Responding finally to Mike’s query last week about how programmers choose their music, I think a good place to start is to look at how the successful stations program. Of course I have my own opinions but I’ll save them until the end of this post.
If you look at the big commercial stations, WQXR in NY, WFMT in Chicago, KDFC in San Francisco, you’ll find they all have one thing in common: they all play classical music!
This is the best, happiest, most smile-inducing story I have heard in a long time. The Deseret News of Southern Utah reports that Dixie State College is launching a new classical music station — KXDS — to be run by students.
It looks as if KFUO-FM, the only classical music station in the St. Louis market, is in danger of being sold. The city’s Post-Dispatch reported recently that the Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church, which owns KFUO, may be asking for upwards of $20 million for the commercial station, which has been broadcasting for 61 years.
I’m at the national conference of the Association of Music Personnel in Public Radio, being held in a newly remodeled Fort Worth Sheraton. I’m sorry for those of you who couldn’t make it, because the sessions have been very good, and the food is outstanding.
Mona has taken detailed notes, and I think we’ll ask her to write up the great advice we got on announcing from a morning session by John Dodge, Program Director at KBPS in Portland OR. John had a very lively, engaging list of do’s and don’t’s for classical announcers, based on long experience, a keen ear, and his own personable style.