Classical MPR’s top programmer explains all those awards

Each year the Public Radio Program Directors Association hands out its Awards for Creative Excellence, recognizing stations for outstanding programming in public radio’s primary formats. Count on this: next year Classical Minnesota Public Radio will not be winning an ACE Award. That’s because MPR won its third consecutive ACE Award for classical programming this year, which disqualifies it from winning a fourth time.

How does a station manage to win an ACE Award three years running? Here’s what judges said this year in praise of Classical MPR’s entry:

The station clearly pays attention to every part of the broadcast day.

The hosts are talking directly to the audience and speak with a sense of knowing their audience well.

Responding to the question, “What can others learn from this entry?”, a judge wrote:

The importance of intelligent, authoritative hosts who are concerned first and foremost, not with impressing their listeners, but with communicating with them in a clear and congenial manner.

“I love that because it’s really true,” says John Birge, program manager and senior host with Classical MPR. “Because ultimately, all of us who are on the radio are here because we care about the music and connecting our listeners’ lives to it.”

As program manager, Birge oversees the classical service, which in addition to spanning Minnesota also reaches into Iowa, Wisconsin, South Dakota and Canada. He told me that MPR’s success stems from paying attention to elements that other programmers also focus on: structuring playlists and dayparts, for example, or attracting talent and keeping performance high with regular coaching. But he also emphasizes the importance of communicating with listeners to strengthen the ties uniting them, the hosts and the music that’s presented.

“Listeners are your friends,” says Birge, who in addition to holding down weekday mornings on MPR also serves as a substitute host for Performance Today, produced by MPR sibling American Public Media. “When you treat them that way, you’re a better communicator.”

Classical hosts walk a fine line when it comes to addressing listeners. In focus-group studies, classical listeners have said that too much talk is a turnoff. Hosts mindful of that have to engage listeners without taking too long to do so. So it surprised me to hear Birge refer to the host’s task as “storytelling.” To me, the word immediately suggests long-form yarn-spinning, but the host’s job sometimes comes down to “being an effective storyteller in 30 seconds or less,” Birge says.

“That’s when it gets challenging,” he says. “But you don’t say a haiku is worse than an epic poem because it’s shorter.” Hosts have to distill the essence of what they want to say into “something that’s elegant, relatable and easy to understand,” he says.

Colleagues who have influenced Birge’s approach to hosting and coaching other hosts include Dan O’Day, Lorna Ozmon and David Candow — known as “the host whisperer” for his work coaching NPR announcers.

Listen here to the clips that MPR submitted for consideration in the ACE Awards:

[audio:http://www.insidethearts.com/scanningthedial/files/2008/10/classicalmpr.mp3]

And of course you can listen to Classical MPR online. You might even get a preview of a winner in next year’s ACE Awards. The rule disqualifying three-time winners isn’t about to stop Birge, because next year PRPD will accept entries in the category of “music features.” So judges can expect to hear more from Classical MPR.