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.

Keeping classical radio vital for the future

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This post continues our series of articles written by professionals in classical public radio, as originally posted to the Listserv of the Association of Music Personnel in Public Radio. Here, Jack Allen, president of All Classical FM in Portland, Ore., shares his thoughts about how classical stations can work to reach their full potential.

Station health and vitality start with a clear vision for the future that takes into account any limitations facing the organization. There are no secret formulas for how much classical music to play or whether to play Handel followed by Chopin. Ever since Audience 88, we’ve known to focus on listeners (their needs and expectations) and to be deliberate about weaving an intelligent musical tapestry that’s daypart-appropriate. Now it’s time to look at the underpinnings of our good efforts. A good place to start is by analyzing several critical areas for alignment with your mission, vision and values and a correlating, if necessary, revitalization.

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We Can Do Better: Promoting Classical Music On Your Air

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Below you’ll find the first in a series of articles by professionals involved with classical public radio. These articles were originally posted on the Listserv of the Association of Music Personnel in Public Radio, and are being reprinted here with the permission of the authors.

The first article is by Peter Dominowski, a public radio researcher and consultant. He started his company Market Trends Research, Inc., in 1985. Here’s his full bio. Without further ado, his article:

We all love classical music and want other people to enjoy it as much as we do. Unfortunately, our aspirations for increasing listening to classical music on the radio are often not matched by the effectiveness of our promotion of the music on air.

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A familiar scenario, this time in Kentucky

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The news just keeps coming, and for classical fans, again it’s not good. This time it’s a public station in Kentucky that has cut back on classical music during its middays and moved it to a full-time HD Radio channel.

This decision by Murray’s WKMS has prompted a petition drive led by a local history professor. Joe Fuhrmann tells the Murray State News:

You can get the radios as cheap as $50 but you can’t buy them in Murray, and to get a very good one you have to pay about $200. As recently as three months ago, WKMS had about 15 hours per week of classical music, now the station has gone more and more into talk and news. The only HD station in the area is WKMS (HD-2). Even some people who have HD stations report they don’t have very good signal at times or they can’t even get WKMS at all.

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Update on KFUO

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Last week came and went, and St. Louis’s KFUO-FM is still a classical station — at least for now. The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, which owns the commercial station, has decided that it will continue pursuing “multiple negotiations” regarding the station’s future. Local media has already reported that the prospective buyer is Gateway Creative Broadcasting, a Christian broadcaster. (Does “multiple negotiations” mean others are interested?) The board gave a committee full authority to approve a sale. For more details, you can read the full press release on the LCMS website. We’ll keep you … Continue Reading

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