Classical Radio is Alive and Kicking!

By Steve Robinson

Old-fashioned terrestrial classical-radio stations should all be on death’s door due to such digital competition as Pandora, Sirius, Spotify, Apple Music, and dozens if not hundreds or even thousands of other online sources. Right?

Guess what? They’re doing just fine and, in many cases, have never been better.

According to statistics supplied by the Maryland-based Station Resource Group (SRG), 11 million Americans listen to public radio classical music each week with an average of over 200,000 listeners tuned in at any given moment. Sixty-one stations offer all-classical all the time, while a mix of news and classical music is available on the radio in over 200 markets. This makes classical-music radio one of the most popular formats in the public radio industry, second only to all-news stations.

Now consider these statistics about the habits of people who listen to classical music not only on the radio but online, on CDs, and on downloaded MP3 files. According to data unveiled at the 2014 Public Radio Program Directors conference by Larry Rosin of Edison Research:

• An astonishing 30 percent of everyone in the U.S. say that in the last month they’ve listened to at least one hour of classical music either on the radio, online, on CDs, or downloaded as MP3 files. This is a remarkable statistic, not just for classical-radio stations but for anyone involved in the business of classical music.

And for those who think people who listen to classical music are so behind the times that they wouldn’t know a URL from a UFO, consider this:

• When asked about their use of Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Google, Linkedin, Tumbler, Snapchat, and other social-media platforms, classical-music lovers outpaced the general 25+ population in every single instance. Remember, these statistics apply not just for classical radio but to people who listen to classical music wherever they can find it.

What does this have to do with classical radio? This mind-blowing statistic, also from Edison Research, explains the connection: In any given market that has a classical-music radio station, a staggering 75 percent of the people in that market who say they love classical music are not aware that there’s a classical-radio station on the dial in that city. 

On the one hand, this fact speaks to the classical-music radio industry’s poor record at promotion, but it also raises great hope for the future: If classical-radio stations can promote themselves properly, they can begin to turn the current figure of 11 million weekly listeners closer to the 50 million Americans out there ready to discover all that is available on the nation’s classical-music stations.

And what’s going on is very exciting, as stations from big cities to rural areas are offering a rich array of creative programming. These are just a few examples:

• In March, WQXR in New York offered “Bach360,” a five-day continuous marathon that presented the complete music of Bach. In October 2014 the station streamed without interruption the complete organ music of Bach.
• For the past 15 years, Nebraska Public Radio has been celebrating Arbor Day with an entire day of nature-related programming and they do so in collaboration with the National Arbor Day Foundation and, most importantly, a high level of interaction with their listeners.
• For one entire week leading up to July 4th, WFMT in Chicago programmed American music around the clock. From Billings to Bernstein, nothing but American music. Listener reaction was overwhelmingly positive.
• KPBX in Spokane, Washington, is devoted to presenting performances by local and regional ensembles. The astonishing array of groups they broadcast includes the Spokane Symphony (all ten classical concerts) and its Chamber Soirées; all concerts by the Spokane String Quartet; the Walla Walla Symphony; Glacier Symphony (Kalispell, Montana); and the Boise Philharmonic. And then there are the festivals they broadcast including Montana Baroque (Paradise, Montana); Walla Walla Chamber; and the Amadeus Festival (Whitefish, Montana).
• In Colorado Springs, General Manager George Preston of KCME reports that they have a wonderful orchestra, chamber orchestra, youth symphony, pre-college conservatory, a world-class museum, theater companies, choruses, and an astonishing array of artists of all stripes. He says, “Our key to success is creatively engaging with local partners to work towards common goals of increasing overall awareness of the cultural opportunities available in our market. We’re currently conducting a month-long ‘Bardfest’ in partnership with Theatreworks, which produces a Shakespeare play every August in a big tent at historic Rock Ledge Ranch. We’re playing Shakespeare-inspired music throughout August and successfully inviting other local presenters to get on the bandwagon with Shakespeare-related programming. We look for opportunities to celebrate the uniqueness of our region, to build strong relationships, and to leverage those relationships when we’re selling sponsorships or fundraising on the air.”

These examples only scratch the surface of the creative and imaginative programming ideas classical stations are using to keep listeners tuned in.

