Station profile: Classical WETA 90.9 FM, Washington, D.C.

First of two posts

WETA, the powerful all-classical public radio station serving Washington, D.C., has attained its biggest audience in years by claiming the city’s franchise in classical music radio. Its arrival at this stage in its 38-year history has been hard-won, however. In just four years, WETA has endured great change, from a news/classical mix to all-news to today’s steady stream of classical.

“If you had asked me a few years ago if I would have gone through this — two format changes in a period of three years — I’d have said it would never happen,” says Dan DeVany, WETA’s g.m., when I interviewed him last month in his office at WETA’s headquarters in Arlington, Va. “And here we are.”

The first jolt to WETA’s status quo came in February 2005. Like many stations, WETA was struggling as it tried to attract an audience to its dual format of NPR’s newsmagazines and midday classical music. Its ratings in fall 2004 were the worst in 15 years. Fewer listeners were donating, and while news programming was drawing underwriting income, classical was less successful — a common pattern in public radio. WETA’s position was further complicated by competitors in the D.C. market that shared its formats — WAMU, another well-established NPR affiliate but one that specialized in news/talk, and WGMS, the city’s commercial classical outlet and one of the most successful in the country.

“It was clear that we had an identity problem,” DeVany says. “We didn’t stand for anything in particular.”

DeVany sought to take the station in the direction many others had pursued and streamline its format to focus on just one type of programming. Only news or classical appeared viable — trying something completely different was not an option. WETA saw an opportunity to appeal to Washington’s diverse and international population by going all-news, but with a more global slant than WAMU, adding large chunks of BBC News to its schedule at relatively low cost and carrying other programs not already heard on its competitor.

On February 28, 2005, after winning approval from WETA’s board of directors, this new format took to the air. It was slow to catch on, DeVany says, but that was expected — he and his staff planned to give it at least three years to prove itself.

But not even two years passed before WETA again saw an opportunity to remake itself and, this time, claim a format all its own in the D.C. market. The rumblings began when Dan Snyder, perhaps best known as owner of the Washington Redskins, was rumored to be pursuing another FM station to add to his sports radio network. Reports suggested that he had set his sights on WGMS, which at the time was owned by Bonneville International. And if the sale went through, WGMS’s classical format would in all likelihood see its final days on that frequency.

As it turned out, the potential deal between Snyder and Bonneville fizzled. Yet Bonneville executives continued to contemplate a move away from classical. Bonneville had recently moved WGMS to a weaker FM signal to boost the coverage of WTOP, its highly popular commercial news station in Washington, which had caused the classical station’s ratings to suffer. Leaders at WETA approached Bonneville, and as a result of those conversations, WETA adopted an all-classical format on January 22, 2007 — the same day that the old WGMS changed its call letters and switched to a rock format dubbed “George.”

WETA absorbed WGMS’s music library, as well as several of the commercial station’s staffers, including Program Director Jim Allison and some announcers. “We very consciously wanted to provide in our music programming a safe landing place for all the former WGMS listeners, so that they had a place that was familiar, and so the sound of that was comfortable,” DeVany says.

In an upcoming post I’ll discuss how WETA’s fortunes have changed since it became an all-classical station, how it differs from the old WGMS, and what DeVany sees as the future of the station — and of classical radio.