I’m just about to move on from discussing the nuts and bolts of public radio’s dual news/classical format. But I did want to add this footnote about Vermont Public Radio after a recent chat with Jody Evans, the network’s program director. I’d called her about Classical Public Radio Network, in fact, because the network relied heavily on CPRN when it was getting its first all-classical stations on the air four years ago.
For several years VPR chugged along with a dual news/classical mix on seven stations across the state. But like other broadcasters, VPR was seeing its dual-format approach lose steam. When classical came on after NPR News, news listeners were fleeing to other news/talk stations.
“We had done well with the dual format,” Evans said. “But our audience was holding steady—it wasn’t growing.”
Meanwhile, fans of both news and classical were asking for more of their favorite flavors of programming, but the network wasn’t ready to accommodate them. Abandoning classical was ruled out—the network had been devoted to classical music since its founding 30 years ago. “We really thought long and hard about it and said, ‘This is part of who we are. This is our mission,’” Evans said.
The tipping point came last August, when VPR had the good fortune to acquire a second signal in Burlington from a religious broadcaster looking to sell. At that point, the network was free to juggle formats without depriving its key Burlington audience of either news or classical. VPR now airs news on five transmitters and classical on three—enough to cover about two-thirds of the state. In an effort to make up for the gaps in classical coverage, VPR is offering its classical feed on four HD Radio channels as well.
VPR has already seen its audience for classical music jump by 50 percent since making the change, and Evans has no doubt that the audience will keep growing. She summed up the payoff that prompts many public stations to differentiate their formats by whatever means possible: “The news people can listen, and the classical people can listen, and they know that when they tune in, they can get what they want.”
Related posts:
- The dual format—neither fish nor fowl
- Where classical music is holding steady—and where it’s waning
- What’s happening with Classical Public Radio Network?
Subscribe Via Email
Enter your email address to subscribe to Scanning the Dial and receive notifications of new posts by email.
Thank you for subscribing.
Something went wrong.
Are any of the signals AM or all they all FM? If both, what is the split between classical and news?
They’re all FM, with five news and three classical. That covers the full-power stations. There are five translators with the news network and eight with the classical. Here’s a full list.
Many thanks, I always wonder about that when reading article along this line. for classical music, the quality of AM signals just doesn’t do it although for talk radio it isn’t such a big issue (for me at least). It would be interesting to learn more about the distribution of classical music radio via FM vs. AM signals.
Yes, music certainly suffers on AM. But putting news on AM also has its drawbacks, since many radio listeners never tune to the AM band and as a result are less likely to discover stations on AM, even if they would enjoy the programming. Some AM stations also have to power down at sundown, drastically limiting their broadcast range. I do wonder how many AM classical stations there are.