Programming

An item in the recent American Symphony Orchestra League newsletter:

In Sunday’s (3/16) Omaha World-Herald, John Pitcher writes about the ways classical music has benefited from the Internet, particularly in regards to downloads. “At eMusic, the world’s second-largest digital music service after iTunes, classical music now represents 12 percent of its overall European sales, and its business in the U.S. is not far behind. That’s a big increase for a genre that rarely made up more than 2 or 3 percent of total sales in record stores. … ‘What the Internet has done is fragment the entire music and entertainment industry, so in the future, I don’t think we’re going to see as many Michael Jackson-like mega acts,’ said Douglas McLennan, founder of the online periodical ArtsJournal and an expert on Web-based arts culture. ‘On the Internet, everything is a niche, and in that kind of environment, classical music is one of the bigger niches.’ … Perhaps the most amazing thing about eMusic, iTunes and other digital sites, though, is cross-genre buying. Nearly a third of eMusic’s classical sales go to customers who’ve never downloaded a classical piece. Similarly, iTunes sells as much hip-hop to classical buyers as jazz, the company recently told New Yorker magazine.”

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You’re a program director for a classical music station. You have a tight budget, an on-air staff ranging from just ok to excellent, an incredibly supportive local audience, and a lot of local ensembles that need promotion. What do you put on the air?

Can your listeners tell the difference between national vs. local, live vs canned music? Is there any reason to play whole shows of live performances?

A program director at a major station recently told me the concert hall experience doesn’t work on the radio; people don’t sit quietly and listen like that. They’re driving, working, or exercising while they listen. So he won’t air any national concert programs. Yet that same station plays all sorts of local concerts, some good, some mediocre. The rest of the time the station plays canned music.

Two program directors were talking about Performance Today at a national conference, and one said, “I’d never play it. There’s too much talk. The other said, “I’d never allow that on my air.” Another program director recently told me, “we don’t air any produced product.” I talked to a major market station this week that doesn’t allow outside material, because they believe in local, local, local.

Then there are stations that air just about everything national but have no local production. Or how about stations that believe only local announcers should be heard on-air?

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