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.
The graph, from the Audience Demographic Research Review, commissioned by the NEA and the League of American Orchestras, shows steep declines in classical music audiences. [UPDATE: The League’s report and the NEA’s report are from two separate studies, though both came to similar conclusions. This graph is from the League’s report which focused on orchestra audiences; the NEA’s study was much broader.]
Classical stations have the power to nurture a new generation of classical listeners. That’s a topic for another time.
In this blog we have been pondering solutions for our little corner of the business. That’s why I wanted Jack Allen to write for this blog. He is on the ground, dealing daily with the real issues you all face at the stations. I also heard recently from Daniel Gilliam, Program Director at WUOL in Louisville.
In Louisville, WUOL’s listenership has doubled and time spent listening has nearly doubled over the last year. Fundraising is going exceptionally well even in a recession. Daniel, frankly, is younger than most of us in the biz. He’s fairly new at being a P.D. and doesn’t have some of the old habits and hangups. “It’s no longer ok,” he says,
…to talk about classical music as though it’s some sort of higher art that only the educated can appreciate. We have to appreciate the immediacy and personal nature of the music. Haydn and Mozart didn’t have Ph.D.s. We have to be aware of the energy and subtlety we project. We don’t always give our listeners credit for picking up on the subtleties of inflection, like the old-school inflection that implies “this is too difficult for you.”
You might think this is obvious, but just this week I heard a whole slew of stentorous voices – those arrogant, booming male voices that were ok 30 years ago. If you’ve been on the air for 25 or 30 years, it might be time for you to either retire or change your style.
WUOL has gone to exceptional lengths to promote for the local arts groups, support live concerts, have a presence at events, and even put the best of the local music on the air. Both Daniel Gilliam and Jack Allen believe that if the station supports the community, the community will support the station.
Again, you say this is obvious. Let me tell you — it’s definitely NOT obvious to everyone. Some stations just plunk the syndicated shows on their automation and go home. Others promote for the big bucks arts groups and ignore the little ones. It takes a lot of energy to get out and engage with the community.
It also takes a lot of energy to produce great radio — how are your production values? Are you getting fascinating voices on the air, or is it just the announcers spinning CDs? How much live music are you airing? Some stations sound tired and unadventurous. Many are trying lighter mid-day programming, following the tenets of the Mid-day Classical Music Testing by the PRPD and CPB. Some are playing more world and crossover music. Some are playing classical lite.
If you want to double your ratings, you can’t keep doing what you’ve been doing. Change it up. Make a splash. Speak up for the little guy. Find the excitement. Make new friends in the community. Do something for the kids to get them interested in your music. Be bold. Be brave. Try something new!
And Happy Monday!
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I read Alex’s article.
In either this article, or the one on (Le)Poisson Rouge, the context was that not only Classical music attendance was down, but so was Jazz, and, even sporting events.
In the later article, about(Le)Poisson Rouge, the new New York City New Music hangout in the old Village Gate, Alex commented that we citizens just in general do not any longer en masse want the cost and hassle of attending pretty much anything. He says -and this sure is me – that we just want to sit at home with the tacos and watch and listen on the big HD screens in the house.
I think that he thinks the Classical music – and Jazz for that matter – are actually in pretty good shape if one considers all of the new fangled way we listen to music – internet streaming, mp3 players and the like.
I know that both WQXR in Classical music and WBGO in Jazz are expanding videocasting, and even archiving the videos so that if I find it inconvenient to be at the computer at some specific time, I can still see the videocast from the archive. This is the new world.
So, take that Terry Teachout and all the rest of the naysayers. We are not listening any less. Rather, we have gotten fat and lazy and tired of the expense and hassle.
Peter Gelb has taken a huge and successful step of putting the Metropolitan Opera into movie theatres, close to home, cheap. It’s all part of the same thing. The paradigms are changing, but the music is alive and well.
Great poke, Marty!
I read the article as well. I think Richard nails it.
Paradigms are changing, shifting simultaneously with the evolution of new listening devices, the concept of “broadcast” and the way we want and consume our music. Everyone I know is listening more and more to classical music, just not as much in formal settings.
BTW, we at All Classical have placed in-house programs “on-demand” for convenient repeated plays here.
And we archive our pre-concert video chats with the Oregon Symphony here.
Again, we can’t just get away with pushing content AT people any more. They want (more and more) to interact with our materials and customize it. They can do that with just about everything else in their world. They want a say in how acquisition works and how it feels to listen. Look at how our web sites are evolving…Facebook and Twitter links and even blogs by our hosts.
