Word: wbms
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Five years ago the Templeton Radio Corporation gave Boston listeners their first classical music station, WBMS. Because the music was good and the advertisements few, the new station soon gained one of the highest Hooper ratings in this area. But because WBMS has to be self-sufficient, it ran more and more advertisements, which steadily lowered its rating to the point where the station was running at a huge loss. When WBMS made the shift to disk jockey programs, the wail set up by Bostonians was enough to prove the popularity of an all-music station. Former assistant manager John...
...George Lasker of [Boston's] WBMS lays the blame for the abandonment of Brahms for bop squarely at the feet of the American advertiser [TIME, May 8]. But he errs in stating that radio commercials offend the esthetic tastes of the listening audience. It is not the esthetic tastes that are insulted, but rather the normal, ordinary, human intelligence...
Boston's classical-music station WBMS this week decided to abandon Brahms for bop. After three years' experience, disillusioned Vice President George Lasker concluded that "all of the classical-music enthusiasts in Boston would just about fill the Boston Garden [capacity...
After the contract of WBMS's Disc Jockey Arthur Fiedler, conductor of the Boston "Pops" Orchestra, runs out this month, Lasker will carry "absolutely no classical music of any kind." This week, though five music students were protesting the station's new policy with a picket line, most Bostonians accepted the switchover calmly. Said one: "Rather than listen to high-pressure, ear-jarring sales talk, I, like other Bostonians, will take my recordings at home without commercials...
...Maybe WBMS can continue its new popular music programs and make enough money to pay off its staggering debt. More probably it will sink. If it does, the reputedly cultured Boston listeners will be largely to blame. Obviously WBMS did not have as tolerant and intelligent a body of listeners as Martin Bookspan thought...