New Management in Oregon

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Station KBPS in Portland, Oregon announced last week that they have hired a new CEO, reports The Oregonian. Jack Allen comes from the programming side of classical music radio, but with a lot of management experience. He was director of news and music for seven years at Minnesota Public Radio, including being an on-air host at Classical 24. For the past five years Allen has been in Austin, TX managing the much smaller, listener-supported classical station KMFA. This article in the Austin Chronicle makes it pretty clear that Austin is going to … Continue Reading

A Real Concert in a Virtual World: Second Life

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If I’m the blogger, you must be the bloggee. This morning I got to be both blogger and bloggee, by visiting Second Life, a 3-D virtual world/social networking site. A whole bunch of real people represented by their avatars went into the virtual Fraser performance studio at WGBH to listen to pianist Jeremy Denk play live.

The concert went out over the radio and the on-air feed was streaming on the web, as usual. But in addition, WGBH set up a computer simulation of their new performance studio. I signed up for Second Life a couple days in advance (it’s free) so I could practice. They walk you through it step by step.

Practicing was a hoot. I was in stitches most of the time. I got my avatar to walk up to the Steinway, but when I tried to get her to sit down on the piano bench, she would sit on the ground next to it or behind it; she even sat on the keyboard, but I couldn’t get her to sit on the bench!

When virtual Marty got in a car and started driving, some cute guy came along and hopped in the car with her. That never happens in real life.

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What radio might gain from living a Second Life

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As I posted about a while back, Boston’s WGBH-FM will stage a live performance by pianist Jeremy Denk today in the virtual world of Second Life (11 a.m. Eastern time, 8 a.m. “Second Life time,” as it’s called). As Denk performs in WGBH’s real-life performance studio in Boston, an avatar of Denk will play in a studio on WGBH’s Second Life island, Brightonia. After his performance, Denk will answer questions from the Second Life audience.

It’s the first time a radio station has ever orchestrated a Second Life simulcast of this kind — at least as far as Gary Mott knows. Mott, a radio producer at WGBH, has been overseeing the station’s Second Life buildout in recent months, creating the Brightonia space and its performance studio, which is based on WGBH’s actual Fraser Performance Studio.

When I spoke with Mott last week, I asked him why WGBH wanted to be in Second Life. His answer surprised me. “I’m not sure we should be, to be honest with you,” he said. “That’s what we’re trying to find out.”

WGBH applied for and received a $12,000 Public Media Innovation Grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for the project. A colleague of Mott’s wrote the proposal, then left the station, and Mott took over. He says that Second Life has “lots of potential” but that it’s a very different world from the radio sphere he and his colleagues at WGBH are accustomed to. WGBH broadcasts to hundreds of thousands of listeners each week, while in Second Life the potential audience for Denk’s performance is much smaller, with only 50,000 or so avatars online at any given moment, and probably just a small fraction of those likely to attend today.

“We’re not talking about thousands of people here,” Mott said. “We’re talking about entering a wholly new space, with wholly new rules that apply.”

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News roundup: More on the CBC, and Los Angeles’ KCSN

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Authormike72x72_3 A Canadian federal committee has voted to hold hearings on the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.’s decisions to change its programming and to shut down its radio orchestra, reports the Vancouver Free Press. “I want Canadians who are concerned about classical music, who are concerned about the CBC Radio Orchestra being disbanded, and who are concerned about the direction of Radio 2 to have an opportunity to express those concerns to … the parliamentarians on the standing committee on Canadian heritage,” said the member of Parliament who initially moved to hold the hearings. “I also want the CBC to pay attention to what these folks are saying to the committee.” Not being familiar with Canadian politics, I must admit that I have little inkling of what sort of effect these hearings may have. But it seems like a first step.

Meanwhile, Chris Boyce, director of programming at CBC Radio, has penned an op-ed in the Vancouver Sun defending the network’s decision to cut back on classical in favor of other musical genres. He writes:

And what we heard was loud and clear. People love classical music. But they also love other kinds of music, too, as long as it’s of high quality and intelligently presented.

Consider the following. Of the approximately 30,000 pieces of music released each year in Canada, 240 receive regular airplay on Canadian radio stations. We intend to take advantage of this vast body of Canadian music that is otherwise ignored and make the best of it available to our listeners in an intelligent, creative and engaging way. We see this as the embodiment of our mandate.

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