptance policies, and some ad agency skepticism of large AQH ratings that were so TSL driven, which meant a relatively small CUM for a given AQH.

Aside from the sales difficulties, listeners began increasingly to complain about redundancy. After listening to the same quarter hour segments, frequent listeners (most of the audience) began to know what selection was coming up next. They were unconsciously memorizing the segments! Ironically, the matched 15 minute matched flow segment structure, which was the format’s greatest strength, also became its Achilles heel. The only solution was to replace the segments with newly constructed ones more frequently, and this put tremendous pressure on SRP.

New and powerful competitors also began to spring up in the form of Bonneville Broadcasting’s syndicated Beautiful format, which was similar to SRP’s, and Century Broadcasting’s, which was quite different. Instead of the fixed 15 minute matched flow segments, Century used several tape decks and pulled each selection from a different reel. The automation systems could then be programmed to create new segments all the time. The matched flow proponents scoffed at this approach, but WLOO, Century’s Chicago station, was achieving great success against SRP programmed WLAK (LAKE) and Bonneville programmed WCLR (CLEAR). Interestingly, Century did not subscribe to SRP’s compression ban. WLOO was as loud as most of the other stations on the band, and the commericals were played at normal levels. Some managers of SRP programmed stations began to wonder if the Schulke mystique was more hype than science.

By 1979 SRP was sold to Cox Broadcasting, but even as the big syndicators fought it out in the major markets, scores of independent Beautiful formatted stations sprang up all over the country. These smaller operators, often individual stations, formed the Independent Beautiful Music Association, IBMA. As the format continued to mature all Beautiful operators shared one problem: lack of its most important component – new Music. The very success of the format virtually ensured that all existing product would be consumed in a few years and suitable new product simply wasn’t being produced. Now everyone was having redundancy problems. The larger syndicators began to produce new music, mostly in Great Britain where the costs were lower and suitable talent more available. The IBMA found help in form of a pioneering Beautiful station in Silver Springs, Maryland, just outside Washington, DC – WGAY.

WGAY was owned and operated by Greater Media, Inc. In addition to the Beautiful format on WGAY, Greater Media had several other stations running a company proprietary adult contemporary format called "Magic". The Magic format was produced and duplicated at Greater Media’s headquarters in East Brunswick New Jersey. Peter Bordes, Greater Media’s Chairman, was a great visionary and gave his programming and engineering executives free reign to pursue the best technology and methods. Greater Media even had an audio R&D lab at its corporate headquarters. A custom mastering and duplicating facility had been built featuring the latest Sony phase compensated tape decks in a 1:1 duplication system. Extreme attention was paid to audio purity in the design and operation of the system and the accompanying mastering studio. By this time Bob Chandler, WGAY’s Program Director, was producing custom music with John Gregory in England with the intent of recovering the cost of the operation by selling the product to independent Beautiful Music stations, primarily IBMA members. The very high fidelity 1:1 duplication system at the East Brunswick HQ was ideal for duplicating WGAY’s custom product, which was marketed as Beautiful Hits.

John Gregory was, and is, a brilliant composer, conductor and arranger. John was one of a few arranger/conductors chosen to produce BBC orchestra performances. There was no BBC Orchestra per se. Whichever conductor was selected for a given performance would assemble an orchestra from among the many very talented union musicians working in the London area and put a program together. John was ideal for the Beautiful Hits project. The mission was to create lush orchestral renditions of contemporary pop tunes. This ensured a constant flow of format compatible new music. John knew all of the very best musicians and they enjoyed working for him. He was in his element in the recording studio. The Beautiful Hits sessions were done at some of the best studios in London, including PI and Olympic. The orchestras were usually comprised of between 33 and 38 musicians. The earlier sessions were 16 track, but soon transitioned to 24 track. Beautiful Hits production peaked in the summers of 1977-78 with as many as 80 new selections being recorded in a season. It was about that time that Bob Chandler had his first heart attack just after completing a day long session.

Beautiful continued to be a powerhouse format for a few more years, but the audience was aging out of the target demos. This meant that the revenue opportunity was diminishing and the major market Beautiful stations gradually eased into soft rock formats. In recent years this trend has been accelerated by the corporate consolidations that have seen so most major stations acquired by huge publicly traded corporate operators. The individual station owners and small group operators who might have kept the format alive are now either gone or retired. Schulke died on August 6, 1998 of complications from Pneumonia at age 77. Sadly, Peter Bordes and Bob Chandler are also gone. The format still exists in secondary and tertiary markets in some form or other and can still produce a large following in areas with a large retirement community. More importantly, it thrives in the hearts of music lovers of all ages who still thrill to the magnificent sound of big orchestras weaving their magical sonic tapestry.

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Tot zover deze info, veel leeswerk, echt iets voor een regen8tige zondag.

Paul de Haan