[BC] Early formats on FM

[Gordon Carter]

A slight correction here....

WFMT was originally a ma & pa station.  It was founded, owned, and
operated by the husband and wife team of Bernie and Rita Jacobs.  They
sold the station to the Tribune company when ill health forced them to
"retire".  After Bernie's death, Rita continued to produce some programs
for WFMT.  I had the privilege of meeting her a few times.

Even though the Tribune Company spent quite a bit of money on the
station (they built new studios and transmitter sites fairly early on)
and vowed they would keep the station classical, a listeners group did
not trust them.  It was the legal action by this listeners group that
forced Tribune to donate WFMT to the parent company of WTTW-TV (One of
Chicago's PBS affiliates).

Gordon S. Carter, CPBE, CBNT
Chief Engineer
WFMT and The Radio Network
5400 North St. Louis Ave.
Chicago, IL 60625
773 279-2071

-----Original Message-----
From: broadcast-bounces at radiolists.net
[mailto:broadcast-bounces at radiolists.net] On Behalf Of Rich Wood
<richwood at pobox.com>
Sent: Sunday, October 23, 2005 12:50 PM
To: Broadcast Radio Mailing List
Subject: [BC] Early formats on FM

------ At 02:36 AM 10/23/2005, Robert Orban wrote: -------

>My recollection is that Beautiful Music was the format that actually 
>drove FM expansion in  the late '60s. Beautiful was either the #1 FM 
>or close to it in most markets back then. It was also cheap to do; 
>no expensive personalities :-). It was also easily automated.

In most markets there were multiple stations doing the format. In 
Boston WBZ was #1 in morning drive and WJIB took over from 10am-7pm. 
In New York there was WPAT, WRFM,  WTFM and a few others. WJIB led 
the market for most the 10 years I was there.

Classical was the predominant FM format before Easy Listening. At the 
time many FMs were donated to schools and non-comms. WFMT, Chicago, 
was owned by Tribune. They saw no future in it and donated it to
WTTW.-TV.

WCRB-FM, Boston, is held by a trust that mandates it remain classical.

Rich



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