These ideas and, in fact, most of the programming on music stations of any genre rely on CDs for the bulk of their broadcast day. For pop-music stations it’s a given that radio  “spins” sell records. But what about classical albums, does airplay on classical-radio stations help sell CDs?

We put the question to a classical-music record executive. Raymond Bisha, is director of publicity and marketing for Naxos USA. Naxos is one of the largest and most prominent classical labels in the world. “It’s very hard to measure any sales that are directly attributable to radio,” Bisha says. “This is partly because of the changing retail landscape: People may hear things they like on radio, but they are then going online and buying from online stores. Unless the customer is actually using an affiliate link from the radio station website, it’s difficult to attribute a specific listening experience on radio with sales. The exceptions are things like Fresh Air or All Things Considered, which tend to create a measurable bump in sales right after airing.”

In other words, classical radio isn’t much of an aid to a label like Naxos when it comes to classical-record sales.

But maybe there’s more to the picture than meets the eye.

Consider the case of CDs by the late Russian pianist, Vera Gornostaeva, on the tiny LP Classics label. In 2013, David Polk, program director of WFMT—the Chicago station I manage—met pianist Vassily Primakov, who owns the Brooklyn-based label. Primakov studied with Gornostaeva in Moscow when he was a teenager. He knew that she fell out of favor with the Soviets because of her political and religious views, and that in the prime of her life as a musician, she wasn’t allowed to leave the country. But she had given hundreds of concerts all around Russia, and on a visit to Moscow some years ago he acquired master tapes of some of those concerts and released them on his LP Classics label. Polk was astonished by the depth and beauty of her playing. So during the station’s two membership drives in 2014, the three recordings were offered to listeners as thank you gifts. Listeners went nuts, and when the dust settled on the second membership drive, WFMT had requests for 11,000 CDs. Eleven thousand! Primakov visited his former teacher in 2014 and told her about what had happened, and Gornostaeva recorded a thank you, in Russian, to the station’s listeners. So, if you wish, you may say that classical-radio stations no longer have the power to influence the market for new CDs, but if done right, classical radio can still have a demonstrably powerful influence over the market. Gornostaeva died in January 2015 at age 86.

Whether or not airplay on classical-radio stations moves new releases is an open question. But how does an appearance on a local classical station affect a recital or concert by a musician or ensemble? Cellist Matt Haimovitz is a strong believer in radio’s power to reach concertgoers: “I find that most stations go out of their way to make time to bring me in, if I’m in town, or tape a phone interview. There are really only a few stations whose programming is so structured that they cannot accommodate a live appearance.”

But does it help promote his concerts?

“Radio has always been one of the best ways to spread the word about an upcoming performance and recording. A recent example is support we received from Seattle radio station KING and Second Inversion [a KING streaming channel]. Their radio audience is wonderfully engaged and closely allied with our own mission. When they decided to co-sponsor a performance by Christopher O’Riley and me playing Beethoven sonatas on period instruments at the Tractor Tavern, the performance sold out in hours. The word spread like wildfire.”

So far we’ve been talking about classical-music radio stations and their over-the-air or terrestrial services. But how are these stations responding to the onslaught of digital services mentioned at the beginning of this article? Do they have their collective heads in the sand?

Hardly.

WFMT has been streaming its programming over the Internet for nearly 20 years, and that’s true of many classical-music stations. Listenership from streaming isn’t going through the roof, but stations report that for every 100 over-the-air listeners, 5 to 15 people are listening online. In many cases those people live in the broadcast area but find it handy to listen online, especially when they’re out of town. However, streaming is only part of the picture.

In 2009, WQXR in New York launched Q2, a streaming service devoted to contemporary music (wqxr.org/q2). This is a highly imaginative and thoughtfully programmed service, curated by the station’s Alex Ambrose and his associate producer, Hannis Brown. At present, much of the music is streamed with no announcing, but that’s changing. Composer Paul Kline hosts for two hours a day, and there are other hosts for specialty shows. In any case, everything programmed is displayed on their comprehensive website. There are many composers who have pre-recorded commentary about specific pieces broadcast by Q2. On a recent day, Q2 featured music by John Adams, Kaija Saariaho, Judd Greenstein, Lisa Bielawa, Oliver Knussen, Lois V. Vierk, Matthew Herbert, John Luther Adams, Nico Muhly, Conrad Winslow, and Joan Tower. And that was in just three hours! (On balance, I regard Q2 as one of the most progressive and interesting streaming websites offered by any classical-music radio station in the country.)

