Marty Ronish

Marty Ronish is an independent producer of classical music radio programs. She currently produces the Chicago Symphony Orchestra broadcasts that air 52 weeks a year on more than 400 stations and online at www.cso.org. She also produces a radio series called "America's Music Festivals," which presents live music from some of the country's most dynamic festivals. She is a former Fulbright scholar and co-author of a catalogue of Handel's autograph manuscripts.

Performance Royalties – The First Domino Tumbles

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Until recently, musicians and record companies have had a mutually-beneficial agreement with radio stations.   No money needed to change hands because the artists and record companies got free publicity and the radio stations got free product. With music moving to the internet and the change in media ownership rules, however, that delicate balance has shifted.  Record companies have lost out to file-sharing.  Big money now owns most of the broadcast spectrum. Radio has never paid royalties to the artists, which made sense when radio was little mom and pop companies.  But you can see why it’s … Continue Reading

More Classical – A Tale of Three Cities

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San Francisco: The somewhat convoluted steps that have gone into making commercial classical KDFC into a public station in the crammed Bay area market is starting to resolve with a new ruling by the FCC. Commercial KDFC’s powerful signal was sold 17 months ago, and to keep classical music on the air, the Classical Public Radio Network in LA acquired a group of smaller stations that would cover the Bay area.  KUSF at the University of San Francisco was one of them.   But the students and community listeners of eclectic KUSF were not pleased and they mounted a p.r. offensive against the … Continue Reading

WITF in Harrisburg PA Drops Classical

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At the end of this month, classical music lovers in Harrisburg and Chambersburg will no longer find 94 hours a week of classical music on their public radio station.  In place of music, the station is switching to nearly all news/talk.  To add insult to injury, Harrisburg listeners are treated like this in the press: WITF is adding a classical music Internet channel to witf.org. Now lovers of classical music will be able to access their favorite music 24-7 on witf.org, via computer, mobile device or Internet radio. I guess they are practicing politics-speak for when they go talkedy-talk on … Continue Reading

World’s Biggest Online Classical Destination?

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Radio Today  reports that Classic FM in the UK has launched a new website with the claim that it will become the “world’s biggest online classical music destination.” I went to the site here, and got a screen saying they only have rights to air in the UK. This is not the first time I’ve heard that an online station was going to dominate the world.  When NPR dropped most of its own original classical music programming and gathered a coalition of stations to contribute content to NPRmusic.org, they said it was going … Continue Reading

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