Posted on 11/18/2009 7:36:06 AM PST by raccoonradio
Classical station has new business model: support of donors
Boston is following a trend in radio that’s taking place in other cities across the nation: Its only 24-hour classical music station now depends on listeners - not advertisers - to keep it afloat.
Last week’s Federal Communications Commission approval of WGBH’s $14 million purchase of WCRB-FM (99.5) means the classical musical station is now a public broadcaster, with a business model that draws revenue from donations and corporate sponsorship instead of relying on advertising.
Because classical music fans tend to be older, and advertisers typically want to court a younger crowd, WGBH sees listener support as a better way to ensure that the 60-year-old classical music station is financially healthy enough to continue to play Chopin and Mozart.
snip
WGBH officials said the sale will enable them to keep 99.5-FM classical full time, while converting WGBH-FM (89.7), which has a mix of news, classical, jazz, and blues shows, to an all-news talk format. WGBH plans to implement several changes on Dec. 1, including shifting some of its classical programming to WCRB and moving the staff and play lists of WCRB from Waltham to Brighton, where WGBH is based. Eventually, the folk and blues programming will be dropped.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Note:
—This means that instead of two, well one and a half, classical stations in Boston, now there will be one—with a signal that doesn’t reach as much of the area. Instead of WGBH’s 100,000 watts from Boston it’ll be WCRB’s 27,000 watts from Lowell (Andover actually)
—Loss of long running folk and blues shows on Saturdays.
The blues show was started by the late Mai Cramer in 1978.
Many (over 1,000 people) have joined a facebook group protesting this move. They’re saying they’ll drop their memberships, not leave bequests to WGBH, etc.
—There will be unnecessary duplication of shows that Boston University’s WBUR already carries
This is depressing. I don’t mind giving money to ‘CRB but I don’t wanna support those ash hats at ‘GBH.
I’m also afraid that the definition of “classical” is going to expand to include a lot of crap that I can get by listening to any college radio station.
My complaint about CRB is that it only plays “pop” classical pieces. I wish they would mix up the well known pieces with a few more esoteric things once in a while. I’m not sure if the GBH takeover will change their format in this respect, however.
And I play the blues on a college radio station NE of Boston (WMWM Salem State), a mighty 130 watts compared to WGBH’s 100,000. (The other DJs I share the show with used to work on Mai Cramer’s ‘GBH show. “We’ve Got Blues Here” as she used to say.)
Am visualizing a classical version of Casey Kasem: “’Classical Top 40’ is heard each week around the world on great radio stations like...” :)
BY TOM TAYLOR
>“The Aging Audience” of public radio is the newest study from Walrus Research.
George Bailey (a T-R-I reader) says listening for public radio “has long been dominated by highly-educated baby boomers”, and that Garrison Keillor’s observation about seeing more gray heads in the Prairie Home Companion live audience is right-on. That carries some implications. George is kind enough to share the results of his study of three groups of stations - #1, NPR News-based stations, #2, non-commercial jazz outlets, and #3, non-com classical stations.
His “Life stage NPR News” graph covers the years 1997-2009 and shows the median age of the audience getting older, from 46 to 52. The percentage of those employed is getting smaller. (“For NPR News station listeners, retirement is top of mind.”) For Life Stage Jazz, the median age is up from 45 to 55, and 23% of those in the audience are 60+ and not employed. For Life Stage Classical, the median age has gone from 56 to 65. Bailey suggests “the end of employment may have an impact on their willingness to contribute money.” There’s another set of graphs, ranking “core and loyalty.” NPR News-based stations have grown their percentage of “core listeners” (think P1 for commercial stations) since 1997. They’ve also grown the number of listeners. But for jazz stations, 2009 brought “a crash in loyalty.” Plenty to think about, including the impact of PPM, for public radio management and listeners.
WUMB’s various stations do have folk and I think they run blues Mid-6 am Sat nights...some college stations have blues
and one commercial station, WATD in Marshfield, has it overnights.
I live far from Boston. I’ve never been able to get a signal from a college, unfortunately.
Marshfield is a bit of a hike East of here.
It’s a little north of Duxbury. I’m lucky to get a Worcester and Rhode Island station.
Ah...I’m in Beverly and WATD comes in well, across the water
Most of them stream online.
Yes, and that’s nice, but I mostly listen to the radio in the kitchen or outside while gardening or shoveling snow. My computer is too far away to be useful in that way. I’ve been thinking of getting an XM/Sirius radio that is portable between the car and house.
As I said on another thread, long ago, how many times can you listen to "Un Bel Di", even on "a good day".
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