Bill Kling Stepping Down

Big news in the radio world: Bill Kling, the man who started American Public Media and who hired Garrison Keillor, is stepping down  in June after 45 years at Minnesota Public Radio.   Kling began a small regional station in Minnesota in 1967.  From that he has created a media conglomerate that now employs 700 radio professionals broadcasting on 44 stations.

American Public Media announced on Friday that Kling plans to work on a national fundraising initiative to improve newsgathering among public media outlets.  He’ll also be doing some public advocacy (a nice euphemism for “lobbying.”)   This article from MPR News claims that APM is “the largest public media group in the nation.”  I expect NPR might beg to differ.  Regardless, APM and its subsidiary Minnesota Public Radio have been serving the public radio audience for decades with such programs as A Prairie Home Companion and Marketplace.  More recently, and to this blog more importantly, APM became the home of Performance Today and SymphonyCast, when they were cast off from NPR.

Having an advocate with the talents and stature of Bill Kling can only be great for public radio.  We at Scanning the Dial wish him every possible good wish for continued success.

On another note:

All is not going smoothly with the increase to 24/7 classical in Houston.  As you can imagine, the students at Rice University do not want to lose their eclectic indie programming and are protesting the sale of their station to KUHF.  Not only that, but the KTRU signal is not clear in the southern and western parts of Houston, so listeners in those areas may lose what classical they’ve been able to hear on dual format station KUHF.  We’ll keep you updated as the situation evolves.

About Marty Ronish

Marty Ronish is an independent producer of classical music radio programs. She currently produces the Chicago Symphony Orchestra broadcasts that air 52 weeks a year on more than 400 stations and online at www.cso.org. She also produces a radio series called "America's Music Festivals," which presents live music from some of the country's most dynamic festivals. She is a former Fulbright scholar and co-author of a catalogue of Handel's autograph manuscripts.

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2 thoughts on “Bill Kling Stepping Down”

  1. This “poor” little radio empire has managed to put out of existence its last competitor playing classical music in the Twin Cities area, WCAL. WCAL’s classical music programming goes way back. Kling badgered the WCAL board of directors until they gave in and whorishly killed venerable WCAL. In it’s place is a horrible bash in the face of that Saint Olaf College radio station because it now plays an wholly unlistenable mish-mash of whatever the disc jockey wants to play. Kling’s greedy gorgon ways have stifled other stations from expanding. The list is incredible. This poor little for-profit/non-profit has bought out stations. Not only that, the foolish owner of KLBB, the Music of Your Life station in Saint Paul GAVE away his station to Kling.

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