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.

Roundup: Classical radio online, WQXR and more

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Authormike72x72_3The Albany Times-Union ran a feature the other day on a local classical music buff who has refined a system for tracking performances by orchestras around the world:

 

To keep track of his daily listening options, Olsen has compiled a weekly grid showing when concerts by major orchestras can be heard, and on which stations. The full schedule allows him to keep up on the weekly performances of acclaimed orchestras in Pittsburgh, Chicago, Milwaukee and Vienna, among others.

The fruit of Karl Olsen’s hobby sounds like a one-man PublicRadioFan.com. Now he just needs to get it online so the rest of us can enjoy. ClassicalMusicFan.com?

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The dual format: neither fish nor fowl

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In my last post about broad trends in classical radio, I started to examine the odd beast known in public radio as the “dual format.” A dual-format station airs both news and classical music on weekdays, with NPR’s morning and afternoon newsmagazines, Morning Edition and All Things Considered, sandwiching a midday block of music.

Many stations in public radio adhere to this format — a little more than half of the 450 stations airing classical are dual-format. Most of them serve small- and medium-sized markets where the smaller number of public-radio listeners makes being “all things to all people” more feasible. But a considerable number of dual-format stations have been cutting back on classical in recent years or dumping it entirely, in part due to the thorny problems posed by airing two different kinds of programming. Research shows that most listeners who enjoy classical avoid news programming and vice versa, which forces a dual-format station to try to serve two different audiences. What’s more, stations have found greater success raising money around news programming than around classical.

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Public radio classical net to sign off

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According to the blog of the Public Radio Program Directors Association, Classical Public Radio Network is signing off sometime this summer. The around-the-clock classical feed is one of several available to public radio stations looking to fill airtime without having to rely on local staff. Many stations use CPRN or one of the system’s other services, such as Classical 24 or the Beethoven Satellite Network, to fill at least part of their music schedules. Launched in 2003, CPRN, one of the newer services, is a collaborative effort between KUSC in Los Angeles … Continue Reading

Where classical radio is holding steady—and where it’s waning

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My co-author Marty and I have been brainstorming loads of ideas for Scanning The Dial, posts that will look up close at classical radio and focus on programs, hosts, strategies, technologies, innovators. But before zeroing in on details, let’s pause and get our bearings in this sonic landscape.

First off, a key question: how widespread is classical music on radio today? And how has that changed in recent years?

To make sense of the answer, let’s break it down a few different ways, first between commercial and public stations. The nonprofit public stations that hang out at the lower end of your radio dial are home to most of the classical music on the air today. Yet a small number of commercial stations remain devoted to the format as well.

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