From Kathy Gronau in L.A…
KCSN Adjusts Format. “In an effort to bring greater consistency and a higher profile to our Arts and Roots programming format, KCSN has made the decision that its weekday evening programming, effective immediately, now will feature the acoustic music of poets and social commentators spanning the late 20th Century into the present,” emailed Fred Johnson, general manager of California State University, Northridge radio station.
A music teacher in Naples, Fla., sounds off in the Naples Daily News about WGCU’s decision to drop classical music from its analog FM signal: Telling people that they will need to buy a special converter to receive classical music that is being outsourced from Minnesota is not a solution. That approach only helps to promote the idea that classical music is an elitist form of entertainment. I think that Tardiff and the management of WGCU have succumbed to the lowest common denominator, money, which always wins out in the end. But … Continue Reading
WBJC-FM, the all-classical public radio station in Baltimore, is looking for a new general manager. “[T]he General Man[a]ger is responsible for providing leadership, vision, planning and direction to Maryland’s oldest and largest public radio station, with approximately 200,000 listeners in the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan markets,” says the station’s website. WBJC is licensed to the Baltimore City Community College. We weren’t aware that the station’s previous g.m. had left, but we’ll see if we can find out where he’s gone, what he’s up to and if he’d like to chat it with us a … Continue Reading
Yet another classical music station has decided its classical niche audience is not valuable enough to keep: WGCU in Southwest Florida is dropping its classical format on September 8th to go after bigger audience with news and jazz. The station management will be up in arms at my statement. “We’re not dropping it,” they’ll say. “We’re moving it to our HD stream.” Really. How many of your listeners have HD radios or are likely to buy them to listen to a format you obviously don’t value enough to support with real resources? HD is going nowhere fast.
As I sit here listening to the Democratic National Convention, with all the talk of change and hope, I realize that one of the legacies of the big business era is the meshugaas it has made of classical radio.
We can’t blame the Republicans for the big money grab that was set off after the FCC deregulation in 1996. That was Bill Clinton’s era. Some classical stations sold out for a lot of money and then found that classical was unable to support the higher level of income they needed to pay down the debt.
Then public radio consultant David Giovannoni piled on with his research that convinced public stations to go after bigger audience, to drop niche formatting and mixed formats in favor of a single format model. Essentially his research showed that news/talk delivers the most audience.
WGCU’s decision is mostly in line with Giovannoni’s conclusions. It is currently a mixed format station and with the change will be mostly news/talk. The station plays four hours of classical music a day, and four hours in the evenings, plus a couple hours overnight, but they claim classical listeners pay for only 1/4 of the programming. Well, duh. They put no effort into it. It’s all canned programming, no local hosts.
The classical audience has always been small but exceedingly loyal, and there’s plenty of room in the stratosphere for at least one classical station per market.