More From Boston

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In a disturbing follow-up to Mike’s post on Friday about WGBH’s grand experiment in the virtual world, comes this post from Alex Beam at boston.com: Home / Lifestyle Alex Beam Temple of Doom? If people are going to take the trouble to leak us internal memos, we are going to take the trouble to print them. In an all-points bulletin issued last week, WGBH president Jon Abbott warned that the World’s Greatest Broadcast House may end its current fiscal year in deficit, and declared an immediate freeze on hiring. A friend of … Continue Reading

WGBH stages virtual concert in Second Life

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Here’s a great example of a classical broadcaster trying something different in the new-media space. On Tuesday, May 27, acclaimed pianist Jeremy Denk will visit Boston’s WGBH to perform live in their studios and on the air. Nothing new there. What’s different, though, is that at the same time a digital version of Denk will perform in WGBH’s virtual performance studio in its world in Second Life. After his performance, Denk will answer questions from his Second Life audience.

WGBH's Second Life environment
WGBH's Second Life environment

In case you’re not familiar with Second Life, it’s a vast online cosmos where visitors create computerized alter egos, known as avatars, to interact with each other and explore the user-created world. According to Wikipedia, about 38,000 users are logged on to Second Life at any given moment. (The image to the left depicts an avatar playing the grand piano in WGBH’s realm.)

“WGBH Radio broadcasts well over 100 live performances every year, on 89.7 and on the web, and now it’s time to tap a new audience in an environment that’s beyond those platforms,” says WGBH’s Gary Mott, who is managing the Second Life project. “It’s thrilling to be a part of something we’ve not done before, in virtual space. The media landscape is constantly evolving, and it’s exciting to be changing with it.”

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No Drama

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The Democratic primary has been a terrific display of Performance Art — improv theater at its best. Journalists reveling in their juicy onstage parts have created their own political fringe festival, at the expense of more important stories, like wars and natural disasters. Everybody loves the drama of two powerful onstage protagonists, with their rival gangs. It’s a real life West Side Story. In the biz, we’ve always said that controversy is great for radio. It’s what makes talk radio more popular than music radio. And the lack of conflict – “drama,” … Continue Reading

A quest to understand the classical radio listener

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Authormike72x72_3 How should music directors and program directors at classical radio stations decide what to play? What do listeners most appreciate about their services?

These sound like pretty important questions, right? But put yourself in the place of one of these programmers (assuming you aren’t one) and think about how you’d answer those questions. You’d have piles of Arbitron ratings at your disposal, but those only show you when listeners tune in and out. Ratings don’t tell you why they listen or what makes your station valuable to them — at most, you can only infer answers to those questions from ratings.

But since 2002, a group of public radio programmers has been commissioning research to address these concerns. In a series of studies, the Public Radio Program Directors Association (PRPD) has surveyed listeners to various public radio formats, including classical, to deepen the field’s understanding of the value their services deliver. Their results have given programmers a new vocabulary to apply to their work and, in some cases, fed debates about the role of research in programming and public radio’s overall approach to classical music.

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