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.

Session two today was more about midday programming.  Four stations — WDAV, WITF, WGUC, and KBPS (you can Google the call letters if you want to see more about them) — were part of the original Classical Music Testing Project, which I mentioned in yesterday’s post.

They each talked about how they changed their programming to align it with the findings of the study.  I probably shouldn’t publish this, because they like to keep the nuts and bolts quiet, but I believe public radio is public and needs to be transparent, so I’m sharing it with you.

Let me preface this by saying the results of the study are more about sounds than about specific pieces.  The stations solicited adjectives about what sounds listeners liked and disliked.  The likes included familiar, predictable, clear melody line, consonant, light, inviting, happy, gentle.  The dislikes were unfamiliar, wild dynamic shifts, overly saccharine, unclear melody lines, dissonant, heavy, scary, static, angry, dark, and brooding.

WDAV eliminated marginal and polarizing sounds from midday.  For instance, they dropped Brahms’ Tragic Overture, but kept the Academic Festival Overture; dropped Gershwin’s I Got Rhythm Variations, but kept the Rhapsody in Blue.

All of the stations rotate in familiar pieces more often and excerpt single movements from longer works like symphonies and string quartets.  They now play 2 or 3 familiar works in an hour, repeat them frequently, and play more from the classical era — Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.  The stations feel that this satisfies the casual listeners, and the more serious listeners like it, too, or at least put up with it.  In all four stations the ratings have gone up.

At KBPS in Portland, Program Director John Silliman Dodge said they scrubbed their CD library and “de-listed” any CDs that didn’t meet the criteria.  Dodge said

We need to set aside the intellectual — it belongs to another era.

From the questions and the general mood in the room, there seemed to be a lot of interest in the results and a surprising amount of agreement with the conclusions.  But afterwards, I talked to several people and by no means is there consensus.   The controversy is worth discussing in this space, but not tonight.

More tomorrow…

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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7 thoughts on “Day 2 at the PRPD”

  1. When did they start implementing the findings? The programmers I talked to earlier this year said they started making changes around Jan. 1. Personally I think it may be premature to correlate audience gains to the programming changes. It will be interesting to see if those gains stay over time.

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  2. It’s not accurate to say that serious listeners “put up” with familiar selections in the music testing. The indications from the music testing is that, in general, they like them even more than the casual listeners. There was no evidence of “burnout.”

    Were there Serious listeners who gave negative ratings to familiar pieces? Sure. But the majority gave them positive ratings.

    Also, the qualities listed were the result of analysis by the partner stations, they were not “solicited” from listeners. Marty may not have intended that meaning in her post, but I wanted to make sure that was clear.

    As to Mike’s point about it being too early to correlate gains to the changes, he’s absolutely right, and our project director made that point several times in the PRPD session. Our gains were reported to the session as “preliminary results” and by no means conclusive.

    Full disclosure: in addition to being part of the panel and PD at one of the partner stations, I am one of the members of the PRPD project team.

    One point that I wish you would have reported is that we are adadmant that we are not seeking to provide a list of what to play and what NOT to play. We’re simply trying to inform classical music programmers about how different listeners react to different types of music.

    I personally made the point in my comments that this research can just as easily help stations tailor their approach to Serious listeners as Casual ones, and in the case of WDAV’s strategy, we want to appeal to both kinds of listeners by seeking the common ground they share, which is considerable.

    The objective is not simply larger audience measurements, although those are nothing to be ashamed of, either. The objective is to make classical music a larger part of more people’s lives, which we believe is good for the art form, even if it doesn’t provide the entire range of it in the middle of the day.

    Our own philosophy at WDAV is that thinking strategically at prime times such as middays puts us in a better position to inform our listeners about the other types of music we play at other times in the schedule (on concert shows such as Peformance Today, SymphonyCast and our own Carolina Live and Main Street Sessions), and the other opportunities they have for exploring classical music in more depth in our own community. Having more listeners to hear these messages rather than fewer seems like a win-win.

    Our emphasis on appeal at prime times doesn’t keep us from occasional excursions, such as the hour we’ll devote to Steve Reich during our weekly Artist Spotlight later this month, or the live broadcast of the Charlotte Symphony’s season-opening Mozart and Mahler concert last Saturday, or the weekly arts features we produced on a range of interesting classical concerts. We like to think that respecting the preferences of the majority of our listeners most of the time gives us more credibility to occasionally say to them, “This may be a little different, but give it a try.”

    I don’t think there NEEDS to be consensus on this subject. There are certainly examples of stations that survive with a more traditional approach, and I think there’s room in the system for approaches as diverse as those of WNYC with their Evening Music (which I greatly admire), and those that are trying to emphasize appeal in order to accommodate more people in the classical tent, rather than fewer.

