New Seattle AM music station KVI 570

[Reece]

Jeff, in the 1950's FM was nowheresville in most small towns and people didn't know much what to make of it. Also, most stations signed on at 6AM and off at midnight (except for some daytimers.) There were half a dozen AM stations in my immediate area (Beaumont, TX, then around 100,000 population) and then comes along this FM station that nobody could hear, except the few that had bought a radio that just happened to have the FM band on it, that most people didn't know what it did. It wasn't going to pay in the beginning to set up a complex arrangement to a deaf audience. The FM station that used the record changer used a corner of the AM station's studio so the changer was monitored and the stack changed. A lot of people back then thought FM meant "fine music" and so this really was a sort of Muzak substitute; IIRC the music was all syrupy instrumentals, think Mantovani, etc. And, of course, the source for DJ and other music in those days was vinyl: in the case of DJ's, two manual turntables with 45's on them. There were 1/4" tape decks for recorded commercials, etc.

By the late '50's and early '60's in my area, FM was being "figured out" and a Houston station played exclusively classical music. FM was pretty much classical with pop etc. on AM until around the '70's.