After four days at the PRPD I’m trying to process the many voices competing in my head. The big, overarching question we radio types ask ourselves every year is How do we increase our audience?
As I mentioned in Friday’s post, the clearest voice to me was that of Bruce Theriault who is the Senior Vice President for Radio at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. He talked about throwing open the doors to diversity to connect with the actual public and not just the 82% older white audience we are reaching now. He said that we can never reach young audience unless we use convergent media — diverse content available to them when, where, and how they want it. And they demand a two-way conversation. Our new listeners are “collaborators who shape their own stories and make their own playlists, and their content goes everywhere.”
That’s a seismic shift in the way radio has always worked.
Bruce’s perspective was backed up by a CPB-funded project called Grow the Audience, led by the Station Resource Group. The resulting statistics were enlightening. The public radio audience is still overwhelmingly college educated, and the higher the education, the more likely people are to listen and give money. The number of college grads in the general population is going up in every age group. Currently 25% of age 25-44 college grads are minorities! So it’s not just rhetoric when Bruce says we need to open the doors to diversity.
The statistics on audience growth are different for news/talk and music programming. In news/talk the number of pubradio listeners went up sharply in 2001 and then leveled out. In music the audience level has stayed the same in all genres for 10 years. A stable audience means you can afford to take some risks.
In the classical music sessions, the talk was all about the mid-day results of the Classical Music Testing Project. The twelve stations involved in the testing are tweaking their programming to fit the results, and some are showing increased audience after purging negative-testing sounds. I talked about this in the last few posts.
My program director once said we should play only easy-to-listen-to music in the mid-day, because we didn’t want to disturb the listeners while they’re at work. That’s essentially the conclusion of the mid-day testing.
I’d like to throw out a challenge to classical music programmers, though. WDAV Program Director Frank Dominguez and I had a good chat about this. I’m ok with playing beautiful music, but we in the classical music biz need to work diversity into our programming, too. Our very survival depends on it, because our audience is diversifying, just like the news audience is. There is SO MUCH wonderful music out there that is not by dead white European men, but you have to be open-minded and you have to work at it a little.
The ethnic makeup of your community should be your guide. Even your white audience eats at Indian, Chinese, and Greek restaurants; they travel all over the world; they read; they go to movies that are set in exotic places. Why do you think they wouldn’t be interested in spicy, exotic music, too?
In classical music we have the added difficulty that two generations now haven’t had music education in school. The classical radio station needs to be the leader in the community when it comes to getting some classical music to kids. We have the power to do good! Start a kids’ concert series, air a kids’ show, sponsor stuff in the schools, bring kids into the station, do radio training for kids. Whatever it takes.
I didn’t hear a word about either diversity or youth in the classical sessions. I hope we will remedy that at the classical radio meeting in March.
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Great post, very interesting info. Thanks
There is very approachable music from people we rarely hear on Classical Public Radio. From a check of my own library: Philip Glass’ “Glassworks” and “Glass Pieces”; the Music of Alan Hovhannes; David Diamond, Don Gilles; Holste, not just “The Planets”; even Karlheinz Stockhausen; Mark O’Connor, overlooked as “cross-over”, but there are at least six completely orchestral sets of work on CD; Olivier Messiaen.
That is just my own library, which includes much beyond, with Varese, Antheil, Partch and Nancarrow, who I would of course not recommend.
Programmers need to open up.
>>RSM
The diversity issue is hugely important. Thanks for raising it, Marty.
One major factor is the lack of diversity within station staffs. Public radio conferences are overwhelmingly white. Not a good sign if diversifying the audience is crucial. I imagine that classical stations are no different.
Also, is this a broader issue within the world of classical music as well? How diverse are orchestras? The audiences that go see them? Execs at classical labels? And so forth.
I am a music pro in Chicago where we have a large classical station that plays everything. They even cater to kid’s programming with a new SAT. AM show at 11 ‘o’clock.
So called “diversity” is a code word for having a certain number of minorities on staff. Quotas have been outlawed. I hardly see how calling for quotas can provide a better influence on a station like the one in Chicago. They already play early music, romantic, modern, post modern, opera, experimental, vocal etc.
They do this because they know that their audience enjoys it and because the radio station staff are well informed and expert in choosing what to program.
It is outrageous and naive when a person calls for diversity in orchestra player rosters just for diversity’s sake. If people attended the auditions for orchestras they would see only one minority group well represented in auditions. No other minorities show up for the prospective position.
This summer I was discussing “going after the youth audience in classical music.” One of the persons I was talking with suggested that people do not come to classical music as ticket buyers until approx. age 40-45. I agree with him.
Certainly one can introduce younger than 40’s people to classical radio with interesting broadcasts. I feel that the columnists here sometimes to that in their work and that it is successful. However, if one panders to under 30’s with gimmicky programming and “introducing the audience to the sounds of the orchestra” as one columnist does here with her productions, it is cheating the sophisticated listener who is already up to speed. Now, it seems, the topic of interest in broadcasting is which way to go.
with thanks,
Plush
Plush: thanks for your comment. I disagree that “‘diversity’ is a code word for having a certain number of minorities on staff.” As a term “diversity” is somewhat euphemistic and mealy-mouthed, which, as a journalist, bugs me when I use it.
But pursuing a diverse staff doesn’t demand that a station set a goal of having X number of minorities in-house. Aiming for diversity might involve expanding the station’s outreach among people of color, for example, or using recruiting methods that haven’t been used before to diversify the applicant pool. This is why, for example, NPR and other journalistic organizations show up at journalism conferences aimed at particular ethnic groups, or gay and lesbian journalists, and so forth.
I’m not sure how having a more diverse staff would affect what listeners hear on the air. But that may not be the only point of having a more diverse staff.
And: If people don’t buy tickets to classical performances until their 40s, does that mean that orchestras should just give up on trying to reach people under 40? This actually echoes a conversation I witnessed yesterday among board members of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, who were discussing how public television could better serve listeners who are not under the age of 7 or over the age of 50. The question was, should programmers just not worry about it and do what they already know how to do?
Maybe I misunderstood “diversity. I assumed the subject was music. Of course, any organization dealing with jobs should be getting the best people they can within a budget to do the job, White, Black, Asian, Latino/Latina, male or female.
Certainly, the more diverse a programming staff, why the more diverse the influences in the music.
But, radio is still radio. People have no idea the ethnicity of the on-air people, unless something comes across in their speech.
Does anybody remember the band “Average White Band”, A.K.A. “A.W.B”? One name was used on “white” radio; the other name on “black” radio.
Regardless of the diversity of the staff, it is the music which will attract or not.
>>RSM
This is really what I was serching for (PRPD Classical Radio Wrap-up | Scanning The Dial : post)! much thanks