Bob Jones College (of radio)

At first I assumed that The above Bob Jones Collegehad nothing to do with the Bob Jones Christian College in Greenville, South Carolina. I was wrong. Their campus has moved twice, muddying the waters so to speak. Bob Jones College was founded in 1927 by evangelist Bob Jones, Sr. near Panama City, FL. The school relocated to Cleveland, Tennessee in 1933 where it remained until their move to their present 205 acre compound in 1947.The ad above dates to end of their tenure in Tennessee.

Jones founded the college in the wake of the Scopes money trial, terrified that secular thinking might break out.  So he founded the school in St. Andrews Bay, FL with a charter from a circuit court in Panama City. His first class had only 88 students. The purpose of this school was to get back to bible-basics... in other words it was anti-science and specifically anti-evolution. they were also thoroughly racist openly supporting the KKK, they still banned interracial dating on campus until 2000. Unsurprisingly the modern (yet oxymoronic) Bob Jones College science department still supports young-earth creationism... but back in the 1940s they cherry-picked enough real science to believe that radio waves were real. At least real enough to hand out diplomas. They offered graduate and undergraduate courses in technique, script writing, program building and more.

The school barely survived the great depression and was on the verge of bankruptcy when it moved to Tennessee. But Jones had already been broadcasting since the early 1920s. There are documented appearances in Pittsburgh, PA as early as 1925 on KQV-AM. In 1927 he began a radio ministry that consisted of two programs, a daily and weekly which he did personally until 1962. The show was purported to be heard coast to coast but I can't find a list of affiliates. I do know that it originated at a Chattanooga station, WDOD-AM.

In 1944, Jones became a founder of National Religious Broadcasters. After World War II, the GI Bill was introduced, which led the student body of the college to nearly double, hence the impetus to relocate again.But the move to Greenville also allowed space for a university radio station. WMUU-AM signed on with 1,000 watts at 1260 Khz on September 15, 1949. They added an FM station 94.5 WMUU-FM in 1960. The station airs easy listening today and it possibly one of the blandest stations in the nation. The university continues to be a strange crank even among religious institutions, they recently made the news for expelling a student for watching the TV show Glee. More here.

The Beautiful Music Radio Format

What a freak show this was...
It starts innocently enough on WDVR near Philadelphia in 1963. Then Music director Jerry Lee created a format that miled the new high fidelity of FM stereo sound. Within four months they were #1 in Philly. Then Jim Schulke arrived on the scene. He was not from radio, he was from TV. But with the ideas he had you'd have thought he was from the CIAs MkUltra department.
http://www.michael-robinett.com/declass/c000.htm

Jim Schulke, an ex Paramount TV executive and harvard MBA had this idea. He would design his playlist of Muzak to effect human behavior with through the tempo. The clock was divided into 15 minute music blocks in a process he called "matched flow." modulated the tempo of music to improve work place productivity. It gradually increased tempo from morning until the lunch hour then started the process again after lunch. The point was that each musical peice should flow together like one long song. It was desribed as almost hypnotic. But that was the idea right? And it worked! The TSL (time spent listening) was great, with led to a nice AQH and grat ad rates as well.

Jim Schulke started the company Stereo Radio Productions (SRP) and offerd the above format. His format control was absolute. To be an SRP client the staiton owner had to agree to a number of restraints. There were certain changes to the EQ, and no compression was allowed. They were limited to 6 minutes of ads per hour. Commercials had to be run at a reduced volume. Spots had to be dry read, no bed music. The music they shipped to station was on tape reels, and was also proprietary. major labbels jumped on the fad and well.. you find Living Strings LPs at the salvation army all the time right?

This was a cult. They even beleived that the demographics on a specific SRP station were directly related to the EQ manipulation. More bass for males, less for females... etc.

Shortly after all this set in, Bonneville introduced their own Beautiful music format as did others. The new format providers were not as obsessive about EQ, compression, spot loads or spot volume. This was easier to implement, and equally popular. Of course this was SRP's undoing. If the audio paranoia wasnt related to numbers, why do it? A coalition of independant beautiful music staitons popped up: Independent Beautiful Music Association (IBMA) Some of these were actually in Europe this was branded as "Beautiful Hits." It was about then that Cox bought SRP. This was 1978, there were hundreds of these stations. As many formats do, it reached some form of critical mass and the statiosn shifted their formats away from each other. New formats cropped up. Smooth Jazz, Sunny, Soft AC, Easy Listening, Magic, Soft Hits... etc.

CURRENT STATIONS CLAMING TO BE BEAUTIFUL MUSIC:
WOEZ 88.3 Knoxville, TN http://www.woez88.com/
WKTZ 90.9 Jacksonville, FL http://wktz.jones.edu/
WMUU 94.5 Greenville, SC http://www.wmuu.com/main.asp

NOTE: about 5 years ago some christian music stations began co-opting the branding.