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Short Stuff: BM Radio · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is short Stuff,
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: the Routiness Tutinous, down home Sasparilla drinking podcast on the planet.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: That's right. Welcome to ws YSK, your source of all
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: the smooth podcasting sounds.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: That was great, Chuck, you have a future in radio.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: Oh great, here, there's a bright future in radio.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: So we are talking radio. That's why you just did that,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: and we're talking about a specific kind of radio. But
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: we should kind of go back a little bit to
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: the beginning because and I should. It occurred to me
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: that there are people who listen to us they won't
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: even know what we're talking about with AM and FM.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: But if you know enough about radio, there were two bands,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: the AM band and the FM band. And when if
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: you grew up in this late seventies, eighties, nineties, you
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: knew that AM radio was as square as.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: A Rubic's cube.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Yes, and the FM radio was where it was at.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: But it turns out that when FM radio first came
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: on the scene in the sixties and then early seventies,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: it was square and AM radio is where it was at.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: That's where you'd hear hits and rock and stuff like that.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: FM was so super square that it actually gave birth
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: to what we consider easy listening music today.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: By the way, I know this is going to be
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: kind of a long one, but I still have to
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: say this. When you were just stumped on trying to
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: think of a square thing, all I could think of
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: was the little Homer Simpson bubble above your head with
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: just like a doughnut.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: Or that black and white donkey swatting flies on the tail. Yeah,
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: that one always gets me. No. I thought of a
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: Citral Wilson quote that I just can't I can't say,
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: but it's hilarious.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: All right, we'll tell me later, Okay, all right, So
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: you left off that AM radio square FM radio was
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: where the rock hits were.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: I think you said the opposite.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: Well, if you grew up like we did, right, they
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: did a switcheroo and early on AM radio was the
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: cool one and FM was the upstart that was trying
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: to find its way.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and so FM essentially gave birth to that easy
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: listening music, which is also called elevator music. Some people
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: call it good music, but the type of music format
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: that we're going to talk about today is known as
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: beautiful music, and it is a great name for a
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: great kind of music if you ask me.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, if you heard our Musaic episode,
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: we talked a lot about this stuff. Muzak is of
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: course a proprietary eponym or aka a company, right.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Right, did I use that right? Yeah?
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay. But beautiful music is that it is like,
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: let's take a pop hit of the day, like a
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: Beatles song or something, unless let's arrange it as an
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: orchestral arrangement. A lot of strings will either do pop
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: pits or maybe'll do old standards from like the Great
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: American Songbook. And you know, we're going to make it
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: super polished, very easy on the ears. We're going to
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: remove the voteocals almost always, and instead of like the singing,
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: there's going to be like a flute or a clarinet
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: or something. Is the is the singing voice or if
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: it does have human voices singing, it's probably gonna be
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: like a chorus just singing a little bit of it
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: here and there.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, or doing that that kind of singing that the
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: vocalist does on the Star Trek theme where she's just
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: using her voice as an instrument.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: I don't know the Star Trek theme.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: What I don't.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: I've probably heard it, but I can't call up like,
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: oh yeah that thing.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: It goes d It turns out I do know that actually, yeah. So,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: like you said, the vocals were almost always removed, except
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: when they were humming or that kind of thing. Sometimes
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: they would include vocals, but they, like the carpenters, were
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: a little too hard edged for beautiful music, so they
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: would have like the ray Koniff singers sing the song
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: and provide the vocals like this is how softened. They
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: would take these songs and make them. And I mean,
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: if it was done right, even like the hardest core punk,
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: even the members of Crafts would hear that song and
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: be like, I'm not going to admit this out loud,
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: but that is actually beautiful music.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: Are you going on a limb and saying that everybody
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: likes this stuff?
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: I I no, no, no, no, not as a genre
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: for sure. I'm just saying there were some There's this
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: one version of What's New pussy Cat that is way
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: better than any version Tom Jones Burt backrack. It's so
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: good that I really think that basically anybody could hear
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: and be like, this is this is a great song.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: It actually is great, whether they'd admit it or not.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: But I don't think that that would automatically convert them
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: to beautiful music. I'm just saying, in some instances, done perfectly,
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: it really is beautiful music, all right.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: Well, pressing forward, the BM format really took off because
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: of an FCC ruling in nineteen sixty five that said,
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: if you are a company that has AM stations and
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: FM stations, you got to play different stuff. Because at
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: the time, there were companies that are like, hey, this
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: is great. We can just broadcast the same thing on
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: AM and FM and get ads on AM and also
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: get different ads on FM and essentially double down on
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: our product. And that's like the opposite of what they
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: were trying to do with FM to begin with. So
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: the FCC came around in sixty five said you can't
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: do this anymore. You got to play different stuff. And
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: so Beautiful Music came along and said, hey, this is
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: a pretty cheap solution. It's going to be sell a
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: lot of ads because it's going to be directly aimed
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: at women, especially housewives, because you know what they're doing.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: They're at home all day doing that housework, listening to music,
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: and this will make them happy while they're doing their housework.
