Mike Janssen

Mike Janssen Served as Scanning The Dial's original co-authors from Mar, 2008 to Jan, 2010 and is a freelance writer, editor and media educator based in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. He has written extensively about radio, mostly for Current, the trade newspaper about public broadcasting, where his articles have appeared since 1999. He has also worked in public radio as a reporter at WFDD-FM in Winston-Salem, N.C., where he began his career in journalism and filed pieces for NPR. Mike's work in radio expanded to include outreach and advocacy in 2007, when he worked with the Future of Music Coalition to recruit applicants for noncommercial radio stations. He has since embarked on writing a series of articles about radio hopefuls for FMC's blog. Mike also writes regularly for Retail Traffic magazine and teaches workshops about writing, podcasting and radio journalism. In his spare time he enjoys vegetarian food, the outdoors, reading, movies and traveling. You can learn more about Mike and find links to more of his writing and reporting at mikejanssen.net.

A quest to understand the classical radio listener

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Authormike72x72_3 How should music directors and program directors at classical radio stations decide what to play? What do listeners most appreciate about their services?

These sound like pretty important questions, right? But put yourself in the place of one of these programmers (assuming you aren’t one) and think about how you’d answer those questions. You’d have piles of Arbitron ratings at your disposal, but those only show you when listeners tune in and out. Ratings don’t tell you why they listen or what makes your station valuable to them — at most, you can only infer answers to those questions from ratings.

But since 2002, a group of public radio programmers has been commissioning research to address these concerns. In a series of studies, the Public Radio Program Directors Association (PRPD) has surveyed listeners to various public radio formats, including classical, to deepen the field’s understanding of the value their services deliver. Their results have given programmers a new vocabulary to apply to their work and, in some cases, fed debates about the role of research in programming and public radio’s overall approach to classical music.

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Station profile: Classical WETA 90.9 FM, Washington, D.C. (continued)

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Authormike72x72_3 Second of two posts

After WETA-FM became the sole classical radio outlet serving Washington, D.C. — you can catch up on the back story here — the benefits of claiming the city’s classical franchise were immediate. In the first Arbitron ratings book after the switch, WETA’s market share jumped to a 4.9 — more than double its 2.1 prior to the change. That took WETA from 17th among the market’s radio stations to fifth.

The station went on to average a 4.5 share last year and had a successful fundraising drive in February. “Public service is being transacted here,” says General Manager Dan DeVany, “because people are listening.”

WETA aims to present a mix of classical music that appeals to a broad audience — “anywhere from those who would be considered aficionados of classical music to those who enjoy it but don’t necessarily know much about it,” says DeVany. “Being broad-based in our appeal has certainly been an effort on our part, and it’s paid off.” The station couldn’t sound like the old commercial WGMS-FM “even if we wanted to,” DeVany says, because the lack of 20 minutes of ads an hour offers more programming freedom.

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Younger listeners and classical; new home for CBC Orchestra?

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Authormike72x72_3 A writer in Oklahoma State University’s student newspaper gives a thumbs-up to the format change at KOSU-FM in Stillwater, Okla., which recently cut back on classical and added more news and talk. The author writes, “The new music programming is also exciting. On Friday and Saturday nights, instead of tuning in to hear classical music, listeners may find jazz, blues, bluegrass and Celtic music greeting them.”

Though just one voice, this editorial does point to another concern among station programmers in public radio — appealing to younger listeners. At public radio conferences I’ve attended, getting younger listeners to tune in (and in public radio, “younger” means “under 40”) is generally talked about as a Good Thing. Some argue that if public radio doesn’t start cultivating a younger audience, its current listeners will keep aging with no one lined up to replace them. But no one quite knows how to go about doing it, and there’s no tried-and-true approach. Some shows such as This American Life have succeeded in generating buzz among young folks, but no one’s suggesting that stations switch to host line-ups of Ira Glass clones 24/7.

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Station profile: Classical WETA 90.9 FM, Washington, D.C.

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First of two posts

WETA, the powerful all-classical public radio station serving Washington, D.C., has attained its biggest audience in years by claiming the city’s franchise in classical music radio. Its arrival at this stage in its 38-year history has been hard-won, however. In just four years, WETA has endured great change, from a news/classical mix to all-news to today’s steady stream of classical.

“If you had asked me a few years ago if I would have gone through this — two format changes in a period of three years — I’d have said it would never happen,” says Dan DeVany, WETA’s g.m., when I interviewed him last month in his office at WETA’s headquarters in Arlington, Va. “And here we are.”

The first jolt to WETA’s status quo came in February 2005. Like many stations, WETA was struggling as it tried to attract an audience to its dual format of NPR’s newsmagazines and midday classical music. Its ratings in fall 2004 were the worst in 15 years. Fewer listeners were donating, and while news programming was drawing underwriting income, classical was less successful — a common pattern in public radio. WETA’s position was further complicated by competitors in the D.C. market that shared its formats — WAMU, another well-established NPR affiliate but one that specialized in news/talk, and WGMS, the city’s commercial classical outlet and one of the most successful in the country.

“It was clear that we had an identity problem,” DeVany says. “We didn’t stand for anything in particular.”

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