We must be honest and fierce about the barriers that we have created to listening to our stations and attending our concerts.
Classical Radio: bad attitude – we know what’s best; this is the way we’ve always done it; in order to appreciate this music you must be sober and serious; the vast unseen audience is viewed as the vast unwashed within which exists a cadre of musicians, musicologists and academics…whom we’ll serve (re: want to please) the rest can just hang on for the ride (until membership drive when we need them). MIA – localism and true affinity with our communities – not token localism but real engagement with our arts partners and listeners.
Classical Concerts: lousy parking, expensive tickets, formal attire, audience antipathy (I will be alone when I get there – will I run into any friends? – I will stand out – will I be ostracized?); rigid rules of engagement (we must sit absolutely still for 2 hours – which is exhausting) don’t move or tap your toe (an exercise in discipline even if the music is crazy, wild and fun) and NO clapping between movements. AND, what about the programming. Now there’s a conundrum, accessibility and ticket sales vs. serving the blue hairs and the academic cadre again (local arts column writer!).
Now, with all that said, can we truly expect to grow our audiences when the experience is so stilted? Think about the reaction of some patrons and some boards when stations or orchestras try to change the rules. All hell breaks loose.
Think about all the other genres of music we enjoy, from jazz to rock and how we listen at home and then how we behave in live music settings. The only genre that causes me to fake a demeanor is classical music. When I’m at home, I dance, move, sing, and air conduct to my favorite compositions. Enter the concert hall and I become Béla Lugosi.
I know many that will read this thread and say, “But we’ve come so far! These are arguments and battles we were facing back in the 80’s.” We’ve got a long way to go!
Perhaps we need a time machine in order to travel back to Mozart’s day when there was eating and drinking in the music halls and clapping between movements!
Finally, I’ll throw another log on the fire and suggest that we must further explore film music and its role in our programming – on the radio and live concerts.
If you haven’t already, please read this excellent essay by Jack Sullivan: Is Movie Music the New Classical? Let’s not throw the Bach out with the bath water, I’m just sayin’. We MUST understand where our world is today and what is relevant to our audiences. If we’re smart, there are so many cool connections we can make with a captive, live, butts in seats audience, like Arnold Schoenberg’s influence on Bernard Herrmann. You can hear it in the Psycho! shower scene.
When my son was 17 he asked if the music from the film Braveheart was “classical”. I didn’t say no, I explained that it was part of the long tradition of symphonic music accompanying other art forms like ballet and opera – and now film. He asked what else, then, would he like? I gave him all 9 Beethoven Symphonies, which he listened to on his Walkman. He is a now a Shostakovitch nut. The gateway was movie music…
Onward!
Thanks Jack for a spot-on reply. I only disagree with you a little on the film music as the “new” classical music. Here’s why: There are thousands of non-film composers struggling to be accepted, mainly because new music has gotten the rap of angular-spikey-unfriendly. Some of it is, some of it isn’t. If we suddenly say film composers are the evolution of the 16-19th century tradition of concert music, where are the non-film composers going to go?
And finally, film composers are at the service of the director. 99% of scores are composed in the post-production phase, with less than two months to complete the score, most of which is cut and performed by a super-computer or studio orchestra (if you’re lucky). Opera/ballet composers were rarely at the mercy of a director cutting bars or pages from the score.
I am in no way dogging movie music, because there is so much of it that is great…and it is a “gateway drug” for many…but I don’t think we need to blur the lines between film and concert music, because they serve two distinct purposes regardless of the outcome.
Ok, maybe I disagreed a lot! ha! Sorry. 🙂
Thanks for the reply, Daniel.
Man, you have got to read the article by Jack Sullivan I link to in my post!
I’m not making the case that film music is THE new classical music, I’m pointing out a significant sub-genre of classical music that already exists (for over 100 years) and is universally appealing, not just as a ‘drug’, but as a marvelous art form in and of itself, part of the ligature of the evolving Canon.
What Marty and I delve into here is the conversation around mind-sets, root causes and barriers to growth in our area of interest, no matter how acceptable the notion may be. We look at best practices as well. And, as you see, folks jump in and say, “…but not that sacred cow!” Our goal is to challenge assumptions – maybe even break up some hard ground.
As you well know ‘classical’ music is comprised of roughly 1000 years of compositions: chant, court music, table music, incidental music, parlor music, masses, solo instrumentation and large orchestral, atonal and tonal, funereal and celebratory, massive masterworks and little ditty’s, syncopated rag time piano and sweeping tone poems, full blown operas and solo art song, ‘periods’ such as Renaissance and 21st century – and now that DNA metamorphism blooms into film music, married to moving images, and redefining composition and roles in music – from Brian Satterwhite in Austin, Texas to Hans Zimmer in L.A.
