An article in Sunday’s Evansville Courier & Press highlights the Evansville Philharmonic Orchestra’s embrace of Web tools to reach out to its audience. The orchestra’s music director, Alfred Savia, has launched a blog, for example, and the orchestra now has a Facebook page. It also plans to offer MP3 downloads of some of its performances.
Savia explains the strategy:
“People think that we’re basically custodians of these notes written by Beethoven and Mozart hundreds of years ago, and that we still function the same way that orchestras did in Beethoven’s time and Mozart’s time,” Savia said.
“In many ways we do,” he added. “We’re playing the same basic instruments, playing the same music, but in trying to survive in the 21st century we have to look at new ways of reinforcing the traditional things we have done.”
If the Evansville Philharmonic is taking this approach, shouldn’t classical radio stations be following suit? Is your station blogging? Does it have a Facebook page? And if not — why not?
Read the full Courier & Press article here.
Or, as Mark Ramsey puts it on his Hear 2.0 blog:
“Radio,” after all (in the current vernacular) is a distribution channel, but what you have on your radio is the brand (or at least should be).
So where’s your brand’s podcast? Your videocast? Your twitter feed, etc?
Regarding Twitter, more thoughts on that in a future post — but let me know about any classical stations that are using Twitter.
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Blogs: this is one area in which my station, WNYC, absolutely sucks.
They have a thing on the web site for most programs that they call blogs, but, they are comment boxes. I can comment on what I hear. I can even leave neat little bombs like, “…Hey listeners, do you miss Hearts of Space? Tell the management…”
But, this is not blogs. It is also not a forum. There is no reply notification or thread subscription so that I can get notification is someone posts to something where I have been active.
If we post a question, the host never answers it except maybe on the air, when I am, maybe, in the bathroom.
Richard — That definitely doesn’t sound very useful. I’m thinking about writing a post just on blogs and how classical stations could use them. And certainly one reason to use them is to have a dialogue with listeners. If you’re posting questions and not getting answers, ever, that’s an example of failing to build on a blog’s potential.
I’m sure folks at stations are busy with the responsibilities they already have, and blogging might seem like a burden on top of all that. But it’s becoming increasingly essential. And so far I know of only a very few classical stations with regularly updated blogs.
WV Public Radio has three blogs, and one of them is devoted to classical music, called “Classically Speaking.” (http://www.wvpubcast.org/blogs.aspx)
We’re still figuring this all out, but I’m happy we’ve gotten started. It’s a place for me and our classical host to post interviews, reviews, and other things related to classical music on the air and around the state. We don’t broadcast these things on the air, so I’m very glad to have an outlet for interviews, etc.
We’re just getting the ability to add pictures, and will also hopefully embed some video soon, so it should look prettier soon. Comments are minimal, partially because there’s a registration/moderation process–hopefully that will be (a bit) looser in the future.
I have a list of classical radio blogs (you probably know about them, but I can post the list if anyone is interested). Also, I think the AMPPR conference this March is going to have a session about blogging.
I know of two classical radio people on twitter: me (@wvclassical – separated from my personal @mona_s) and John Clare (@JohnClare) who I think is at a station in Texas…
He also has a (totally cool) blog: http://classicallyhip.blogspot.com/
Mona Seghatoleslami
Announcer/Producer
West Virginia Public Radio
http://www.wvpubcast.org/blogs.aspx
Mike-
I second your desire for dialogue. That is the opportunity provided by all you guys at Inside the Arts.
By all means, take your thoughts about blogs to a logical conclusion, lay it all out, and present it.
I would ask further that you consider the value of forums. Forums allow the development of threads where the exchange of ideas can be really exciting.
There is tons of forum middleware around. I am a participant in many forums, everything from Microsoft communities, to Mozillazine and SillyDog, even the French group Deep Forest has a forum.
If Terrance McKnight (WNYC) of Alan Chapman (KUSC) plays something that should be discussed, why, open it up in a forum. We can all ask questions and learn something.
For me, as you can see over the past weeks since I discovered all of you, you have been acting as a forum.
I have no platform for my own blog; but I have a lot of ideas, and here is one place I can express them, have them supported or blown away. So, I thank you.
Mona: Thanks for your comment. How did you find our blog? The Classically Speaking blog is looking good, and kudos to you and your station for getting it going! And yes, please post your list of classical radio blogs. I imagine you might know of some that I don’t. And thanks for the Twitter tips. I’ll be following your tweets and reading the blog.
Richard: And we thank you. Why don’t you have your own blog, in fact? You certainly have no shortage of opinions! 😉 As for the forum idea, I do think it’s a great idea — as I said before, the question is just who has the time to moderate it for the time being.
Mona — ay, no RSS feed! I’m an RSS diehard and would much appreciate one. I think many others would too.
Mike-
First, I did try to do a blog on Public Radio. In fact, I tried twice. Once at Blogger and once at Blogster. And, even though I loaded it with links, e.g. station URL’s, etc., nothing happened.
But, I have always been pretty much a one issue person: the power of the internet for Public Radio. When I was doing this, pretty much most stations seemed not to get it that they were now in a global competition for listeners, for member dollars, etc.
I emphasized the need for a really good stream for broadband.
I wrote of the need for programming something that would set the station apart and give them a unique identity.
I emphasized the need to get up on Shoutcast. Back in the day, WMP, Real, Music Match, and Winamp had pages of stations with streams. Today, of those, only Real still has that. iTunes has brought it back, but without a link to a stations home page, so no way to drive traffic, which makes iTunes in my estimation a waste of time.
So, thanks to you guys, people are considering all of these issues. If the station people are reading you, then I think there is a good hope for a bright future.
Not having a blog, I developed a distribution list of recipients of my incredible thoughts at the stations to which I belonged, four in number at that time.
Mike,
There is an RSS feed, but it’s like a weird stealth feed–you get to it only by clicking the little RSS button, otherwise it isn’t detected.
http://www.wvpubcast.org/WorkArea/blogs/blogrss.aspx?blog=312
(I don’t know why it’s like that, maybe this Ektron content management system we use; I’m always sending lists of things I want to our poor harried IT guys, a more noticeable feed is one them).
I think I found out about your blog through the WV Symphony’s director Paul Helfrich (who is totally moving to Dayton…it is a sad day when one’s state loses a guy who can easily chat about both Bruckner and Spinal Tap, and is nice, and is really good pitch talent). Have you posted to the AMPPR email list about this blog? I’m sure lots of people there would be interested…
I will post the list of classical radio blogs when I’m at work (where I have it saved).
Following you back on twitter!
Mona-
It was great to see a pro responding here. Almost the only respondent I have seen here is me, and I am certainly not a professional.
I sure would like to read what you have to say in the future.
>>RSM