Digital radio

Budget woes persist; Ohio station simulcasts classical

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Apologies to our readers for the, uh, radio silence here at Scanning the Dial as of late — your scribes have been buried under deadlines and other pressing concerns and haven’t had as much time for blogging as we’d like. But we have more reflections on last week’s Music Personnel Conference coming your way, including posts from guest blogger Mona Seghatoleslami of West Virginia Public Broadcasting.

In the meantime, a few recent news items worth noting:

:: Budget difficulties continue at stations across the country. The Berkshire Eagle reports that WMHT in Troy, N.Y., faces a deficit of $235,000. With an annual budget of $8.5 million, that’s not as severe as some stations are dealing with, but WMHT has frozen hiring and cut a monthly magazine. A proposed budget for the state of New York would also drastically reduce WMHT’s state support.

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Could CBC cut more classical?

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On this final day of 2008, I’ll just point out a few articles I turned up recently that might be of interest. First is a piece in the Toronto Star in which entertainment columnist Greg Quill (an ideal name for a journalist) cheers on the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.’s controversial changes to its Radio 2 format.

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Classical Music Radio Should Be Listed As An Endangered Species

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Two recent news items ought to make your head whirl. The first is from current.org which is the online arm of Current, the pubcasting journal.

The latest analysis from public radio’s Grow the Audience project identifies a “short list” of market factors that drive performance of individual NPR News stations–namely education levels, competition within each market for NPR News listeners and the presence of key psychographic segments.

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Making the case for HD Radio with fresh programming

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Authormike72x72_3 I’ve told you about the changes coming up at WGCU in Fort Myers, Fla., where classical music will soon be moved to a channel available only on digital radios. WGCU’s classical channel will air Classical 24, the nationally distributed satellite feed produced by American Public Media. Other public stations have taken  similar approaches, filling their digital channels with Classical 24, Classical Public Radio Network (when it was still on the air), or other 24/7 formats such as rock or electronica.

Over at the Edison Media Research blog, Tom Webster suggests that radio programmers should give their HD streams a little more thought, especially if they hope to give consumers any real incentive to buy new HD Radios. His focus is on commercial radio, but the advice applies to public stations as well.

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