Here’s Hoping for a Better Decade in Classical Radio

Happy New Year!  We start the year with good news in Oxford, Mississippi where the sale of a translator by San Diego’s Christian Broadcasting has brought classical music to the town’s airwaves.  If you’re in Oxford you should be able to pick up Memphis-station WKNO, a mix of NPR shows and classical music, at 103.1. 

In looking back over the decade I think of how many of my friends in classical radio have lost their jobs– including me, twice!  I’m happy to have a job now, but so many of my colleagues are still out of work, or at least out of radio.  There’s a lot of serious talent out here not being used.

There’s a stream going at the Music Library Association listserv right now titled “Collapse of classical radio.”  There hasn’t been much of substance there besides some praise for classical radio in Minnesota and Seattle and a lot of venting about how bad the programming on some other classical stations has become.  And at Radio Survivor Matthew Lasar says his local radio station is so unlistenable he chooses to listen online to the much better selection at Pandora instead. 

What we at Scanning the Dial hope to see in the next decade is an appreciation by radio management that our music is both broader and deeper than any other format.  If you’re playing  just chestnuts, Haydn impersonators, and calming sounds, resolve to put a little more energy into intelligent programming.  I hope you will listen to your listeners.  Radio is still a thriving business as long as you give people something fabulous to listen to.  That means outstanding announcing, interesting music choices, the live performances that are available to you on Performance Today, SymphonyCast, and World of Opera, or the many shows that come to you free from the WFMT Network.  If your listeners are stuck listening to second-rate performances and second-rate composers on CD instead of exciting live performances by the New York Philharmonic and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, they are being cheated. 

I’ve heard the excuses, the “not on my air” conceit, the notion that we have to keep from bothering people while they work, the posturing that we can’t let Chicago and New York decide our programming for us.  Gack.   One of the themes we hear at radio meetings is “never be boring.”  

I look forward to reporting great things about your station this year.  Tell us what you’re up to, what works, what doesn’t, and how we can support you in your mission.  Scanning the Dial wishes you a fabulous new year, better than the tough year we’ve just gone through.  You’re keeping the flame alive!

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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1 thought on “Here’s Hoping for a Better Decade in Classical Radio”

  1. Marty-

    I had trouble posting a comment, Mike and Drew say it is all fixed.

    On the Boston WCRB/WGBH thing, I was curious and did some snooping. Fully seven of the ten regular on-air hosts at WCRB turned out to be not WGBH people, but Minnesota Public Radio people. So, maybe what they are getting in Boston is “Classical 24”, canned music aimed at the lowest common denominator, what one noted Classical music critic called “musical wall paper”, designed not to intrude.

    Also, in Boston, the listeners are having to thrash out their views at boston.com, a service of the Boston Globe, and in blogs like Doc Searle’s.

    Somehow, I think that the listeners in Boston, one of this country’s cultural meccas, deserve better.

    I am heartened that at WQXR, we do not have this problem.

    Reply

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