To start with, I’ve decided to cut back a bit on my contributions to the blog. (I know, that doesn’t sound like “bulking up,” but bear with me.) In recent months I’ve found I need to give more time to other freelance projects, most of which have little to do with classical radio. Given these demands, blogging on a regular basis about developments in the field has been difficult — especially if I aspire to do it with any degree of thoughtfulness, which is important to me. So we’ve arranged for a replacement to step into my role here.

That replacement is Jack Allen, president of All Classical in Portland, Ore. You’re probably familiar with Jack if you’ve been reading our blog regularly. Marty wrote about Jack when he was hired at All Classical in 2008 and did a Q&A with him shortly thereafter. Later we ran a two-part essay by Jack about the future of classical radio (parts 1 and 2). And this year, we ran another essay by Jack detailing some additional thoughts about how classical radio can stay vital and relevant.

In his contributions Jack has demonstrated his keen grasp of the challenges facing classical radio as it evolves and his enthusiasm about the exciting trip through this changing landscape. We’re lucky to have him adding more to the conversation here at Scanning the Dial.

I’m not going anywhere — I’m becoming a “founding contributor.” I’ll still contribute posts from time to time and also post links to my Delicious page with the tag “dial” — these links all pertain to developments in classical radio. If you’d like to keep up with what else I’m doing freelance-wise, keep an eye on my Twitter feed.

It’s been a valuable adventure and a learning experience to help launch Scanning the Dial, to witness the changes in the field and to share this conversation with you. I’ll remain curious to see how classical radio weathers what looks like the continuing growth of news programming on public radio and sell-offs on the commercial side. Meanwhile, what opportunities afforded by blogs, streaming, social networking and the like will classical stations seize?

Whatever happens, we’ll be here following it with you. Thanks for reading, and Happy New Year.

One group is made up of members of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, which is selling the station. Another is a fundraising group that has helped support KFUO. I was surprised to see Patty Wente speaking on behalf of this fundraising group — she used to be general manager of KWMU, the city’s main NPR station, until she was dismissed amid controversy last year.

Read Sarah Bryan Miller’s full article here. As far as I know, it’s rare for the FCC to block station sales — but I haven’t heard of many sales that have been so vigorously opposed, either.

Also — if you read my article from Current about midday music research that I posted last week, you might want to go back and read a letter from a reader that was posted more recently on Current’s website.

There are more aspects of classical music than are dreamt of. The Brahms Academic Festival/Tragic Overture choice goes beyond “One laughs; the other cries.” The first may indeed be lightweight; but the other is a heartfelt testament. Shunting “darker” music from midday to the fringe of the schedule belies what we know of listeners tuning in when it’s convenient for them, not for us. There are unpredictable aspects to listener reactions, and these may be the very works that would have reached in a meaningful way, and ultimately served, the listener.

Jeff Skibbe commented here about the similarity of the midday research to some studies done years ago within public radio — then known as “modal music.” For some extra history, check out this Current article about the modal studies. There are indeed some similarities between that research and this more recent effort to understand and cater to listeners’ tastes.

WDAV 89.9 CLASSICAL PUBLIC RADIO TO PRODUCE NPR WORLD OF OPERA

December 18, 2009 | DAVIDSON, NC — WDAV 89.9 Classical Public Radio announced today that as of January 18, 2010, the station will take over production of National Public Radio’s World of Opera, keeping in place NPR’s successful creative team of host Lisa Simeone and producer Bruce Scott. WDAV General Manager Benjamin K. Roe is the new executive producer. The show will continue to be marketed and distributed by NPR.

NPR World of Opera, carried now by 87 public radio stations across the nation, is the only radio show in America devoted to broadcasting full-length operas captured in performance from around the world. Productions from La Scala, Bayreuth, Vienna, Paris, and Geneva regularly grace NPR World of Opera’s airwaves, as well as performances from great American opera companies, including Washington National Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Glimmerglass, Santa Fe, and New York City Opera. The production team of Simeone and Scott has been together since 2002, when Roe, then NPR’s Director of Music, paired them. While this new partnership is a first for WDAV, the organization is poised for the opportunity.

