Downfall of ‘Elevator Music’ : Radio: Southern California’s last ‘beautiful music’ station is changing its format today. The decline is a nationwide trend.

These are ugly times for beautiful music.

In response to sagging ratings, KDUO-FM (97.5), Southern California’s only remaining station playing “beautiful music,” will drop the melodic, low-key format today. After 40 years of playing a style also referred to as “elevator music,” the Riverside-based station will take on a more contemporary--though as yet undisclosed--format.

“People just finally got bored with the format,” said Jeff Salgo, vice president of programming at Henry Broadcasting, which owns KDUO and 13 other stations across the country. “About a year ago, our ratings started to fall and just stayed down. We said, ‘All right, the public’s voted. We better do something.’ ”

The demise of the “beautiful music” format is a nationwide trend. The once-popular style has slowly been disappearing from the airwaves over the last decade, and industry officials say that only about 400 of the nation’s 14,000 radio stations now feature it--only one of which is in California--KBAY-FM in San Jose.

“The advertisers are more interested in an audience that is under 50, and ‘beautiful music’ targets an over-50 audience,” said Charlton Buckley, president of San Francisco-based Henry Broadcasting. “Twenty-five years ago, 30- and 40-year-olds were listening to beautiful music, but they grew old with the format.”

In the Los Angeles area, KBIG-FM (104.3) and KOST-FM (103.5) switched from “beautiful music” to the younger-sounding “adult contemporary” format in 1986 and 1982, respectively. KJOI-FM (98.7) switched to an “adult contemporary” format of soft vocals and light jazz in October, 1989, then changed its call letters to KXEZ-FM (98.7) and went to “easy oldies” music, trying to reach more people between 35 and 54.

Dan O’Day, a Los-Angeles based radio programming consultant, described “beautiful music” as “background music, soft vocals, lots of strings, lush arrangements, music meant not to be noticed.”

Salgo attributed the decline of the format to the younger audience’s growing distaste for instrumental versions of hit songs. He pointed out that people moving into their 50s now--the genre’s target audience--were teen-agers in 1955 when rock ‘n’ roll was born, and their idea of soothing background music is substantially different from that of people in their 60s and older.

“There’s kind of a natural bias in people who’ve grown up in the rock period against instrumental versions of hits,” Salgo said. “People like to hear the original versions. Since the days of rock ‘n’ roll, usually there has been only one artist who becomes identified with a song. In the ‘30s and ‘40s it was different. Songwriters were famous. Cole Porter, Irving Berlin were the famous ones and many people performed their songs. That shifted in the ‘50s.”

“The fans (of ‘beautiful music’) would tell you it’s delightful music and they really like the orchestral arrangements,” he said. “The problem is there just aren’t enough of them.”

KDUO officials would not reveal what the new format--developed after months of research--will be, except to say that “it will be much more contemporary,” according to Salgo. Today marks the last full day of “beautiful music” programming. For one week the station will run a combination of “beautiful music” and free-form “people’s radio,” featuring 97 guest disc jockeys, then will switch to its new format next Friday.