Programming

KUSC Bucks the Trend and Expands

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LA’s sparkling classical radio station KUSC has been bucking trends for a while now, and I’m happy to report that they’ve bucked another one, to the benefit of central California.  While everyone else is cutting costs, KUSC has gone out on a limb and bought another station.  We reported back in October that KUSC would be expanding their signal.  Because of legal complications, that particular transaction fell through, but now the station has purchased KESC in Morro Bay for $1.2 million. KUSC General Manager Brenda Barnes was interviewed by the L.A. Times … Continue Reading

Programming – Our Ongoing Controversy in Public Radio

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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!

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A Rising Tide Floats All Boats in the Arts

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Mike has started a great thread about programming, and I hope to give it some real thought next week, but today I’m going to digress to a topic that has come up because of the economic mess we’re in.

Like most of us who work in classical music radio, I go to a lot of concerts.  I serve on boards.  All of us in radio use the power of the airwaves to promote live concert-going.  But right now, with the shrinking of arts coverage in newspapers the music organizations have lost a major means of communication.  Is it the job of radio to make up for that loss?

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