Stations

Martin Perlich, KCSN, Ben Rosen on the Met, and Sean MacLean

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Some notes about happenings in the classical radio world on a midsummer Friday. Dailynews.com reports than longtime radio personality Martin Perlich resigned on Tuesday from his job as Program Director at KCSN in Northridge, CA. Perlich is very well respected for his award-winning interviews with musicians. He’s retiring at age 70 with his legendary energy unabated. His retirement leaves a big hole in the radio landscape and raises even more questions about the fate of KCSN, where there have been rumblings of changes, but no hard news yet. To quote the article … Continue Reading

What WGBH learned from its Second Life experiment

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In May my co-author Marty and I told you about the virtual online world of Second Life and an intriguing experiment conducted by Boston-based public broadcaster WGBH. Classical pianist Jeremy Denk visited WGBH’s studios to perform live on-air and, at the same time, in a virtual performance space within Second Life. Afterward, he answered questions submitted by the Second Life audience.

Public media’s experience in Second Life extends to just a few isolated efforts, and WGBH had never staged such an event before. So Gary Mott, the radio producer at WGBH who oversaw the event, didn’t really know what to expect. Would anyone show up? Would they enjoy it? And would WGBH’s considerable efforts to stage a virtual performance be worth it?

WGBH's Second Life performance space
WGBH's Second Life performance space

I talked to Mott the other day to find out, and the answer on all counts was “yes”: “It surpassed what we expected,” he said. About 70 Second Lifers showed up to see Denk and ask questions, and Mott says they were polite, attentive and keenly curious about Denk and his music. They also chatted with each other via instant messaging throughout the concert — you can see their comments and applause in the image accompanying this post.

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WCPE – An Amazing Business Model

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I was surfing the net the other day and saw a press release from WCPE in Wake Forest, NC about their new affiliation with KXMS in Joplin, MO. Jeff Skibbe, the Joplin station’s General Manager is always intensely interested in classical radio’s place on the internet, so my ears perked up. I picked up the old fashioned telephone and called Curtis Brothers, WCPE’s outreach manager.

We’re providing programming free to small stations that can’t afford their own. We pay a lot of attention to the human aspect; we’re always 24-hour live-hosted. For radio stations we provide tones for local i.d.s; a lot of stations use us overnight.

Free to any station that wants it? Wait a minute. How is that possible? The recent demise of CPRN’s voice-tracked satellite service which we reported on March 21st makes this seem impossible from a business standpoint. CPRN was charging stations for their service, as are the two other programming services, Beethoven Satellite Network from WFMT in Chicago, and Classical 24 from American Public Media in St. Paul, MN. How does WCPE do it for free?

Because they really want to. Curtis Brothers says they are managed extremely efficiently.

We’re 100% listener-supported. We do our own fundraisers twice a year. Volunteers answer the phones and send out mailings. We use volunteer hosts for 25% of our airtime. Stations get the local Wake Forest concert announcements and underwriting because it’s just straight streaming, but it’s only a couple of minutes per hour.

Seems like a small price to pay. WCPE has about 150,000 listeners in Raleigh-Durham, plus 11 translators and 14 radio station affiliates. You can pick up their signal on many cable TV stations, and if you have your own dish you can pick it up at home from the AMC-1 satellite.

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Who Does What At A Classical Station?

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Authormarty72x72 Our fearless Inside the Arts blog leader and guru, Drew McManus, reminded me that not everyone is a classical radio nerd, and that I should remember to do a nuts-and-bolts post once in a while.

If you’re a listener rather than a radio employee, you might not know who does what at a classical station.

Announcers
The people you hear on the air are the public voice of the station, but they often are NOT the decision-makers. And it might surprise you to know that at a classical station the announcers are not like Don Imus and Howard Stern, pulling in the big bucks. Classical announcers are more likely to be the lowest paid employees. Announcing is considered a glamour job. I know of stations where the on-air employees earn just over mimimum wage. (By the way, we don’t call them D.J.s in classical music.)

A full time announcer might make about $50,000 at a unionized station (the union most belong to is AFTRA, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists), but most stations are not unionized. I worked full time on-air for many years and never even broke $20,000. Still, being on-air is the most fun of all radio jobs IF the announcer gets to pick some of the music. If not, the job can be very frustrating.

Stations usually have a handful of fulltime announcers, and a stable of part-timers who do weekends and sub when needed.

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