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

Second of two posts

After WETA-FM became the sole classical radio outlet serving Washington, D.C. — you can catch up on the back story here — the benefits of claiming the city’s classical franchise were immediate. In the first Arbitron ratings book after the switch, WETA’s market share jumped to a 4.9 — more than double its 2.1 prior to the change. That took WETA from 17th among the market’s radio stations to fifth.

The station went on to average a 4.5 share last year and had a successful fundraising drive in February. “Public service is being transacted here,” says General Manager Dan DeVany, “because people are listening.”

WETA aims to present a mix of classical music that appeals to a broad audience — “anywhere from those who would be considered aficionados of classical music to those who enjoy it but don’t necessarily know much about it,” says DeVany. “Being broad-based in our appeal has certainly been an effort on our part, and it’s paid off.” The station couldn’t sound like the old commercial WGMS-FM “even if we wanted to,” DeVany says, because the lack of 20 minutes of ads an hour offers more programming freedom.

And providing music as a full-time classical station, rather than one with the dual news/classical format, allows DeVany and his staff to focus on providing a consistent flow of music that carries listeners throughout the day. They are no longer constrained by, for example, having to find pieces of music that segue well out of NPR’s Morning Edition or into All Things Considered.

WETA’s listening pattern throughout the weekday is now typical for music stations, with the audience growing throughout the morning, peaking at midday and tapering off later in the day. This is the opposite of what many news/classical stations experience, with peak listening during the NPR newsmagazines — the so-called “tentpoles” — and a valley in between.

With a lock on the classical format, and the latitude to focus on doing one thing well, WETA appears to have reached a stronger position than it has enjoyed in years. What does DeVany see in its future — and in the future of classical radio?

“Terrestrial radio is not dead,” he says, “and we as a system need to get over that and recognize that that is still the core business that we’re in.” But he acknowledges that programmers must be concerned about the overall waning of radio’s audience, and of the impending arrival of widespread listening to stations via wireless broadband Internet. In that sort of environment, how will stations such as WETA distinguish themselves among the nearly limitless competition that is sure to result?

“If your stream of programming has value to an on-air audience, then you’re ahead of the game in terms of value to an online audience,” DeVany says. He also envisions that WETA might take advantage of the breadth and depth of its 55,000-album music library to create Web streams of niche musical genres such as baroque, vocal and contemporary music, among others.

As we concluded our conversation, I asked DeVany to look back on WETA’s tumultuous and unpredictable past few years and reflect on what he took away from it all. He considered and said, “You’ve got to be willing to be brave.”

“You’ve got to be willing to take the kind of risks that, quite frankly, a lot of public radio stations don’t take or can’t take for whatever reason,” he continued. “We did some things here in terms of our ability to move quickly and in different directions, if necessary, that I’m very proud of.”

“And the other thing is, you’ve got to respond to the marketplace,” he added. “You have got to respond to the environment that you’re in — you’ve got to. If you think that you can survive without being cognizant of the other things going on with your listeners or potential listeners, then you’re going to live in a museum and become irrelevant in my opinion. … We responded to what was going on in the marketplace, and you have to.”