Stations

Becoming a hub where audiences connect

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Buzz about the microblogging service Twitter continues to grow, and as a user I’m increasingly seeing the fruits of its popularity. I signed up with Twitter early on, but I didn’t start to use it regularly until some months ago. As more people join, the party gets livelier, and the odds of bumping into a stranger with similar interests improve. Meanwhile, people are taking advantage of Twitter’s built-in flexibility and finding increasingly clever ways to use it.

For people in media, this means now is a great time to enter the Twitterverse and connect with audiences. Perhaps more importantly, you can also connect members of your audience with each other.

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Notes From the Music Personnel Conference in Fort Worth

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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.

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WFMT ends record winter fund drive

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Two weeks ago Steve Robinson, g.m. of WFMT-FM in Chicago, told the Sun-Times that the fundraising environment for his commercially licensed classical station was the worst he’d seen in his career. Fortunately for the station, it looks as if it may not be so terrible after all.

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New prez at VPR, and other odds and ends

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:: Robin Fenn was named president of Vermont Public Radio, which runs a network of classical stations throughout the state as well as news/talk outlets. Fenn has worked at the station for 20 years and most recently served as v.p. of development. She replaces Mark Vogelzang, who left VPR to work with a nationwide fundraising effort for public radio. More in the Burlington Free Press. CORRECTION (added 3/11/09): As you’ll see if you read the article, Robin Fenn is now Robin Turnau.

:: I got a kick out of this article about a shopping mall in Yellowknife, Canada, which falls into the “Is it real, or is it The Onion?” file. The Northern News Service reports that most people are glad the mall has stopped playing classical music on speakers at its entrances. The tactic was intended to keep people from hanging around outside the mall.

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