We wonder where new audiences will come from for Sibelius and how do we ‘grow’ that audience, when right in front of us, all around us, is a sea of humanity spending billions of dollars on films (over $11 billion in the U.S each year alone) which expose them to every kind of music under the sun, including “angular-spiky-unfriendly” stuff. People sit still for it and visually wash it down. It grows inside them. They often are inclined to revisit the experience in a concert setting or through buying a CD in order to remember. So much could be done in concert halls with this phenomenon. I’m just sayin’…
I’m fascinated by the historical significance of European fascism driving “non-film” composers to America in the 30’s and 40’s and how they managed to reinvent themselves and a whole genre as film composers. Ultimately everyone, most 20th century composers, got in on the act whether they wrote explicitly, albeit briefly, for film (Prokofiev, Tiomkin, Stravinsky, Shostakovitch, Schoenberg, Takemitsu, Schnittke, Waxman, Korngold, Vaughan Williams, Copland, William Walton, Gershwin, Bernstein, Golijov, Nyman, and Glass) or their music was used to enhance film (Ligeti, Barber, Verdi, Satie, Strauss, Mussorgsky, Ravel, Puccini, etc.).
The pressures any composer feels when trying to create something that other humans will value is universal and timeless. Via that time machine I mentioned earlier, we would hear, I’m sure similar gripes from Haydn and Mozart, “Eszterházy!” “Archbishop!” As John Mauceri says in the Sullivan article, “You don’t hold it against Tchaikovsky that he wrote Sleeping Beauty to certain requirements or Bach that he had to write a new cantata every Sunday whether he was inspired or not.”
If they were alive today, which one do you think Spielberg would tap if he could for his next film score? Which of the great composers from across the span of time would turn their nose up at writing for film? Cash flow can really inspire an artist! Not to mention a symphony or a radio station.
Thanks for jumping in! The water is fine.
Onward & upward.
I took a quick random look at the WUOL playlist.
On February 5, 2010 at 8:30 am they played the Sibelius Tapiola. At 11:15 am they had the complete Mahler Symphony No. 4 and at 1:00 pm they then ran the complete Shostakovich Symphony No. 10.
Now I am not a radio programmer nor do I play one on TV but this does not look like what the typical classical radio station would be playing at these times in an attempt to expand listenership.
David Rich
I agree, David. It’s not typical, and therein lies the answer. They are taking risks, playing great music, and they don’t need to apologize for it. I would MUCH rather hear Mahler 4 or Shosty 10 than a bunch of short, light, fluffy pieces intended to pander.
Each movement of Mahler 4 is a gem of perfectly listenable, brilliant, engaging music, absolutely chock full of melody and whimsy and charm. Shostakovich 10 is phenomenal to attract kids, with all that percussion and rhythmic interest.
Bravo to WUOL. GREAT CHOICES.
And the Sibelius Tapiola is meltingly beautiful.
Now THAT’s great programming.
David, thanks for checking out our website and playlist.
Marty is right, we take risks (calculated ones) and listen to our audience. And we don’t shy away from the hits either: you’ll notice on the same day we played Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring, a Chopin piano concerto, Yo-Yo Ma playing Haydn and selections from The Nutcracker (just to name a few).
(I’ll also say that Friday afternoon is listener request, so the playlists REALLY get interesting those days!)
Ah yes. One of my favorite topics…film music vs. “classical” music. Ya, it amazes me that this argument still exists. As somebody with a passion for (and education in) both film music and the “classical” traditions of 1000 years of music composition, it amazes me that people still feel the wanton desire to place an iron wedge between the two.
The argument that because our tools are better today or that mediocrity runs amok in film music doesn’t hold water. Neither of these two observations has anything to do with the validity and acceptance of the art form. Mediocrity was abundant in 1825. However, we have the benefit of a couple hundred years to filter most of it out. The same will be true with film music a couple hundred years from now.
Classical music has always “suffered” from this way of thinking. Before film music it was sacred vs. secular, diegetic vs. non-diegetic, fundamental vs. incidental, programmatic vs. non-programmatic…the list goes on. The fact remains that if film were around in 1800 it is likely we would have had scores from composers like Mozart and Beethoven as both of them composed for “smaller” theater (which was scoffed at being lower-caliber than say the opera house).
This is as good an article (including your subsequent comments) as I’ve read on the subject. Jack, your explanation to your son about BRAVEHEART is spot on. One of the best answers I’ve ever heard.
