WUOL in Louisville, For Example

Those of us in the biz have studied at length how classical radio can survive, or even thrive, when its main proponents are in serious decline.  Alex Ross posts a scary graph in his Feb. 3rd article in the New Yorker

Every classical organization in America should print out this graph, pin it on the bulletin board, and ponder what is to be done. If the light-gray line doesn’t reverse direction in the next ten years, those organizations may begin to fold.

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Throw Open the Doors to Diversity!

Here’s a tease for Monday’s post:

Today some very strong words from Bruce Theriault, Senior VP for Radio of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, who said we need to “throw open the doors” to diversity, to new people with new ideas, to young people who understand converging media formats, and to look around us and realize that the public radio audience is 82% white, while the American population is nearly 50% non-white.

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Day 2 at the PRPD

There are lots of sessions going on at the Public Radio Program Director’s meeting, but of course on this blog I’m just reporting on the classical music ones.  This morning was a session on fundraising, and I’m pretty sure the stations don’t want me to give away the secrets of how they’re planning to persuade you to donate.  Let’s just say they sincerely want classical radio to be a partnership with their listeners, and the advice they gave us is to focus on how valuable classical music is to our lives, and that radio stations are the ones providing that value — basically for free.  I think we sometimes forget that fundamental truth and we get caught up in the minutiae.

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