Great news from David Duff, President of the Association of Music Personnel in Public Radio:
This year’s MPC will be in New York City, in the Greene Performance Space at WNYC/WQXR. Dates for the conference will be April 21-23, 2010.
We’ll be reducing the registration fee this year to assist stations affected by the economy (aren’t we all?). Exact amount will be set soon.
Conference hotel will be the Four Points Soho, with a nightly rate of $179.
We will keep you posted as the agenda develops.
This year’s Music Personnel Conference happens later in the spring than usual, which should make travel a little easier. And it’s exciting to have a station host the conference on-site, especially the brand new configuration at WNYC/WQXR, where our colleagues are busy merging the best ideas of both stations and trying to set a fresh new course for all of us. Have you heard their online channel Q2 yet? It’s very cool. Not boring. I can’t wait to see their operation and meet up with old friends who are in new jobs.
If you can scrape up the shekels, I hope you’ll try to make this year’s conference. It’s going to take all of us to turn this ship around and breathe new life into it.
When classical music radio realizes that it’s a dynamic content provider and not just elevator music on FM, we will be on our way. The Consumer Electronics Convention going on in Las Vegas right now is exciting proof of the new opportunities we have for getting our content out there. People are going to be able to listen online in their cars, on their phones, on their new tablet computers, on their kindles while they read, and more that we can’t even imagine.
All the more reason to make your content as fantastic as you can. Find your smartest announcers and let them do their best work, which includes letting them air new discoveries and talk with fascinating people. Top notch content is the only thing that will cut through the noise and save classical music radio. Conversely, if you’re streaming mediocre content out where the whole world can hear it, you’re making our whole field look bad.
News Bits:
More than 400 people showed up in Boston on Tuesday to participate in a panel discussion about the new WCRB, its lousy signal, and the weak programming that’s bothering the sophisticated, educated Boston audience. Rather than my telling you the highlights, it’s worth reading the whole article. You can find it here.
In Minnesota, the grassroots group in Northfield MN called SaveWCAL has been trying since 2004 to get their classical music back, based on the premise that the donors to the classical station did not approve the sale and change of format to adult contemporary. The Star Tribune reports that the group’s leader, Ruth Sylte lost again in the Minnesota Court of Appeals when she tried to get the judge to declare the station a charitable trust.
“I think of the tens of thousands of donors over the course of 80 years who gave hard-earned money … to make sure this station existed for the benefit of all of us,” she said, choking up. “When you look at that cloud of witnesses behind us, how could you not be inspired to do the right thing on their behalf?”
WCAL was bought up by Bill Kling of Minnesota Public Radio and is airing The Current. Northfield, home to Carleton College and St. Olaf College is a passionate enclave of classical music lovers.
And Radio-info.com is reporting that baseball superstar Albert Pujols is backing the plan for classical KFUO-FM in St. Louis to switch to contemporary Christian. The “Committee to Save KFUO-FM” and several individuals have petitions in to the FCC to deny the sale, on the grounds that the buyer, Gateway Creative Broadcasting, lied to the FCC about having the money in hand at the time of their bid. It’s still a mess.
Subscribe Via Email
Enter your email address to subscribe to Scanning the Dial and receive notifications of new posts by email.
Thank you for subscribing.
Something went wrong.
The MPC should find New York to be a pretty peaceful place. And, the Greenspace is really terrific. Things are settling out nicely with the new configuration of WNYC/WQXR. The vitriol on the station’s comment pages has calmed down. Maybe some people left; but there are some very complimentary remarks now.
I am primarily a Q2 listener, coming from WNYC’s eclectic musical perspective. But I do listen to 105.9 a bit, just to see what’s going on, like Bernstein’s “Jeremiah” on Symphony Hall. You would not have heard that on the old WQXR.
On the events is Boston, there has been a lot in forums and in the “blogosphere” (in fact, everywhere except WGBH, where there appear to be no forums, blogs, or comment pages), but, surprisingly to me, nothing from the Bostonians on “…the Minneapolis syndicate…” business. I mean, maybe they don’t care? I looked at other stations listed for Classical 24 at http://publicradiofan.com and Classical 24 is listed in their program guides. I have an alert set for WCRB because of the unfortunate comparisons between Boston and New York. I think that this is so unfortunate for Boston listeners. I hope that they wake up.