Marlin Taylor

Marlin Raymond Taylor (born August 26, 1935) is an American former radio broadcaster, program director, and radio executive who is credited as the "father of beautiful music," an update of the older easy listening radio format popular from the 1960s to the 1980s. He initially developed the format, which primarily featured instrumental versions of popular songs and classical melodies, while working at WDVR in Philadelphia between 1963 and 1966.

Ratings success there and at Boston's WJIB led him to a position as general manager of the Bonneville International Corporation's New York FM station, WRFM, in 1969. With Taylor's "beautiful music" format, WRFM became the third-most listened to station in New York City by the fall of 1970. Taylor then formed and became the president of Bonneville Broadcast Consultants (BBC), a new Bonneville division that syndicated his beautiful music format to stations across the country. At its height, BBC provided beautiful music programming to almost 200 stations in the United States, Canada, and Australia.

Taylor left Bonneville in 1987, but returned to radio programming in 2000 with XM Satellite Radio. He developed XM programming for three stations: '40s Junction (big band), Escape (beautiful music), and enLighten (southern gospel). He officially retired from radio broadcasting in August 2015. Taylor was inducted into the Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia Hall of Fame in 2015 and the Southern Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 2021.

Early life

Marlin Raymond Taylor was born on August 26, 1935 in Abington Township in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. He grew up in nearby Bucks County primarily in the towns of Feasterville and Newtown located north of Philadelphia. Taylor received his first radio when he was 11 years old and developed an interest in the medium throughout the 1940s. Initially, the station did not air news segments, but Taylor later introduced pre-recorded weather and news summaries that aired every three hours. He eventually added live, local announcers to allow for breaking news reports, such as during the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963. In 1966, when the American Research Bureau (ARB) published the first Arbitron ratings, WDVR had the highest average listenership of any FM station in the nation.

After leaving WDVR in 1966, before taking a position as program and music director at WJIB-FM in Boston in 1967. A new joint venture between Kaiser Broadcasting and The Boston Globe, WJIB sought to incorporate a format similar to the one developed by Taylor at WDVR. That year, WDVR became the first FM station to bill $1 million in a calendar year. Taylor then wrote letters to a number of broadcasters in major markets, informing them about his success with the beautiful music format. Arch L. Madsen, then president of the Bonneville International Corporation, received one of those letters and asked Taylor to become the station manager at Bonneville's low-ranked New York City affiliate, WRFM-FM. and soon began implementing his beautiful music format. By January 1970, the station was tied for fourth, In September 1970, Taylor was named vice president and FM program consultant with Bonneville International. In that role, he became responsible for the programming of all six Bonneville-owned FM stations. In addition to WRFM, these stations included KSEA-FM (Seattle), WCLR-FM (Chicago), KBIG-FM (Los Angeles), KSL-FM (Salt Lake City), and KMBR-FM (Kansas City).

Looking to expand the reach of the format even further, Bonneville and Taylor formed Bonneville Broadcast Consultants (BBC), a division of Bonneville International that syndicated Taylor's beautiful music format to stations across the country. BBC got its start in early 1971 The syndicated programming was based on Taylor's WRFM concepts, and participating stations were sent a library of tape reels containing Taylor-produced, 15-minute segments of music, created from a collection of several thousand record albums. This "matched flow" format was aired either automated or played by live announcers, depending on a station's staffing ability. Taylor's format limited advertising to seven minutes per hour and also often called for news and community affairs segments that were three to four minutes in length. Taylor's syndicated format continued seeing ratings success including for stations like KEEY-FM in Minneapolis and WEZO-FM in Rochester, New York, the latter of which was the most listened to FM station in its market in 1973. Other BBC stations that saw success in their markets included WMEF-FM in Fort Wayne, Indiana; WAIA-FM in Miami; and WRRN-FM in Warren, Pennsylvania among numerous others. That year, BBC introduced a new syndicated genre format with soft rock, although Taylor continued to focus on beautiful music programming. Other genre formats that BBC syndicated included both traditional and contemporary middle of the road music. That format was also syndicated to stations in Canada and Australia. and contemporary artists into his beautiful music reels, including Neil Diamond and The Carpenters. Taylor continued bringing in client stations for BBC into the 1980s, including WDVR (then known as WEAZ-FM) in Philadelphia where he originally started programming beautiful music. The number of BBC subscriber stations reached a peak of around 180 in the early 1980s. Taylor remained at Bonneville until retiring in 1987. He also began distributing beautiful music recordings via his Surrey House Music label. In 2018, he released his autobiography, Radio...My Love, My Passion, which details his life and career, including the development of the beautiful music format.

Personal life

Taylor married Alicia Blood in 1975 He has three children from a previous marriage, Scott, Linda, and Patricia. He currently resides in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.