I don’t mean to take away from Mike’s post yesterday, but this is just in on the blogs:
Obama: “It’s a shame” art, music being cut back in schools.
There’s a video clip with it. Some of us who’ve been in the biz for a long time think the reason classical radio is on the decline is that we’ve now had a generation of students who got little or no music in school growing up. Wow. A possible president who thinks art and music are important for a well-rounded education. Can we even dream about such a thing?
Let’s get this guy elected!
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Marty-
Did you pick up on where he briefly recounted his own experience with music in school? He said, in paraphrase “…I remember some of the music we had in school…[a little smirk and giggle] some of that music was a little out of date….”
So, I am not so sure that Classical Music would benefit from Sen Obama.
Here is an example of what hurts Classical Music on the radio: New York City is without a Country Music station. We had a Country Music station and it was significantly profitable. But the format was switched to Hispanic music because that would be even more profitable. With this sort of mind set, you can see why we lost WNCN, the “other” Classical Music station in New York City, which still has WQXR,not a great station, owned and supported by the New York Times, which did in fact sell its AM station to the highest bidder. Of course we do have WNYC, which has a great history and present in Classical Music.
I am 67 years old, so I did have music in school. My wife had music, and my 38+ years old kids had music in school. My wife’s family was completely non-musical, in fact, they were pretty much non-radio. My love of Classical Music came from my father, who had a vast LP collection of Classical.
Music, which I have reconstituted in digital form.
So, my kids grew up constantly hearing Classical Music in the house. My son has a great deal of music in his house, albeit not Classical. But. my daughter became a classical ballerina and choreographer.
I believe that a love of music, any kind of music, begins with having it in the house and having a good radio source.
[Note: it seems to me that my last post was cut off, I am not sure, so I am saving this in Word, just in case.]
I suppose I should consider myself lucky to live in Chicago. There is one classical station, WFMT. I listen, but don’t know enough about classical music to evaluate the music selection.
Dorron –
WFMT has a noted history. But, I can not tell from the web site, is it public or commercial. WPRB is also a .com; but a year ago it became a public station.
Happy listening.
>>RSM
RSM……………
WFMT is a curious mix of both, but legal under FCC. Here’s how it works, and I’ll try to be brief.
WFMT is a COMMERCIAL station, owned by a NON-COMMERCIAL organization. It’s like the National Geographic Magazine: a profitable operation, in the service of a non-profit group. So instead of a profit, they (in theory) prow the excess income into the operation and its improvement.
On the air, and on the website, it’s a commercial business, just like WGN or anybody (including the late WNIB). But the CEO, as it were, is not for profit. In fact, WFMT is owned by WTTW, the Chicago educational TV station’s parent organization.
WFMT began life as a commercial station, and continued that way until is was donated to WTTW by its then-owners — who took a big tax write-off, of course.
Same thing at WCLV, Cleveland, and KING-FM, Seattle. Both owners carefully set up a bullet-proof non-profit organization that would not sell it off to a philistine, and reetired secure that the dream would go on. Very good plan, I think. I ish the same could have been done for KHFM, Santa Fe / Albuquerque, NM, which has now gone flat.
Bill Dunning
Santa Fe
Mr. Dunning:
If you listen to WFMT regularly, you will notice that while it is operated as a commercial station and sells advertisements which are read by their staff announcers, it is not profitable. A substantial portion of the station’s funding comes from the “WFMT Fine Arts Circle”. On air fundraising occurs several times each year. During the rest of the year, there are periodic requests for people to join.
At one time, the station also published Chicago magazine (which began life as WFMT’s programming guide). It appears that the profits from the magazine may have helped support the station. My recollection is that the station’s financial problems began when WTTW sold the magagzine and used the proceeds for its general needs.
(Picking up on Dorron Katzin after a long Rip-van-Winkle): I haven’t had the opportunity to listen much to WFMT in the last few years. Listening on the internet isn’t really feasible, for me at least. But yes, WFMT is a sort of platypus mix of commercial and non-commercial radio. Like A Tale of Two Cities, the best of both worlds and the worst of both worlds, I guess. But I hope mostly the best.
I hope, for instance, that the ban on jingles and music beds still applies at WFMT. The spots were intelligent, mature conversation between the announcer and the listener — not razzle-dazzle sales pitches. That was a feature of the commercial station for decades, and is an excellent model for any station that aspires to the Fine Arts Radio model.
Even as a commercial station, WFMT was never a wildly successful profit machine. The listener’s sensibilities came first. The station stood between them and the advertiser as a sort of diplomat, editing, as it were, the ad message to be a positive, non-threatening and non-annoying appeal to the intellect. For the right sponsor and the right listener, it worked extremely well. I hope it still appeals to our beter angels.
I volunteered at WTTW years ago when I was in college in Chicago, as a very small cog in an announce booth once a week. I got the vague impression that WTTW was managed as a “big” operation, and later found many aspects of “big” in WFMT when I dealt mainly with Carol Martinez as program director a small non-commercial school FM station in New Mexico. I founded the station on the WFMT programming model, and when I left, it changed to a more conventional “public radio” style and dropped all the classical music in favor of rockers and talkers.
The advent of the internet has pretty much rendered the program guide magazine obsolete. An attentive Fine Arts Radio station (that’s shorthand for the original WFMT model) can update an on-line guide, which is nice. But if, as happens too often, there is several days’ lag in postings, it defeats its purpose. The other problem is that broadcasters are tempted to devote so much of their energy to “new media” like websites and facebook and twitter and whatever else comes down the electronic pike, that they forget about the radio station. The analogy to FM, stereo and even TV as “new media” that deserved attention may not hold, however. Certainly TV took off in entirely new directions. FM radio was indeed a boon for the FAR model, just as TV was a boon for the movie-and-vaudeville model of entertainment. No argument there. And stereo, of course, was a n integrated improvement — though it may have been a trifle overrated.
The big problem, I suggest, is that the default model in broadcasting, as in so much other “big business,” is get in, get rich a,d get out. The model of service in the long haul, modest money profit but a heavy investment in service to the [arts] community, is, well, let’ say, unpopular. Another way to put it, in follow-the-dollar terms, is that the bankers who loan money for this kind of thing can’t see beyond the bottom line, and won’t let their clients do otherwise, either. Along with “if it doesn’t bring at least 25% ROI, it’s no good” is the aesthetic attitude “if you aren’t reaching out to the lowest-common-denominator mass audience, you’re no good.” and a poor investment.
Bill Dunning
Santa Fe NM