Yet another classical music station has decided its classical niche audience is not valuable enough to keep: WGCU in Southwest Florida is dropping its classical format on September 8th to go after bigger audience with news and jazz. The station management will be up in arms at my statement. “We’re not dropping it,” they’ll say. “We’re moving it to our HD stream.” Really. How many of your listeners have HD radios or are likely to buy them to listen to a format you obviously don’t value enough to support with real resources? HD is going nowhere fast.
As I sit here listening to the Democratic National Convention, with all the talk of change and hope, I realize that one of the legacies of the big business era is the meshugaas it has made of classical radio.
We can’t blame the Republicans for the big money grab that was set off after the FCC deregulation in 1996. That was Bill Clinton’s era. Some classical stations sold out for a lot of money and then found that classical was unable to support the higher level of income they needed to pay down the debt.
Then public radio consultant David Giovannoni piled on with his research that convinced public stations to go after bigger audience, to drop niche formatting and mixed formats in favor of a single format model. Essentially his research showed that news/talk delivers the most audience.
WGCU’s decision is mostly in line with Giovannoni’s conclusions. It is currently a mixed format station and with the change will be mostly news/talk. The station plays four hours of classical music a day, and four hours in the evenings, plus a couple hours overnight, but they claim classical listeners pay for only 1/4 of the programming. Well, duh. They put no effort into it. It’s all canned programming, no local hosts.
The classical audience has always been small but exceedingly loyal, and there’s plenty of room in the stratosphere for at least one classical station per market.
As stations drop classical and turn to news/talk, which appears to be the greener grass on the other side of the fence, they are competing with a lot of other news sources and diluting the market even further. WETA in Washington DC experienced that and ended up switching back to classical (though not because they valued the format; it was because the only classical station in town, WGMS, dropped classical). What a mess.
We need a Barack Obama in our field. Someone with big vision and confidence in the audience. Classical music’s 1000-year history makes it a strong, powerful, enduring art form and it deserves better than the petty decision-making that is killing it in the radio world.
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You probably had a real hard time with CDs and then DVDs too. NOBODY even HAS players for these crazy new formats! Give it time, give it time. I predict within a couple years you won’t be ABLE to buy a radio that’s not HD compatible…then suddenly a station’s ability to have 2 or more extra programming streams will seem natural. Would you suggest WGCU not go HD? Or that it should have switched it up – putting all classical on the analog channel and news/talk on the HD? Because while moving classical has some people grumbling, the opposite would have MANY more people up in arms. thanks!
Well, here I am again.
First, for the most part we all need to get over the idea of people buying HD radios. We need to focus on the internet, that’s where the action is. Streaming audio is the future.
One on-air host, a veritable giant in Classical Music, at a station I will not name in a huge city with tall buildings, goes so far as to recommend to his listeners that they stream the program on their computers because the stream might be way better than the FM, what with all of the tall buildings.
Second, Classical 24? Yuk!! Programmed to the LCD (lowest common denominator). At worst, and it’s not bad, any station that wants it can get WCPE’s live stream which, while not to my taste, is excellent. This stream is free to all comers.
Or, if they were airing and streaming Classical Music, unless they were already renting out someone’s stream, then they have a library of music. It is not rocket science to rip the CD’s to a high bit .mp3, and then build 24 hour files. They can even do it “plausibly live” as they say, by doing what I am told are called “tips and tails”, where an on-air personality does saved (once called recorded, but no more) introductions and words at the end of the pieces.
We all need first to recognize what is positive, and then get happy and lose the gloom.
>>RSM
Response to Tim:
I am actually tech-savvy, being a radio producer and all, but I just don’t think HD radio is going anywhere. Even if HD were loaded onto every new radio, people are buying computers, i-pods, and i-phones now, all of which have self-programmable media. HD radios are on the clearance rack at Target because nobody is buying them.
I like Fresh Air and NPR news, too, but I think there’s room in every market for one measly classical station.
I subscribe to XM Radio, but frankly I do 90% of my listening online. We have lots of choices now.
Thanks for your comments. I like to provoke a lively discussion.