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: They're going to have it on the background and we're
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: going to pump ads in there for all the stuff
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: that they're making the buying decisions over, which is household stuff.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because they were the target demographic of advertisers at
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: the time, they bought most of the stuff that advertisers
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: was selling. They made those day to day decisions about purchases.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: So they were what teenagers are today as far as
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: the target demo, right, And it was just basically assumed
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: and presumed that women would not want anything intrusive or
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: jarring or something. They wanted smooth, beautiful music, so much
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: so that like a version of this was called music
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: only for a woman. That's what the industry called the
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: mow right. The thing is, despite the fact that this
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: was set up to advertised to women directly beautiful music
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: as a whole as a format on the radio, actually,
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: I guess the best way to put is mellowed out
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: as far as advertising goes, and was very protective and
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: defensive of the listener experience, which meant cutting down on
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: ads and doing all sorts of other interesting things to
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: ads to YEA.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: A company in particular that came along called shul Key
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: Radio Productions SRP, and they were a they became like
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: the biggest player in syndication, like being a syndication company
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: for the BM format because they offered They were like, here,
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: we're going to send you these ready to play, real,
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: real tapes. It's all programmed. You just slap that sucker
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: on there and push play and your set and they said,
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: this sounds great, and they said, oh, but wait a minute.
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: If you want to use our stuff, like, we're audio files,
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: so we want the listening experience to be great and
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: we want it to be kind of perfect. So you've
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: got to update your broadcasting equipment because we're sending you
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: high quality tapes and they need to come across that way.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: You've got to hire an engineer that really knows what
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: they're doing and make sure this is all going to
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: go as we say it goes. And those ads, those
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: sixteen minutes of ads an hour that you're playing, you
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: can only do six minutes of those an hour, and
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: when you do, you got to have those lower in
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: volume than the music even and all the stuff you
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: should know. Listeners stood up and cheered.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's true. Because they found that if you had
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: the radio on a low enough volume, those ads at
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: six decibels less were like you couldn't even hear them
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: sometimes at a certain volume threshold, even though you could
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: still hear the music. And there was another thing about
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: the ads too. They're like, you cannot use attention grabbing
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: tactics to advertise, and in some cases some of these
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: local radio stations had to go back to their advertisers
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: and be like, crazy, Murray, We're gonna have to tone
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: this down quite a bit. Yeah, and like they had
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: to re record rewrite ads to follow these Sholky standards.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: And the reason that Sholkey could get away with this
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: was because they were selling up not just like pre
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: recorded tapes that you can just put on and have
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: your radio station. They were selling what muzak did as well,
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: that there was a scientific basis to this that like
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: followed the rhythm of the day and like built up
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: and crested and then Wayne and then built up and
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: crusted in Wayne just like musak is just like music
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: that was essentially totally made up. But Shulkey still had
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: the daya to prove it. People who listened to Beautiful
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: Music Radio listened essentially all day.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it feels like a good time for a break. I agreed,
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: And we'll be right back to finish up with BM
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: radio right after.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: This and things jogging job.
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: Josh, all right, we're back.
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: I think where we left off, Shulkey was doing pretty
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: good business. Crazy Murray was reduced to slightly eccentric Murray,
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: and they were selling like hotcakes, and they had the
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: ratings to prove it, like you said, even though the
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: science was not true, and they were listening for hours
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: and hours and hours. But that posed a problem, or
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: I guess presented a problem, which was, hey, they're listening
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: for so many hours a day, they're just having to
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: hear this same playlist in order basically when it loops
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: back around, and we can't get these tapes out the
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: door fast enough to you guys. So people have like
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: a you know, cause they were concerned about the listener
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: experience and certainly listening to a playlist on a loop
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: is not a good one. And so some companies came
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: along that said, all right, well, let's just start hiring
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: conductors and arrangers and putting together our own stuff until
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: a company called Bonaville came along with a really unique idea, right.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Bonaville did what Shulkey did, Like you would get
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: pre recorded tapes of beautiful music from them, but you
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: also had to have essentially a random automatic tape player
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: that would select a tape a song from a tape
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: at random. So even though you had, like them said,
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: of say fifty songs, there was never going to be
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: a playlist over the course of like say twelve hours
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: that was the same as before, same songs here or there,
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: but never the same entire playlist starting over every twelve hours.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so they'send tapes and packages.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: Tapes and tapes, tapes and tapes.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: Man missed those guys. And then yeah, I mean pretty
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: good technology at the time to randomly select and you know,
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: cue up different songs. So it was it was a
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: pretty big leap forward.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: And well, well, beautiful music itself was basically an incubator
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: for figuring out how to standardize and automate radio. That's
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: where that's the cradle of it is beautiful music.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: Weirdly enough, Yeah, and it spread throughout the country as
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: a format. Every city had at least one station if
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: you were a big city, you probably had a few.
