Word: wbms
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...Monday, WBMS, "The World's Most Beautiful Music Station," stopped playing "beautiful" music. It had made a four-year experiment of playing classical music to Boston listeners, and the failure of the experiment is a sad commentary on those listeners...
...WBMS was started in November, 1946, by the Templetone Radio Corporation. After its first week of operation the station's Hooper rating was as high as any in Boston. It had almost no commercials, planning to go on a self-supporting basis once a large and faithful audience had been built up. Martin Bookspan '46, music director of the station, said at the time: "We feel that WBMS has an intelligent body of listeners, so there is no need to drum anything into their heads by repetition...
...sold to the present management, WBMS Incorporated, in July, 1948, having lost $100,000. Since that time the station has lost an additional $50,000. One of the troubles the new owners inherited from the old was an FCC license which permitted only daylight broadcasting on the frequency used. This meant and still means that more commercials must be crammed into operating time to pay salaries and upkeep...
Last week WBMS lost $700 and the owners had to dip into personal capital to meet the employees' payroll. And Monday the station was obliged by necessity to abandon all attempts at compromise between esthetic and economic considerations. Now it plays almost exclusively "disc jockey" music. Only 350 listeners called up to complain of the change, which means a total listening audience of 7,000 by management figuring. No advertisers have cancelled since Monday, and one of them, a television dealer, reported a 500 percent increase in business...
Unlike New York's successful WQXR, WBMS could never get the big accounts that demand a large audience. And people who listen to classical music by and large refuse to patronize the small stores that do advertise on WBMS. Instead, these people complain about the interrupted light classics and Pops, and the Italian hours. Those who couldn't be bothered complaining stopped listening...