Tuesday I paid a visit to Dan DeVany, vice president and general manager of Classical WETA 90.9 FM, the all-classical station in the nation’s capital. We talked about WETA’s quick journey over the past three years from a dual-format news/classical station to an all-news station and finally to the music outlet it is today — a move that has brought it to a new level of success. It was a great discussion, and I’ll share the highlights with you soon.
But I did want to share something in particular right away. Dan brought to my attention a blog post by Robert Paterson, a consultant who has been helping public radio and TV stations adjust to the new realities of the media world. In fact, “New Realities” was the name of an ambitious strategic planning exercise that involved all of public radio, led by Rob and his crew a few years back. Take a look at Rob’s blog and you’ll see that he is the ultimate big-picture thinker. I often find his observations provocative and inspiring.
In this post Rob drew on a conversation with Dan about on-air fundraising around classical music. Dan told me and Rob that WETA’s first fund drive after going all-classical early last year was a smashing success. But in the fall they encountered a dauntingly slow start, forcing them to take a fresh look at how they were trying to connect with their listeners. As Rob describes it:
KUSC in Los Angeles has made a lot of changes recently. They hired Gail Eichenthal as Program Director, and they are putting energy and vision into their fundraising and programming. I asked KUSC producer Brian Lauritzen to catch us up on what they’re doing. Here’s his report…