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: A lot of times it was like you know, in Detroit,
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: w JOI like very mellow call signs. They just wanted
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: to really put out, like brand themselves as BM Radio
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: because it was such a big deal. But it wasn't
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: a big deal for that long because, you know, buying
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: power shifted as rock and roll came along and younger
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: listeners became the dominant sort of listener of radio, and
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: one by one they kind of, you know, BM radio
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: station switched over, which is a very jarring thing for
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: any radio station format change. I'm sure we've all suffered
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: those where you're like, well, I can't listen to the
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: station anymore because you're just not the same radio station.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: Do you remember the opposite happening when ninety nine X
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: came out in the early nineties and they played like
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: the Smiths and it was like, what are the Smiths
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: doing on the radio? This is awesome?
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because ninety nine in Atlanta before that was sort
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: of cheesy pop, and all of a sudden it was
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: alternative music, which was the first the first true alternative
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: station in Atlanta.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like truly alternative too, especially at first.
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I was a ninety six rock kid. But then
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: oh yeah, yeah, but when nine an X came along,
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: I was into that. But then ninety nine X got
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: really bad.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: You right, But at first it was pretty great.
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: No, I agree, because you couldn't hear the Smiths on
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: the radio unless you went left to the dial, which
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: I was doing with the great album eighty eight.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: Oh, album eighty eight guys, for anybody who didn't live
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: in Atlanta, while Album eighty eight was on the air,
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: it was so great. It had the best shows. They
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: played the best like regular rotation music, like it was
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: a great, great radio station, and like you can't find
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: it anywhere. Nobody's archived it.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: Sadly enough, I think they still have it on the weekends.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: You that.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the weekday they switched over to MPR, which is
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: dumb because we already have an MPR station.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they played basically the same thing.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but I'm still pretty sure that the album me
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: dy eight exists on the weekends. And if you haven't
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: heard of it, you may maybe have heard of the
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: great WFMU out of New Jersey. It's it's our version
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: of WFMU. But every most every city had a great
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: left of the dial station.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: Well, this one was the best left of the dial station.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: And do you remember Adam Baum? He had a soul show.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: No, I don't remember that one, Soul Kitchen.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: I think it was called.
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: Oh Okay, I remember Soul Kitchen.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was Adam Bomb. And that's that's definitely not
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: archived anywhere on the internet. So if anybody has old
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: tapes of Adam Baum's Soul Kitchen, please post them. Yeah.
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: They had Reeling in the Ears was a good show.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: Their Sunday Morning Reggae Show was amazing.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: Do you remember the Sunday Saturday Morning cartoon theme show?
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: That was a good one, too, good stuff. I think
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: we should just put one last thing. You said that
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: a BM station started to drop like flies in the
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: or eighties, in particular, by nineteen ninety they were basically gone.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: There was a fictionalized version of this event. Yeah, and
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: we like to call that fictionalized version WKRP in Cincinnati.
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: You know what, I did not remember this and I
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: love that show until you included it in the article
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: and I was like, wait a minute, I do remember
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: the pilot, like I remember that happening.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: That's what happened. That's why they hired Andy a station manager,
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: because they were converting from beautiful music to rock. And
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: that's exactly what was going on at the time around them.
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's why doctor Johnny Fever and Venus fly
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: Trap all were stoked about their job.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and Herb Tarlak had to go to Crazy Murray
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: and be like, can we can we turn you upward now?
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: Because we're a rock station.
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: That's right? And Lannie Anderson said, did I type this right?
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: And lean over the desk.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: That was a good show. Oh, let's thank our sources
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: for this episode. Chuck Tarvar at the University of Delaware,
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: Go Blue Hens, Ken Mills at Radio World, Diffin dot com,
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: Ken Seapora at Credoville, and the Forum at Radio Discussions.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: And since we have nothing more to say about beautiful music,
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: short Stuff is out.
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: or
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: Wherever you listen to your favorite shows.