Audience

Dual format out in Alabama

April 1, 2008 by Mike Janssen

Authormike72x72_3 News surfaced recently of some fallout from the upcoming cancellation of Classical Public Radio Network. WBHM, a news/classical station in Birmingham, Ala., announced last week that it would stop airing classical music during middays Monday to Friday, and has replaced the music with news programs. The changes took effect yesterday.

Station execs indicate that they had anticipated dropping midday classical sometime within the next few years, but that the impending demise of CPRN hastened those plans. In local press and on WBHM’s website, they cite several reasons for the change, many of which echo the weaknesses of the dual format that we’ve been discussing here at Scanning The Dial.

Links: Future of radio, Tennessee’s WUOT, CBC’s Radio

March 28, 2008 by Mike Janssen

The first hour of The Diane Rehm Show yesterday focused on the future of radio. Thanks to the Public Radio Program Directors’ blog for the heads-up. There’s speculation afoot that WUOT-FM, a news/classical public radio station in Knoxville, Tenn., may drop its midday music (though I think the Metro Pulse’s substantiation of this is a little shaky). But the station’s program director does confirm that WUOT might replace some of its local classical programming with Classical 24, the most widely carried around-the-clock satellite feed. And a critic writing for the (Saskatoon) StarPhoenix … Continue Reading

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What Does Success Look Like? KUSC’s Story

March 27, 2008 by Marty Ronish

Authormarty72x72 KUSC in Los Angeles has made a lot of changes recently. They hired Gail Eichenthal as Program Director, and they are putting energy and vision into their fundraising and programming. I asked KUSC producer Brian Lauritzen to catch us up on what they’re doing. Here’s his report…

One network’s success with ending the dual format

March 25, 2008 by Mike Janssen

I’m just about to move on from discussing the nuts and bolts of public radio’s dual news/classical format. But I did want to add this footnote about Vermont Public Radio after a recent chat with Jody Evans, the network’s program director. I’d called her about Classical Public Radio Network, in fact, because the network relied heavily on CPRN when it was getting its first all-classical stations on the air four years ago.

For several years VPR chugged along with a dual news/classical mix on seven stations across the state. But like other broadcasters, VPR was seeing its dual-format approach lose steam. When classical came on after NPR News, news listeners were fleeing to other news/talk stations.

“We had done well with the dual format,” Evans said. “But our audience was holding steady—it wasn’t growing.”

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