“In the last 18 months, we’ve been working to re-position WDAV as a strong source for original classical music productions from the Carolinas and beyond,” explains Roe. “This partnership with NPR puts us squarely now in front of a national audience — a step we welcome. I’m especially thrilled to be reunited with Lisa Simeone and Bruce Scott — two of the most creative and dedicated talents I’ve known in my thirty years of broadcasting.”

Adds Anya Grundmann, Executive Producer for NPR Music, “We know NPR World of Opera is in good hands, given Ben Roe’s history with the show and his award-winning classical music production credits. For NPR, this arrangement lets us continue our long, proud history of supporting opera in performance, beginning with the 1972 World Premiere of Scott Joplin’s opera Treemonisha — the work that subsequently won Joplin the first posthumous Pulitzer Prize in Music.”

I wrote a few posts about this some time ago, and just recently I wrote an update for Current, the trade newspaper that covers public broadcasting. I hope you find it enlightening — its starting point was a session at the Public Radio Program Directors’ conference in September, where station programmers shared their results due to the changes. As I learned, it’s made a big difference for some stations.

WDAV in the Charlotte, N.C., area, saw the biggest increase in midday listening by far, with a 40 percent gain since all the stations began following the research in January 2008. Program Director Frank Dominguez said he felt “guilt in retrospect” — he realized that before the change in strategy, the station simply hadn’t been playing enough music with broad appeal to its audience.

At the PRPD Conference, Dominguez cited pieces the station no longer airs regularly during middays: Brahms’s “Tragic Overture” (too dark and stressful); George Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm” variations (too schmaltzy, not classical enough); and Henryk Wienawski’s Violin Concerto No. 2 (too virtuosic). Like other participating stations, WDAV also reduced crossover classical, choral music and contemporary selections in middays.

Here’s the full story in Current. My earlier posts on the subject included a summary of the research behind this, how stations were using the findings as of June 2008, and a critic’s response to the research.

People outside the radio industry might not be aware of it, but a change is afoot in how radio stations gauge their listenership. Arbitron, the company that gathers ratings data for radio, is moving away from the paper diaries that listeners have long filled out by hand and embracing Portable People Meters — gadgets that can tune into and automatically register a radio station’s signal. This means PPMs should supposedly be more accurate, since they don’t rely on a listener’s possibly delayed or even incorrect recollection of what radio stations they listened to throughout a given day.

The move to PPMs has caused a lot of fluctuation in audience measurements, calling into question what radio stations really know about their audiences. And, as an article in yesterday’s New York Times reports, classical stations in particular have taken a beating. Classical’s share in 12 markets that introduced the PPMs last year fell by 10.7 percent.

I’d like to see more detail about a breakdown by format to help put this into context, but the Times doesn’t offer a full review. This article in Current, the trade newspaper about public broadcasting, does delve into the effects of PPM measurement on public radio stations in particular, however. One analysis presented at this year’s Public Radio Program Directors conference found that dual-format stations — the stations that air both news and music, often classical — have suffered the largest audience declines among public stations, but that all-news stations saw a drop as well. Will PPM measurement prompt even more station to abandon the dual format, adding to a trend that showed no sign of abating this year?

For more reactions, see this letter to Current in which one program director in public radio expressed a positive attitude about the shift to PPMs. Greg Sandow also commented on the Times article on his blog.

Well, not entirely. Like Gainesville’s WUFT, which made a similar move in August, WMFE is moving the classical music to an HD channel. The station’s president says “It’s not like we’re eliminating classical music,” but come on — for what’s no doubt the vast majority of the station’s audience, that not true.

Why did WMFE make the switch? For reasons often cited by other public radio stations. From the Orlando Sentinel:

“We have seen a gradual decrease in the classical music listening audience while the audience for news has been on a substantial increase,” said José Fajardo, president and CEO for WMFE. “With the technology of HD radio, we saw the best of providing both worlds.”

Another reason for the shift: During on-air campaigns, contributions from classical listeners have declined while those from news listeners have increased.

I’m surprised in this instance by how sudden the change was — WMFE only announced it to listeners yesterday, and it goes into effect today. No word so far of a Gainesville-like crusade to save the music — could that explain the short notice?

Well, the station had its first fund drive since the switch, and donations were down — by 37 percent, according to the Gainesville Sun.

Local classical fans had urged their kind not to donate as a form of protest, which might explain some of the decline. But station personnel are looking on the bright side, emphasizing that they got more first-time donations than in the drive a year ago.

