Unpacking the Classical Workforce Survey: A Few Additional Thoughts

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

Colorado Public Radio Ends Colorado Symphony Broadcasts

In a decision that undoubtedly won’t sit well with a number of its listeners, Colorado Public Radio announced that it will no longer carry live or tape-delayed broadcasts of the Colorado Symphony, ending a 15 year partnership.  On the surface, this news looks like part of the trend in classical music broadcasting in which stations many stations are forgoing local content for the sake of cheaper, more bland, imported music.  In reality, the reasons behind this move are much more complex, and raise questions that all stations must face about content partnerships: … Continue Reading

New Classical Station in Wilmington, NC

It’s always great to see public radio stations invested in bringing classical music to their audiences through terrestrial radio signals (as opposed to online-only or HD-2 channels).  WHQR is a small station that has been operating for thirty years in Wilmington, North Carolina, and they recently launched a 24 hour classical music service.  It’s a small signal (250  99 watts), but it covers a fairly dense population center, according to this map from radio-locator.com. The station will provide 22 hours of locally-hosted programming per week, along with WXXI’s With Heart and Voice, … Continue Reading

Adding classical in Wilmington NC

Station WQHR in Wilmington is getting ready to go to 24 hours of classical music 1t 5:30 pm on September 16th.  The link to Wilmingtonbiz.com. The non-commercial, around-the-clock station will join the newly expanded non-commercial news and information station 91.3 FM WHQR News. The classical signal frequency and full program grids for both stations will be announced Sept. 16 by news release and at WHQR.org. Tuesday’s news release said the classical station will feature Jemila Ericson, Pat Marriott, favorite syndicated programs “and music, music, music.” …We hope both our classical fans and our news and … Continue Reading

Send this to a friend