Origins

     The origin of the phrase easy listening is undetermined. Its predecessors, "good music" and "beautiful music," were format descriptors popularized in the 1950s and 1960s by FM stations seeking differentiation from the Top 40 and middle of the road formats that dominated AM radio. Stations initially offered instrumental-laden good music programming to retail business operators on a subscription basis as a means of inducing customer relaxation. Good music programming in the 1950s was transmitted via the FM subcarrier frequency, which precluded reception by the general public. Growing listener interest led broadcasters to shift the good music format to their FM main channels in the early 1960s. The good music format subsequently evolved into beautiful music.

     Stations that pioneered the good music format in the late 1950s included several noted AM outlets. KIXL in Dallas; WOR in New York City; WPAT in Paterson, New Jersey; and KABL in Oakland-San Francisco, all defined the easy listening presentation and accelerated the format's popularity. KIXL programmer Lee Seagall emphasized the importance of matching music tempo with the hour of the day-upbeat during the morning but down-tempo, soft, and romantic in the evening. Gordon McLendon's KABL relied upon interstitial poetry selections to create distinction. Two evening specialty programs-WOR's Music from Studio X and the Gaslight Revue on WPAT-influenced WDVR Station Manager/Program Director Marlin Taylor in 1963 to extend the format on this stand-alone FM station to around-the-clock presentation for Philadelphia listeners.

     Pairing good music with the FM medium was fortuitous for performers, broadcasters, and listeners. When the Federal Communications Commission directed FM broadcasters in the mid-196os to curtail the practice of simulcasting the programming of their AM sister stations, this format emerged as the de facto FM format standard. FM broadcasting, in contrast with AM, exhibited the sonic advantages of high-fidelity reproduction and stereophonic sound. The subtle nuances of orchestral performances, diminished by the process of low­ fidelity, monaural AM transmission, sprang from FM receivers with astonishing clarity and accuracy. After years of languishing in the shadow of AM radio, the FM medium began to assert its identity as a separate and technically superior mode of broadcasting.

What It ls

     Industry followers generally regard the easy listening format as a beautiful music derivative. Beautiful music is a program for­ mat featuring soft instrumental and vocal recordings directed to a target audience of predominantly middle-aged female listeners. Lush, melodic, and subdued in its presentation, the format is carefully planned and executed to offer listeners a quiet musical refuge for escaping from everyday distractions. Programmers regard announcer chatter as intrusive and tend to limit the spoken word to brief news reports, time checks, and weather forecasts. Commercial interruptions are similarly minimized, and the construction of message content reflects the format's low-key delivery approach. The objective is to provide listeners with a background musical environment that complements their daily activities.

     Beautiful music resides in the development of Muzak, a registered trademark denoting the mood-enhancing background music service pioneered in the 1920s by Brigadier General George Owen Squier. Muzak programming was piped via leased telephone circuits into America's factories to stimulate productivity and into retail stores and restaurants to elevate patrons' spirits.

     Programmers for beautiful music and easy listening founded their presentations in the lush, layered string arrangements popularized by the Andre Kostelanetz, Percy Faith, and Mantovani orchestras. Trade publications began using the format labels interchangeably during the mid-1970s. But musicologists cite several distinguishing characteristics between the formats. Beautiful music delved more deeply into the repertoire of 20th-century popular music composers than did easy listening. Tunes by Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, and Hoagy Carmichael-pop music's "standards"-were common fixtures on beautiful music playlists. In contrast, easy listening stations adopted a more contemporary music viewpoint, favoring a greater infusion of fresher sounds. Tunes by Burt Bacharach, Henry Mancini, and John Lennon and Paul McCartney were commonly integrated into the presentation.

     Greater distinction between the formats was evidenced by programmers' approaches to vocal music, in terms of both style and quantity. Performances by "traditional" vocalists, such as Perry Como, Andy Williams, and Frank Sinatra, as well as the cover arrangements produced by artists including the Ray Conniff and Anita Kerr choral ensembles, were sparingly interspersed into the presentation of beautiful music. Easy listening stations, which tended to blend instrumentals and vocals on a more proportionate basis, gravitated toward the pop sounds of AM Top 40. Some of the "softer"-sounding hits by Elton John, Billy Joel, the Carpenters, and others qualified for airplay. Up-tempo performances, particularly those punctuated by intrusive guitar licks or intensive percussion, were generally passed over by easy listening programmers.