The article reports that some local listeners are happy with the change:

Alachua County resident Alison Law said she had last donated about 15 years ago before donating again this year. Law, who is active in local political issues, said she previously turned off the station when it played music during the day but hasn’t listened to any other station since news and talk shows were added at that time.

“There’s more to life than classical music,” she said.

Whatever the reasons are for pledging and not pledging, it’s probably too soon to see one down pledge drive as a final referendum on the format switch. Any station that makes a format change will see some churn in both audience and support, and such things take a while to shake out. We’ll just have to see how the station is faring a year or two from now.

And if you’ve been following the sale of St. Louis’s KFUO-FM, check out this blog post by the Post-Dispatch’s Sarah Bryan Miller — the reporter who’s been covering the sale — in which she dissects an FAQ put forth by the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, which is selling the station. It gets into the nitty-gritty, but it’s worth seeing how the Synod has been blurring the truth about details of the sale. And it’s unfortunate for the public — which supposedly ought to share common ownership of our airwaves, even those that are commercially licensed — that the sale was negotiated in such secrecy.

So it looks as if classical fans in St. Louis despondent over the imminent loss of KFUO might have some salvation coming. KRCU, a public radio station in Cape Girardeau, Mo., is eying an upgrade of its signal in Farmington, about 80 miles outside of St. Louis. In a release on KCRU’s website, General Manager Dan Woods says that could get the station’s signal into parts of St. Louis.

The station is waiting for FCC approval and, if it gets the go-ahead, could boost its power by May. The increase would more than double the repeater’s current wattage.

KRCU doesn’t air as much classical as KFUO — it’s a dual-format station that airs classical between the NPR newsmagazines and most weeknights, as well as an opera program on Sundays. But for classical lovers missing their city’s full-time outlet, KRCU’s fare would certainly be an improvement over no classical at all.

This article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch collects the reactions of several disappointed members of the city’s arts community:

Fred Bronstein, president of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, a frequent partner of Classic99, called the sale “a tragic loss for the city and its wealth of cultural institutions.” On Tuesday afternoon, the orchestra sent an e-mail blast to nearly 20,000 people, suggesting that they contact the LCMS and the FCC with their opinions.

Other arts representatives spoke out against the sale.

“Most of our ticket sales come from Classic99,” said Alayne Smith, executive director of the Bach Society of St. Louis. “That will be a huge loss to us. It’s almost like there’s a death in the family.”

Said Linda Ryder, executive director of the St. Louis Chamber Chorus: “It’s a major blow to the arts community. This further damages our big-city status, just as if we were losing a sports team.”

As the newspaper also noted on a blog, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra has stepped up to mobilize its supporters against the sale. Way to go, SLSO!

The SLSO, along with many of its fans and friends in the local artistic community, believes the loss of KFUO-Classic 99 would diminish the cultural diversity of the St. Louis community. With the loss of KFUO, the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, one of the cultural jewels of the city, would lose a vital advocate. The sounds of classical music over the region’s airwaves would be silenced.

We suggest that you express your opinion on the pending sale of KFUO. You may contact the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod via their website or e-mail its Board of Directors: bod@lcms.org. Or you may reach the Synod by phone 1-888-THE-LCMS (843-5267). You may also contact the FCC via their website or e-mail fccinfo@fcc.gov.

It’s a shame to see another big city lose a classical station, and the secretive manner in which negotiations were pursued — over objections from church leaders, no less — certainly raises some questions. Unfortunately, it would be highly unusual for the FCC to deny the sale.

This extensive study by Jacobs Media surveyed more than 28,000 public radio listeners about their use of technology. Respondents were grouped according to their preferred radio formats, so there’s lots of information to digest about classical listeners in particular, and it’s interesting to compare their habits to those of other listeners.

Perhaps not surprisingly, classical listeners were not as up on some trends. Sixty-five percent of classical listeners said they never send text messages — that’s the largest proportion of any format’s fans. Likewise, only 28 percent of classical listeners listen to podcasts — the smallest share of any format.

There’s much, much more to be learned from the study, so take a look at the PDF. PRPD has also made available an audio stream of Fred Jacobs presenting the study, which is definitely worth a listen — it may help you to process the large amount of data gathered.