Less than two weeks ago, Bob Bishop, Program Director at classical KHFM in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, was called into his new boss’s office and asked to turn in his keys on the spot. General Manager Sarah Colmark told Bishop that the station was going to be reorganized and he was being laid off.
Stations
Some Perspective on KCSN and News About the Oregon Symphony
We’ve been posting periodic updates about the disturbing decisions being made about KCSN in Northridge, CA (the L.A. area). We just received this bit of historical perspective from Helen Peppard, of CreativePR.
Florida station moves classical to HD
We’ve been ruminating and prognosticating lately about the Future of Classical Radio, but it’s equally important to follow present-day developments in good old terrestrial radio — for many still the primary source for classical.
So I took notice when not one but two public radio stations announced in the past few weeks that they’re moving away from the dual news/classical format and giving more daytime hours to news and talk. They join several other stations that have made similar changes since we launched this blog in March. As I’ve written before, 200-plus public stations in the U.S. air both news and classical. But the format is saddled with some inherent drawbacks, the main one being that few listeners enjoy both kinds of programming.
One of the stations to dump the dual format is going whole-hog — not just taking classical out of middays, but taking it off its primary signal entirely.
Classical radio in a post-iPhone world
Is the death of conventional radio imminent, and if so, which broadcasters will survive the jump to new platforms? Several bloggers and radio watchers took up these questions last week, prompted by the introduction July 11 of Apple’s newest iPhone. More than a million of the mega-hyped gadgets sold over their debut weekend, and according to the Radio and Internet Newsletter, Internet-radio applications were among the most popular downloads as buyers tricked out their new toys. Options include Last.fm, Pandora, allRadio and AOL Radio, which also features streams of dozens of CBS-owned stations around the country.
Some observers of the media world and the radio trade argue that, for radio, this marks the beginning of the end. Sure, the iPhone is far from universal adoption, and radios are still ubiquitous (even if members of the younger generations rarely turn them on). But as RAIN’s Kurt Hanson noted, “Keep in mind that what an iPhone can do today, most phones will be able to do in the not-too-distant future.” He adds:
Radio broadcasters could be leaders in this space, but except for the AOL/CBS partnership, none currently are. The problem is, radio broadcasters will have to develop new products and services appropriate for consumer needs and tastes in this new environment, and that means more than straight AM/FM simulcasts.
It means offering a broad spectrum of genres of music, offering playlist options that can be, at the consumer’s demand, very tight or very wide, offering other personalization options that are brand-specific, and, to compete effectively with the AOLs and Pandoras of the world, not trying to deliver 12 minutes of commercials per hour.