Marty
Marty:
The station management will be up in arms at my statement. “We’re not dropping it,” they’ll say. “We’re moving it to our HD stream.” Really.
Exactly — this is what I thought when I first heard of this. It reminds me of when WAMU in Washington, D.C., dumped drivetime bluegrass and said, “But we’re starting an Internet stream of bluegrass.” All well and good, and today their stream has a big online following, I’ve heard. But their decision disenfranchised many who preferred it on-air, and their justification seemed disingenuous.
Then public radio consultant David Giovannoni piled on with his research that convinced public stations to go after bigger audience, to drop niche formatting and mixed formats in favor of a single format model. Essentially his research showed that news/talk delivers the most audience.
I’ve talked to Giovannoni a lot over the years and can anticipate how he would respond to this: he’d point out that his research does not show that news delivers the most audience, only that, in most cases, streamlining formats does increase audience and that dual formatting is a liability. Arbitron alone can show that news draws a bigger audience. But stations, as Giovannoni would concede, can make classical work if they focus their energies there. Going all-classical is probably an effective way to do that.
The classical audience has always been small but exceedingly loyal, and there’s plenty of room in the stratosphere for at least one classical station per market.
Unfortunately, research has shown that the classical audience typically gives less money at pledge time than the news audience, and that news has also been able to draw more underwriting dollars.
As stations drop classical and turn to news/talk, which appears to be the greener grass on the other side of the fence, they are competing with a lot of other news sources and diluting the market even further. WETA in Washington DC experienced that and ended up switching back to classical (though not because they valued the format; it was because the only classical station in town, WGMS, dropped classical). What a mess.
WETA was up against another strong public news station, though: WAMU. Some markets don’t have a strong public news-only station. WGCU’s is one of them. Public radio’s news differs enough from commercial news that I imagine commercial competition is not as much of a consideration.
Tim:
Give it time, give it time. I predict within a couple years you won’t be ABLE to buy a radio that’s not HD compatible…then suddenly a station’s ability to have 2 or more extra programming streams will seem natural.
Starting multiple program streams for the listeners who do have HD Radio makes sense, I agree. But so few now own HD radios that representing a switch to HD as a true alternative is facetious. HD radios still cost $100 minimum, as far as I know, and I bet that many people have older radios that work just fine and aren’t looking to replace them anytime soon. Furthermore, if Internet streaming continues to grow, overall radio listening could decline, which won’t help HD’s adoption rate. And fewer consumers will see HD’s promise of additional program streams as an incentive to buy the radios, even when they do come down in price.
Marty-
Here is an idea for helping stations that are going to a stream to help them get a really good service:
There is nothing inherently wrong with streaming, While I would prefer that it be hosted, even “tips and tails”, it is really the content that matters to me.
WCPE which is I think all Classical, has live hosted programming, and makes their stuff available to all comers free of charge and in a gonzo number of formats. Here is a link to their Staff page.
http://theclassicalstation.org/staff.shtml
Christa Wessel used to be the webmaster. I was a member of WCPE when I was a refugee from Talk at WNYC before wnyc2. I had a fair amount of email and telephone contact with Christa. These guys actually answer the telephone, even on-air people. These are very good radio people, Classical music people.
If they could write up what they do, or, give you text which is right on their web site- it is a very good web site- maybe you could put it into your post or posts, and people from other stations who read your posts could be encouraged to hook up with WCPE.
WCPE was always aware of their out-of-the-area listenership. They had data which said that these listeners more than paid their way. So, an improvement in the quality of what other stations carried from WCPE might be a financial gain to WCPE.
What do you think?
>>RSM
Thanks, Richard. Scroll down to our post for July 13th: WCPE – An Amazing Business Model, and you’ll see we’re on it!
I just went back and read Mike’s earlier post about WGCU. As always, he was the curious one, wondering about HD and other new technologies, and I was the curmudgeon, complaining about losing what little we have. Made me laugh. Mike and I are a generation apart, and he hasn’t had a chance to develop a good healthy cynicism yet!
Marty