There is good film music and there is bad film music (I’ll even admit a whole lot more bad) but to discount the art form because of that or not acknowledge it’s connective tissue to the traditions of “classical” music is ludicrous.
I whole-heartily embrace everything about film music for what it is, serving a story, realizing the vision of a director, achieving a visual, emotional, and functional, component to a visual medium and narrative…that’s what makes it so unbelievably cool. These do not lessen an art form…they only make a unique one strong.
I do believe we’ll continue to have this discussion for as long as there is both film and music. I’m not sure if it’s ignorance, naivety, or something else entirely, but I have yet to confront a truly valid argument to the contrary of my position. If anybody has one, I would absolutely LOVE to hear it.
Great job! Keep it up.
-Brian Satterwhite
WCLV, Cleveland, one of the few commercial classical stations left, follows much the same path as WUOL – local involvement, attractive air personalities, liberal music policy.
1. Many live broadcasts including most of the Saturday concerts by The Cleveland Orchestra, including the ensemble’s Miami concerts. Also regular live concerts from The Cleveland Institute of Music, Cleveland State University, Oberlin College and Baldwin-Wallace College. And targets of opportunity, such as our recent live broadcast of the St. Olaf Choir from Severance Hall.
2. The annual Jubilation Church Choir Festival with six local church choirs competing for $1000 grand prize; the remaining five get $500 each. Nationally known judges such as Robert Page and Craig Jessop, former conductor of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. We bring in Lloyd Newell, voice of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, to announce the two night event, which is broadcast live.
3. Two daily very popular Movie Quizzes in which listeners identify the films from the music.
4, Seasonal promotions such as the Valentines Day Love Poem Contest. This year, 175 entries. Grand prize winner gets a romantic evening at the Ritz-Carlton.
5. Our annual Thanks-4-Giving Blood Drive for LifeShare, including a live remote with live music by area musicians. This past November, 200+ pints of blood were collected.
6. On Thanksgiving, we did a Cleveland Orchestra Marathon from 6:00 AM to 12:00 AM
with eight back-to-back Orchestra concerts.
7. Our air people do extensive pre-program prep and make very knowledgeable comments about the local arts scene and often play recordings by area musical groups.
8. Weekly one hour of music by local composers.
Good stuff, Bob! I’m stealing from this list…
Hi Marty — what do you mean by “pander” as in,
“…would MUCH rather hear Mahler 4 or Shosty 10 than a bunch of short, light, fluffy pieces intended to pander.”
Thanks (everyone) for an interesting discussion.
David
Let’s not confuse the package with what’s inside. Movie soundtracks and their technological ilk are new forms, just as opera was 400 years ago, the romantic orchestral symphony a century or so later, atonalism a hundred years in our past, and electronic sounds fifty years ago.
Vocabulary and grammar change in music just as they have in language since Shakespeare’s day. But the elusive quality we call excellence, elegance, essence or sometimes content or even meaning — that’s another matter. So important, in fact, that we each have our own subjective idea about what it is precicely, and we never agree 100.000 percent on its definition, let alone the word to us for it. But if it’s there, even a child can spot it, and we all resopond viscerally.
Maybe broadcasters do need to reorganize our priorities and strategy. Find music in the fadish new forms that has a degree of that ineffable essence, and use it to attract listeners, then draw them closer with more of the same. In due course, they will respond to the timeless great music that thrilled us and our parents, for the same reasons.
Interactive announcing is part of this plan. The late Norm Pellegrini at WFMT hired annouoncers, he said, who could talk “with” the listener (singular!), not “to” or “at” him. One-on-one is the key, and it’s a special ability not everyone has, any more than we can all play piano as well as Rubinstein or Lang Lang. (Think Godfrey, Bookspan, Van De Graaf, e.g.) New technology lets listeners feed back preference, comment and ideas; act on them.
Above all, though, the staff behind the microphone must know and love the music, not only in its exterior detail, but that inner essence. Again, a talent not shared by every aspirant to broadcasting.
Finally, a word about satellite super-radio, the vaunted new medium that wants to replace local radio. First, it tends to be slick; second, mass-market simplistic (KCSN and other classical-lite “pros” come to mind), and third, distant. That may be the worst sin. Even though Peter Van De Graaf is a friend in my ear, he’s not here and can’t talk about what’s happening next Friday in my hometown. National radio, like network televison, can’t tell you the weather in your neighborhood.
With the help of a greener FCC (>< yr finners!), neighborhood grassroots radio may give ordinary folks with talent a chance to do something good for the human race.