Key Producers

     James Schulke, a former advertising executive and FM radio proponent, established SRP in 1968 to syndicate an approach to the good music presentation that he termed beautiful music. Capitalizing on the good music format's mood-music heritage, SRP Vice President/Creative Director Phil Stout constructed each quarter-hour of programming on a foundation of lush orchestral and vocal arrangements of popular music standards. One nuance in execution-the segue-differentiated the beautiful music from the good music format. Stout insisted that transitions between recordings flow in such a manner as to preserve the emotions elicited in listeners by the tempo, rhythm, and sound texture of the performances.

     Schulke marketed Stout's concept as the "matched flow" approach to format execution. It was not uncommon for Stout to expend up to two days' effort to assemble a single hour of SRP programming. Collectively, the SRP team's insistence on musical cohesiveness and technical integrity proved successful in attracting and holding listeners. SRP's beautiful music format typically surpassed other formats in Arbitron's "time­ spent-listening" measurements, a desirable position for stations catering to advertisers who sought message frequency over reach.

     Bonneville was founded in 1970 by Marlin R. Taylor, a veteran programmer who pioneered easy listening on Philadelphia's WDVR in 1963. Taylor meshed a keen music sensibility with an adroit understanding of listeners' tastes in transforming the low­ rated WRFM into New York City's number-one FM outlet. Success with WRFM inspired Taylor to launch Bonneville as the vehicle for extending his programming expertise to a clientele that grew in the early 1980s to approximately 180 stations.

     Beautiful music prospered in the politically conservative 1970s because its musical message resonated with a nation of silent-majority listeners who had outgrown Top 40 and had never connected with progressive rock, country and western, or ethnic formats. By the end of that decade, more than a dozen syndicators, including Peters Productions, Century 21, and KalaMusic, competed with Bonneville and SRP for affiliates and listeners. As a result, it was common for two or three stations in each of the top 25 markets to vie for a share of the audience.

     Beautiful music stations were unable to sustain the momentum, however. "Light" and "soft" adult contemporary (AC) stations, which burgeoned in the latter half of the 1970s, steadily siphoned beautiful music's target listener, the middle­ aged female, during the 1980s. In a sense, both beautiful music and light AC were easy listening formats (see Josephson, 1986). Unlike beautiful music, which cultivated reputations with listeners as a background music companion, light AC was vocal-intensive, personality driven, and foreground focused in its presentation.

     Switching from beautiful music to light AC improved the revenues of many stations. Advertising revenue erosion for beautiful music stations was attributed to the fact that its aging audience was spending a disproportionately low percentage of its disposable income on consumer goods. Light AC stations, whose demographic profiles skewed toward younger female adults, delivered the audience that had become most desired by national advertisers.

     During a 1980 industry conference, broadcasters reached general agreement about the perceptual distinctions listeners had drawn between stations that positioned themselves as either easy listening or beautiful music outlets. In an effort to shed negative images of beautiful music as passive, background radio, broadcasters confirmed easy listening as a more appropriate positioning descriptor. The phrase easy listening, they agreed, evoked positive and active feelings of involvement by listeners with stations.

Decline

     It was a calculated decision made by an industry about to confront a period of dramatic change in listener preferences. Easy listening/beautiful music, which Arbitron reported as radio's number-one format in 1979, slipped into second position behind adult contemporary the following year. The remainder of the 1980s proved to be a period of redefinition for easy listening.

     Two distinct waves of defection by instrumental mood­ music stations occurred, and each was precipitated by advertising industry pressures for stations to deliver younger, more upscale listeners. The first wave, in 1982-83, swept through the major markets. Where multiple easy listening outlets had once competed, now the lower-rated easy listening stations moved in other programming directions. Some of these stations subtly shifted toward soft AC, excising the instrumental music in favor of full-time vocals. Others pursued ratings success with entirely different formats. A second wave of abandonment occurred in 1988-89, when most of the remaining stations vacated easy listening. Traditional, "standards"­ inspired instrumental music virtually disappeared from the airwaves.

     The descriptive phrase easy listening became more indefinite in the radio lexicon of the 1990s, subsuming not only soft AC but the new age and smooth jazz genres as well. An emphasis on announcer personality and other formats (sports play-by-play, traffic reports, and promotions) aligned easy listening with other mainstream music formats more closely than ever. As format fragmentation increased during this decade, the phrase easy listening generally gave way to variations on the soft AC theme.