Not quite. The W-Bach network is programmed from Nassau Broadcasting in Boston, formerly at the commercial WCRB.

Does it matter with background instrumentals? Do people really "listen" to the music, or is it just there?

In article ,
ai4i wrote:

Does it matter with background instrumentals? Do people really "listen"
to the music, or is it just -there-?

I actually found KBAY to be a foreground station. It played original
popular hits as well as selected covers. It dipped into KKSF territory
with pop jazz pieces. It even played an occasional show tune. It was
borderline eclectic.

Apparently, people listened closely enough for the station to do well
for its advertisers, many of whom had been with the station for years
and years. It was always sold out.

The station was frequently characterized by people who never bothered to
listen to it as "elevator music". It would have had to have been some
pretty hip elevator.

--
John Higdon
+1 408 ANdrews 6-4400
AT&T-Free At Last

On Thu, 8 Apr 2010 12:40:02 EDT, John Higdon wrote:

In article ,
ai4i wrote:

Does it matter with background instrumentals? Do people really "listen"
to the music, or is it just -there-?

I actually found KBAY to be a foreground station. It played original
popular hits as well as selected covers. It dipped into KKSF territory
with pop jazz pieces. It even played an occasional show tune. It was
borderline eclectic.

Apparently, people listened closely enough for the station to do well
for its advertisers, many of whom had been with the station for years
and years. It was always sold out.

The station was frequently characterized by people who never bothered to
listen to it as "elevator music". It would have had to have been some
pretty hip elevator.

During the time I lived in Ukiah, I worked for KLIL, an "easy
listening" station. I and my friends often "DXed" KBAY. It was
amazing to pick it up (for us), being over 150 - 200 miles distant,
and Ukiah being in a rather deep valley. Never-the-less, we got it
quite well using a cheap-o Radio Shack 4 element FM beam. I and many
others even picked it up as we drove around town in our cars, although
it was spotty in places.

We listened a LOT to KBAY, everything John tells you is true ! It was
one heck of a station !!

Warren

John Higdon had written:
|
| I actually found KBAY to be a foreground station. It played original
| popular hits as well as selected covers. It dipped into KKSF territory
| with pop jazz pieces. It even played an occasional show tune. It was
| borderline eclectic.

Perhaps a little less eclectic, but something more than a
background music station was the old KCFM in St. Louis up until the
late 1970s. It managed to hold its own for a while against KEZK,
which was on the old KDNA, and AM station WRTH.

Around 1978, KCFM went to what we would now call a AAA format,
calling itself "The Natural Sound." While moderately successful,
and quite beloved of some people even to this day, the station's
founder decided to retire and sold to Gannett. Gannett, which
ruined almost every radio station it ever touched, promptly
switched it back to a beautiful-music format, this time much more
formulaic and a lot less interesting. It bombed.

Classical KFUO-FM was, at the time, still running tapes from
Parkway.

--
Mark Roberts - E-Mail address is valid but I don't use Google Groups
If you quote, please quote only relevant passages and not the whole article.

Amid this discussion of how broad station playlists are, I was in
a cafe yesterday picking up a sandwich for lunch when I heard the
Eagles' "I Can't Tell You Why." I immediately recognized it as one
of the songs that KYUU (KNBR's FM sister station in San Francisco)
was playing when I worked there in the summer of 1980. I counted
the carts once and figured there were about 400 songs in rotation.
Even in those few months, I heard each of them so many times that
they now jump out at me 30 years later as being "KYUU songs." :-)


Patty

In article ,
Patty Winter wrote:

Amid this discussion of how broad station playlists are, I was in
a cafe yesterday picking up a sandwich for lunch when I heard the
Eagles' "I Can't Tell You Why." I immediately recognized it as one
of the songs that KYUU (KNBR's FM sister station in San Francisco)
was playing when I worked there in the summer of 1980. I counted
the carts once and figured there were about 400 songs in rotation.
Even in those few months, I heard each of them so many times that
they now jump out at me 30 years later as being "KYUU songs." :-)

When ARS took over the original KBAY, they gutted the format. It turned
into ARS' version of a KOIT sound-alike. The playlist was tightened to
less than a couple hundred songs, which of course were played over and
over.

That was in the mid-nineties. To this day, when I hear ANY of those
songs, I cringe inside, recalling the corporate destruction of the
station where I had worked for twenty-three years.

--
John Higdon
+1 408 ANdrews 6-4400
AT&T-Free At Last

On Fri, 9 Apr 2010 17:28:55 EDT, John Higdon wrote:


When ARS took over the original KBAY, they gutted the format. It turned
into ARS' version of a KOIT sound-alike. The playlist was tightened to
less than a couple hundred songs, which of course were played over and
over.

And of course, 200 songs is the opposite extreme, and would be
considered by almost any music programmer, except those aiming at
teens, to be too small a list.

As discussed elsewhere, 400-500 songs is a sweet spot for most
commercial formats, and some of those songs will be heard more often
than others. There will also be some rotating in and out of such a
list. But the key thing is, they will ALL be hit songs among the
station's target audience.

Mark Howell

Patty Winter wrote:

of the songs that KYUU (KNBR's FM sister station in San Francisco)
was playing when I worked there in the summer of 1980. I counted
the carts once and figured there were about 400 songs in rotation.
Even in those few months, I heard each of them so many times that
they now jump out at me 30 years later as being "KYUU songs." :-)

And KYUU was a very popular station at the time. So, 400 songs is about 30
hours of music without repeats, though most playlists repeat some songs more
than others.

It goes back to that mythical waitress in the 1950s playing the same 5 songs
from the 200 selection jukebox that was the supposed inspiration for Storz top
40 format.