Audience

Unpacking the Classical Workforce Survey: A Few Additional Thoughts

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Classical Music Rising’s Workforce Survey, which I blogged about here and wrote about more extensively in Current, has already been making waves in the classical radio community.  To recap ever so briefly, the survey shows that over half of classical radio personnel are white men over 50.  Station leaders anonymously quoted in the survey are concerned about this for two main reasons: a) a looming talent vacuum and the potential for the classical format to be eliminated from their stations when older classical announcers retire or die, and b) older staff are … Continue Reading

A Brief Rant: The Metropolitan Opera Quizzes Have To Go

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I’ll start by admitting that I rarely tune in for the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts.  When I do, it’s usually because I’m in the car and when I turn the ignition, the radio comes on, and it is almost always tuned to the station that employs me.  So I’ll listen for as long as it takes to get where I’m going.  It’s even rarer that I listen to an entire production from start to finish, and in those cases it’s usually when I’ve had to step in to run the board due to the … Continue Reading

Revisiting the Mike Nichols Test

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Today, the world learned of the passing of film and stage director Mike Nichols, known for many great things, among them his 1968 Best Director Oscar for “The Graduate.”  Mr. Nichols was also a radio personality – while in school at the University of Chicago in 1952, he became an announcer at WFMT, and was the first host and producer of the station’s Saturday night folk and comedy show “The Midnight Special,” which airs to this day. One of the other radio legacies that Nichols left was his tongue-twisting test for would-be … Continue Reading

Classical Music: Could There Be an App for That?

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First of all, sorry for the hiatus!  Took a week off in early October to visit family and friends across New England, then upon returning it was time for WFIU’s pledge drive, which consumed many of my waking hours for eleven days.  I’ve been playing catch-up ever since, and am just now getting around to blogging again.  I have already blogged about the Coleman Insights survey data that was presented at PRPD 2014, and in that post I reflected on the way classical music stations market themselves.  Now I’d like to explore … Continue Reading

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