More from AMPPR

I asked some of the attendees at the AMPPR conference in NYC to write reports for this blog.  Here is the first of two installments:

From John Pitman, Music Director at All Classical in Portland OR:

While visiting the facilities of WQXR/WNYC, I felt like I was walking the halls of some vast intergalactic public radio space station:  multiple floors, corridors, elevators, seemingly uncountable staff… it was most impressive.
 Actually, they really deserve such a beautiful  space, because the folks at the country’s #1 station are making some great (public) radio.  It seemed like the ideal place to host this year’s AMPPR (Association of Music Personnel in Public Radio) conference.  As always, a great opportunity to revisit familiar colleagues in the system, make new friends, and learn what everyone is doing to create great radio all across the country.

At a session on fundraising, staff from WWFM explained how they completely retooled the pledge drive model, and now do several one-day membership campaigns, each with a special theme and the promise of a full day of a particular composer’s music.  They say that their audiences responded, airstaff became re-invigorated and, most telling of all, cume went up 30%.

When “Radio and Record Companies work together”, the name of the next session took place, there was one basic message being sent from our friends at Naxos, Harmonia Mundi, Universal  and others:  tell us how you want us to deliver audio – either as CD or files – and we’ll deliver.  Radio stations say they want the option to choose either.   The outlook is very promising.

At Fred Child’s Air Talent Session, the host of Performance Today listened to just one aircheck (from WDAV: their 2-minute modules on Chopin), but the majority of the session was a very informal, yet informative, discussion about how announcers can do more to make compelling radio.  One piece of advice that Fred said not to be afraid of:  using silence to emphasize a point, or to allow a piece of music to breathe.  Give the listener the chance, if only for a couple of seconds, to grasp what has been said or heard.

My colleague, Edmund Stone, attended the session on writing and submitting grants.  Marty Ronish was on the panel, along with Ted Libbey (NEA).  One piece of advice that stands out for me:  Explain your approach in language that a layperson can understand.

Greg Sandow, a music critic and consultant of orchestras around the country, spoke of a “rebirth” and “the future of classical music”.  His talk was primarily based on his experience working with orchestras – he acknowledged that he wasn’t as familiar with how radio works – but I took from his advice the importance of finding creative ways to reach out to younger audiences by trying new things.  I think it would be interesting if a station invited Mr. Sandow to visit a radio station, stay for a week, and learn how radio operates (from the technical side as well as in development and outreach), how it tackles the issues of building audiences, and see what ideas he comes up with.

WQXR Presents:  There was one detail that I noticed on their playlist page of the website that I found really intriguing:  listeners can click and submit comments on the music they are hearing at that moment.  As music director, I would be interested in seeing the kinds of comments our listeners have to our music selections.

Tom Thomas of the Station Resource Group presented the findings from the Grow the Audience report.  He shared some ideas for stronger performance in ratings:  Personality that builds trust with listeners; a sense of timeliness and immediacy; break content that is story and character driven; exercising the same high production values on music programming that we demand of news and information programming.  Mr. Thomas’s advice for “next steps”?  Develop concrete plans for yourself and your organization; grow the money to match your plans.

Stage and Screen Music:  My colleague from All Classical here in Portland, Edmund Stone, is host of our weekly syndicated film music program, “The Score”.  He was invited by Beth Krakower of Cinemedia to be on a panel sharing ideas of how stations can integrate film music into their regular programming.  

I commented, during the session that film music contains an entire repertoire of material that is available to me as a music director in crafting the overall sound of the station.  There are many great composers who happened to have written music to accompany the medium of film, either as just one facet of their career (like Copland or Korngold) or fulltime (John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein).  Does it all fit into our sound?  No.  Is it all of top-notch quality?  No, but then, neither does the main classical music field, as I’ve learned after 25+ years of being an announcer, music librarian, and music director.  It’s as if I’ve just discovered a room behind a door in the music library with hundreds of CDs I was previously unaware of.  Give these CDs a listen, applying the same criteria you would to any traditional classical composer’s work, and you might be surprised at what you can enhance your playlist with.  You might just attract new audiences as a result.

From Randy Anderson, Music Director at KPAC in San Antonio: 
It was appropriate that this years AMPPR conference was in NYC at the revitalized WQXR now America’s number one public radio station. With guests ranging from Gil Shaham to Thomas Hampson the music and the message was great. Classical is back and the future looks brighter than it has in years.

David Duff is right, classical music has a place and it is on PUBLIC radio.