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.

Why You Don’t Hear Many Live Performances by American Orchestras on the Air

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Authormarty72x72 I’m sad to say, it all boils down to $$$$. I know. It’s counterintuitive. You would think the musicians would want to be on the air, because that would help them get noticed and sell CDs or downloads. Well, classical musicians do want to be on the air, but they expect to be paid for it, because they are professionals who deserve to be paid a living wage for their work.

It makes sense that the musicians earn royalties for their CDs. After all, several middlemen (the studios, the record companies, the merchants, and the stations) are making money off the fruits of their labor.

But the radio is another matter. The stations do support the musicians when they pay BMI and ASCAP for royalties, but they can’t afford to shell out extra payments for live concerts. Stations also have to pay syndicators (e.g., American Public Media and NPR) for programming (membership fees based on market size, plus fees for specific programs), though the WFMT Radio Network offers programs free to stations. Believe me; stations are operating on very tight budgets.

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Classical Music as a Growth Industry?

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Authormarty72x72_3 An item in the recent American Symphony Orchestra League newsletter:

In Sunday’s (3/16) Omaha World-Herald, John Pitcher writes about the ways classical music has benefited from the Internet, particularly in regards to downloads. “At eMusic, the world’s second-largest digital music service after iTunes, classical music now represents 12 percent of its overall European sales, and its business in the U.S. is not far behind. That’s a big increase for a genre that rarely made up more than 2 or 3 percent of total sales in record stores. … ‘What the Internet has done is fragment the entire music and entertainment industry, so in the future, I don’t think we’re going to see as many Michael Jackson-like mega acts,’ said Douglas McLennan, founder of the online periodical ArtsJournal and an expert on Web-based arts culture. ‘On the Internet, everything is a niche, and in that kind of environment, classical music is one of the bigger niches.’ … Perhaps the most amazing thing about eMusic, iTunes and other digital sites, though, is cross-genre buying. Nearly a third of eMusic’s classical sales go to customers who’ve never downloaded a classical piece. Similarly, iTunes sells as much hip-hop to classical buyers as jazz, the company recently told New Yorker magazine.”

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National vs. Local; Live vs. Canned Music

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Authormarty72x72_2You’re a program director for a classical music station. You have a tight budget, an on-air staff ranging from just ok to excellent, an incredibly supportive local audience, and a lot of local ensembles that need promotion. What do you put on the air?

Can your listeners tell the difference between national vs. local, live vs canned music? Is there any reason to play whole shows of live performances?

A program director at a major station recently told me the concert hall experience doesn’t work on the radio; people don’t sit quietly and listen like that. They’re driving, working, or exercising while they listen. So he won’t air any national concert programs. Yet that same station plays all sorts of local concerts, some good, some mediocre. The rest of the time the station plays canned music.

Two program directors were talking about Performance Today at a national conference, and one said, “I’d never play it. There’s too much talk. The other said, “I’d never allow that on my air.” Another program director recently told me, “we don’t air any produced product.” I talked to a major market station this week that doesn’t allow outside material, because they believe in local, local, local.

Then there are stations that air just about everything national but have no local production. Or how about stations that believe only local announcers should be heard on-air?

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Why Classical Music on the Radio is Important

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Authormarty72x72Mike suggested I write about why classical music on the radio is important. If you’re reading this you’re already a believer, so this topic is sort of preaching to the choir. But — don’t die of shock — I really don’t think classical music on the radio is all that important for the listeners. Ach! Heresy! (Keep reading.)

The real reason classical music is important on the radio is for the musicians. Classical musicians can’t survive professionally in this day and age without radio.

–It’s still the most effective way they have of communicating with their audience.
–It’s how they let you know about their concerts and their recordings.
–It’s how they demonstrate who’s good and who isn’t.
–It’s how they help you figure out what music you like.

And in turn, you help them make a living. Radio is the cheap, portable way for musicians to communicate. Ads in the paper are prohibitively expensive and lack that minor little detail called audio. Downloads are ok if you already know what you want to hear. You might ask, “what about the web?” Well, we’re not there yet. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra broadcasts, for instance, reach some 350,000 listeners a week on-air, but fewer than 2,000 are listening online each week.

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