Some Globe Articles

[barry@meol.mass.edu]

Hey - searching through the Globe libraries I noticed some accurate radio
station articles. Remember the whole WJIB-FM scandal with the 500 dollar
bills and a leaf blower? I wish I had been there! Here is one for our friend
Bob Bittner:

'THE KING OF BEAUTIFUL MUSIC'

 Date: Friday, August 13, 1993

 Section: ARTS AND FILM
 Page: 57

 By Susan Bickelhaupt, Globe Staff

 When Bob Bittner, owner of WJIB-AM (740) says, "I have no
 competition," he's not being smug, just honest. The station that plays
 "beautiful music," stands alone on the radio dial in Greater Boston,
 since no other station plays a day-long menu of orchestral and
 stringed music that is often maligned as ''elevator" or "wallpaper
 music."

 Bittner's station does play some vocals -- well, maybe three an hour
 -- but he'll never use the moniker "contemporary soft hits,"
 "soft-rock" or "big band."

 The station, with three offices tucked away in a storage rental facility
 building in Cambridge, has a signal of 250 watts during the day and a
 meager 5 watts at night. Most AM stations have 5,000 watts; FMs
 generally have 50,000.

 WJIB received the small power authorization because there's a
 station in Canada that is on the same frequency that was
 grandfathered in at 50,000 watts. Bittner said at first he feared the
 low nighttime signal would cover western Cambridge at best, but his
 signal has proven to have a reach of 15 to 20 square miles.

 WJIB airs news reports from the USA Network and "Pulse of the
 Planet" environmental news. But unlike other commercially licensed
 radio stations, WJIB has no sports reports, no traffic reports and no
 paid advertisements.

 He eschews commercials in part because he views the station as a
 public service, insisting that "beautiful music is a public service." But
 he'll admit that for a small AM station with virtually no ratings, hiring
 a staff and trying to sell ads wouldn't be profitable, at least not now.

 "I could bill $25,000, maybe even $50,000, but it would cost me
 that much, so it'd be a wash," he said. "And before it would have
 been a loss." But he's optimistic -- "maybe we'll sell ads in six
 months."

 Bittner does get income from selling time for specialty music
 programs on Sunday mornings and Monday nights.

 Bittner, who had worked at WNTN-AM in Newton, WXKS-AM
 and WBOS-FM when it was disco, bought WLVG-AM in 1992 for
 $225,115. He changed the call letters to WWEA and called it "earth
 radio."

 The station's music was an eclectic mix of folk, acoustic and country
 music with lots of public-service announcements about the
 environment.

 Then, just over a year ago, he grabbed the call letters WJIB and
 started playing the kind of music that had been associated with
 WJIB-FM before it dropped the format three years ago. That station
 became WCDJ-FM and featured ''smooth jazz" music; it has since
 been sold again and is now country station WBCS-FM.

 Bittner had only 35 "beautiful music" albums, but now he has more
 than 300. And the good part, he says, is that there's no discriminating
 between a hit and a deep cut -- "We can play almost every song on
 an album." The music is not beamed via satellite; it is all from Bittner's
 collection of Henry Mancini, Percy Faith and Ray Conniff albums,
 with music from the Moody Blues, Gordon Lightfoot and Anne
 Murray, too.

 Bittner is aware that "beautiful music" appeals to the over-40 crowd.
 "It is made fun of," he admits. But even he can laugh at a cartoon a
 listener
 sent him that shows a stringed band in an elevator with the caption:
 ''Elevator Music."

 "What happened was that beautiful music just died 10 years ago,"
 Bittner said. "Radio stations started calling the music 'easy listening,'
 then shied away from orchestral or string music."

 As ratings started to go down, he says, stations started playing more
 soft- rock hits. So Bittner says he's determined to keep beautiful
 music on the airwaves.

 "Hey, I like rock 'n' roll, but in this very aggressive society, we need
 something to slow us down," he say. "All I know is, we're filling a
 void and people love it." 

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