The news just keeps coming, and for classical fans, again it’s not good. This time it’s a public station in Kentucky that has cut back on classical music during its middays and moved it to a full-time HD Radio channel.
This decision by Murray’s WKMS has prompted a petition drive led by a local history professor. Joe Fuhrmann tells the Murray State News:
You can get the radios as cheap as $50 but you can’t buy them in Murray, and to get a very good one you have to pay about $200. As recently as three months ago, WKMS had about 15 hours per week of classical music, now the station has gone more and more into talk and news. The only HD station in the area is WKMS (HD-2). Even some people who have HD stations report they don’t have very good signal at times or they can’t even get WKMS at all.
WKMS’s station manager uses a familiar rationale to explain the change: Listeners wanted more news, and the format change gives WKMS’s audience a clearer idea of what to expect from the station. She also says the station has actually added more classical music to its schedule, citing the HD channel, which is also streamed online. But I imagine that will offer little comfort to people missing music on plain old FM.
In sum, it’s been a rough summer for classical music on the air, hasn’t it? On top of this instance, we’ve covered the removal of classical from Florida’s WUFT, Arizona’s KAWC and Nashville’s WPLN. Then there are the stations up for sale: KFUO and WBNI. Whew.
Turns out I’ll be at next week’s Public Radio Program Directors conference in Cleveland, covering a few classical-related sessions for Current. It will be interesting to hear what people have to say, considering these trends we’re seeing. Stay tuned.
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With the loss of so many terrestrial radio outlets for Classical music, and with so many of these stations moving music to a web stream, it is time we had some statistics on how many people actually listen on the internet.
AccuRadio is thriving, Live365 is thriving, Shoutcast has pages and pages of Classical music outlets.
But we do not know what this means. I have a friend who insists that radio is strictly a car thing. Where can we get some numbers?
Concerning the recent trend on lost classical formats, classical format transfers to a second service, I’d like to offer these thoughts.
In terms of playlist, programs, program schedule and selection, hosting and dayparting, what adjustments and refinements has your station made in the past 6 months (to XX years) to ensure your licensee (or powers that be) would not think twice about format changes, format reductions or format transfers to a second service.
What have you done to become “untouchable”?
Are there things you know your station has done well that you’re expanding in some ways and even doing them better?
What type of relationships with licensees (or other powers that be) have you developed and nurtured in the past few years that would enhance your professional credibility if and when format discussions even took place?
I think a lot of it all comes down to thinking twice and even three times about music choices and dayparting from the listener’s perspective.
I am not an advocate for an all-Vivaldi, Telemann, Johann Strauss Classical Light format. But I do believe we should play music the audience like, love and return often to hear more.
David Srebnik
http://www.virtuosovoices.org