Happy Monday, everybody. There’s a very nice blog post about WQXR’s switch from commercial to public radio here.
Doc Searls lists five reasons public radio is better than commercial for classical music, but my favorite is the last one:
Direct Listener Involvement. Commercial radio has had a huge disadvantage for the duration: its customers and its consumers are different populations. As businesses, commercial radio stations are primarily accountable to advertisers, not to listeners. Public radio is directly accountable to its listeners, because those are also its customers. As public stations make greater use of the Web, and of the growing roster of tools available for listener engagement, … this advantage over commercial radio will only grow. This means WQXR’s listeners have more more opportunity to contribute positively to the station’s growth than they ever had when it was a commercial station. (Or if, like WCRB, it lived on as a lesser commercial station.) So, if you’re a loyal WQXR listener, send a few bucks to WNYC. Tell them thanks for saving the station, and tell them what you’d like them to do with the station as well.
It’s all good.
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I think this is an over simplification as audience drives all radio.
Here’s public radio’s little secret – 40 to 50% of its funding comes from the federal government via its funding by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. State and local governments also contribute, though to a far lesser degree. Yes, public radio depends on its audience – and must cater to it aggressively, but it’s even more dependent on government support. I fear WNYC chose a bad time historically to take on such a large commitment – 15 million to acquire the WQXR brand and some of its assets, and who knows how many millions to more to operate it in the years to come. To add to the bad timing, radio listening continues to decline among younger Americans – precisely the audience WNYC must capture to insure a future audience of contributors. I wish WQXR the best – but
You know, I’m 99% sure that isn’t true about government funding for public radio. The CPB website has its financials online at http://www.cpb.org/aboutcpb/financials/appropriation/justification_09-11.pdf, and they state that “Federal support of public broadcasting through the CPB appropriation amounts to about 16 percent of public broadcasting revenues.” That includes public television which is inherently more expensive than radio.
I actually think the move to WNYC was brilliant. They are better programmers and they can run the station much more efficiently with the resources they already have. Commercial classical radio is a dying breed for a reason.
When I was at NPR the official tour information for visitors to headquarters claimed that less than 1% of NPR’s funding came from the government.
If you want to discuss this further, let’s see some documentation.
Hi Marty,
Yes, you’re correct about the figures for *Federal* government support for NPR via the CPB…perhaps Classical Radio Guy is thinking of higher *Local* governmental subsidies for school district, college and community-licensed stations.
Regarding WQXR, though, it wasn’t just another commercial classical station–it was founded by and belonged to the New York Times when there was a huge overlap between that paper’s million plus readership and NYC’s radio audience for concert music.
The shrinking, dumbing-down and general implosion of quality newspapers is pretty closely related to the fortunes of the cultural class which supports music on public radio. When none of NPR’s huge Kroc bequest went to fine arts programming (just how many mainstream talk shows did the network need?) it became evident that either hostility or indifference marked the attitude of “The Network Suits” and “The Consultants” to paying Mozart’s rent on the dial.
-Robert Ready
Well the day is here but we have very little information on what the new WQXR will be tomorrow. The Thursday Playlist is blank on the WQXR website. New schedules for WNYC have been available as PDFs for some time now but not for WQXR. David Dubal said he had no idea if his program on piano performance practice would continue. Nobody at WNYC had contacted him as of late last night he said.
One thing the station announcers are doing today is encouraging those in the fringe area of the 105.9MHz signal to purchase Internet radios (not to be confused with HD radios which are no help when a station downshifts’ its power output). This is the last day they can tell these listeners over the air what to do. Tomorrow they will not be able to listen to WQXR over the air.
Once the fringe listeners have purchased an Internet radio will the stay with WQXR or scan the virtual dial to another station that could be well be in Texas? Note it is not very easy with most of the Internet radio interface software. such a vTuner, to find a classical station. They have a large number of stations available but a very limited ability to navigate to them.
My question is can you get a WQXR listener to move the Internet Radio virtual dial to your station and do you think if you get them they will contribute to your station.
David,
I’m being slow about it, but I’ve got a post with more info about the switch. It happens in less than a half hour (the switch; my post, not as much).
I have an interview with WNYC Senior VP of Programming Dean Cappello about the programming that I’m transcribing, and it should be up tonight or early tomorrow.
To tide you over until then:
Here’s details on the opening concert:http://www.21cmediagroup.com/mediacenter/newsitem.php?i=265
http://www.wqxr.org/articles/about-wqxr/2009/oct/06/join-wqxr-party/
Then the NY Times article about their programming guidelines: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/01/arts/music/01radio.html?_r=1&ref=music
Some reactions from Ralph Graves:
http://the-unmutual.blogspot.com/2009/10/wqxr-finest-of-flavors.html
Stay tuned for my interview!
Best,
Mona
You cannot say that people are not interested in classical radio. Google says the search on the term WQXR was the 29th most popular search of the day with the peak at 5.00pm. That was about the time they put up the new web site. By 8.00pm the web site was so overloaded that it went down for two hours. The strangest thing to me in the new schedule is that Pipedreams is repeated twice on the weekend. The only show that is repeated. WQED took Pipedreams off the air last month. Also of note is that the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra concerts are not on the schedule. The first two of the thirteen part series were broadcast before the switch.