    But there are all too many examples of stations struggling to succeed with the classical format (by any measure) because they’re putting the preferences of their staff above those of the very listeners from whom they expect loyalty and financial support.

    If research can help stations come to grips with that challenge, I think it’s worthy. The objective all of us have in our hearts is keeping classical music alive on the radio. We should encourage a diversity of approaches, and not disparage colleagues who are genuinely trying to serve listeners better by learning more about them.

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  3. Thanks for your thoughtful response, Frank. I do want to open up a dialogue on the whole subject of programming, and by no means do I want to disparage my colleagues or their research. A diversity of approaches is exactly what I’m hoping for.

    I can give you a “for instance.” I did mid-days for six years using programming that fit snugly into the criteria of the study. Consonant, melodic, beautiful music. And our ratings dipped at lunchtime, so we decided to start a lunchtime show. I ran with a show that broke every single mid-day rule and defied every single core value. The ratings doubled in one year. Just ask those KHFM listeners who are bemoaning the current state of their station about the old Classical Cafe.

    I don’t think it was so much about the programming as it was about the passion and the people connection.

    On the other hand, I believe fervently in melody. That’s my number one criterion for what makes classical music so great.

    Anyway, Frank and I had a very good talk after today’s sessions, and I’m going to write more about the PRPD on Monday.

    One slight correction: I took five pages of notes from the session, and the comment about “putting up with” the more familiar selections came from Robin Gehl at WGUC. She said that “the serious listeners will hang with you and will put up with it.”

    To be continued…

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  4. I’m sure Robin regrets the unfortunate choice of words, and agrees with my perspective on the matter. I, too, enjoyed our talk, and look forward to continuing the dialogue, both in person and online.

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  5. Agreed.

    Official implementation began Jan 1 (though some made changes as we discussed the results beginning in July 07).

    Any audience results are VERY preliminary. We all know that Arbitron numbers can be volatile and the even the larger markets have only seen 2 books of results.

    The best we can claim is that the initial results look promising and there is no evidence of any negative result.

    I must also comment on “Put up with it”. It is clear from the research that Serious listeners LIKE “more familiar selections”. Indeed, they consistently rated them HIGHER than Casual listeners.

    “Repeat them frequently” is a relative term. No one is adopting anything even remotely like rock-format rotations. They are just recognizing that previous rotations were so restrictive that, for example, most listeners might hear their favorite pieces only once or twice a year.

    There is a great deal of latitude in the findings of this study. As with all rules, there are situations where one may break them with positive results. But, go too far on that path and you turn people away. The creative act is in truly “listening” to the audience and respecting their tastes while providing a broad and interesting mix of music.

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  6. Wow. I feel honored to have Frank and Arthur both commenting. For those of you who don’t know him, Arthur is the President of the PRPD, and he ran a great meeting — very inspiring and informative.

    I respect both the results of the study and the sentiments behind wanting to serve the audience in the best possible way. When I was programming a station I intuitively sought out tuneful and listenable music for mid-days.

    Standing back a little, though, I see us narrowing and limiting the playlist, when I think we should always be expanding it and keeping it fresh. If we play mostly familiar and soothing music and follow that to its logical conclusion, it becomes elevator music, and as a business model, easy-listening formats fail.

    Think of this way: what if we keep the criteria of melody, consonance, gentleness, etc. but also find pieces that meet our other long term goals, which are to reach diverse and new, younger audience? I’ll bet if we collaborate, we could put out a dynamite playlist of pieces that meet those criteria.

    The “put up with it” line was a direct quote that makes me wonder if we might be a little unsure if we’re doing the right thing.

    Where do creativity, freshness, and bold new ideas fit into classical programming? Are we doomed to go in the same rut, and play the same old familiar pieces forever? That sounds like a death sentence to me.

    I’m trying to be provocative here! Your comments are welcome in a spirit of openness, frank discussion, even civil disagreement. Anything but soporific acquiescence.

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  7. Frank- you don’t know me, I am just a PubRadio fanatic and WNYC zealot.

    If you like what’s going on with Terrance and David for Evening Music at WNYC, I wonder if you have listened to wnyc2, the 24/7/365 web stream?

    George Preston and Brad Cresswell have, in my view, with my tastes, done a fabulous job with wnyc2, which has heavily influenced Evening Music. Until Terrance McKnight. Terrance has picked up the ball and taken Evening Music to even greater heights with-that magic word- diversity. David Garland is and has been for years one the towering giants of music on PubRadio .

    BTW, if you like what you hear on WNYC, why, give a listen to WPRB, Princeton, NJ (http://www.wprb.com) which has recently become listener supported. Classical Music is on Mon-Fri 6:00AM (or when someone wakes up)-11:00AM. Probably the best person to hear is Marvin Rosen, whose schedule is variable, more time as the semester goes on.

    >>RSM

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