Q2 is all about 24/7 streaming. Another type of service—an on-demand streaming endeavor—has been created by the WFMT Radio Network. The Network launched Exploring Music with Bill McGlaughlin in 2013. This is a daily, one-hour music-appreciation radio program that now has over 400,000 weekly listeners in the U.S. and is also heard in Australia, Guam, the Philippines, and China. In 2013 the Network decided to put all 200 weeks and 1,000 hours online for on-demand streaming (exploringmusic.org). Exploringmusic.org charges an annual, monthly, or weekly fee, and it now has over 2,000 subscribers and is actually making a small profit.

And then there are podcasts, one of the fastest-growing audio formats in the world. At the June 2015 “Podcast Movement” conference in Fort Worth, it was reported that 250 million Americans tune into the radio each week, but 27 million listen to podcasts. That represents huge growth in a short time, and the figure will grow exponentially in coming months and years. One artist who is taking advantage of the boom is pianist Lara Downes, whose broadcast/podcast series The Green Room takes listeners behind the scenes and on the road with musicians including Simone Dinnerstein, Anne Akiko Meyers, Jeremy Denk, and others. It’s heard on radio stations and is also available as a podcast at prx.org (Public Radio Exchange) and iTunes.

“We musicians look at airplay as our broadest point of contact with existing and new listeners,” says Downes. “Whether that translates directly and immediately into CD sales is secondary to the fact that we can, by sharing our recordings over the air, dramatically expand our listener base and build a nationwide community of listeners that does translate, over time, into a presence at live concerts and at the modern-day version of the ‘record store.’ ”

Up to this point we’ve been dealing with initiatives and programs presented by individual stations in local markets. However, there are two important national services that provide local stations with a wide range of programs they  otherwise wouldn’t be able to produce on their own. Both American Public Media (APM) in Minneapolis and the WFMT Radio Network in Chicago provide classical and spoken-word programming to hundreds of stations in America and throughout the world, and they both perform an important service.

APM’s flagship classical program is the long-running two-hour daily program Performance Today, cheerily and knowledgeably hosted by Fred Child. They somehow manage to produce a two-hour program filled with performances recorded in the U.S. and abroad every day of the year, seven days a week, with a small but hugely dedicated staff. APM also offers programs such as SymphonyCast, Pipedreams (one of the longest-running classical programs on the radio), Composers Datebook, and a 24/7 live-hosted service called C-24. In May 2015, APM broadcast a live concert from Cuba by the Minnesota Orchestra, produced by APM’s local affiliate, Minnesota Public Radio. 

The WFMT Radio Network offers broadcasts from seven orchestras, three opera companies, and several chamber-music programs. The Network also offers stations a wide variety of special series and features including Song of America and Song: Mirror of the World, both hosted and co-produced by Thomas Hampson; on-going specials from veteran British-based producer Jon Tolansky; Carnegie Hall Live (produced by WQXR), and many other programs. The Network recently added new affiliates in Shanghai and Beijing, marking the first time that American orchestras have been heard on the radio on a weekly basis in China.

The programs offered by both networks give many classical-radio stations an opportunity to round out their local offerings, but this raises an interesting question.

What is the proper balance between locally produced programs and those offered by national networks? Some stations, such as KUSC/LA, KDFC/SF, KING/Seattle, WETA/D.C., and WCRB/Boston, subscribe to the theory that any nationally produced program is a kind of intrusion on their ability to control their own airwaves, and so they take very few nationally syndicated programs. It’s a valid point. But other stations use syndicated programs to offer their listeners music and performances they otherwise would not hear.

So, here we are. It’s 2016, and classical-music radio stations have been broadcasting for almost 100 years. How are we faring? As you read this, and as noted above, over 200,000 Americans are listening to classical music on the radio at this very moment, and 11 million will listen this week. That makes radio the primary way Americans experience classical music, and those figures are among the highest ever recorded. In addition, as noted, classical is one of the most consistently popular formats in public radio, and the trend appears to be growing. 

Our stations can influence who attends concerts; we can sell 11,000 albums in one city by a little-known pianist on a tiny record label; we’re heavily involved in the online world; our stations are programming more creatively than ever before; and in addition to a wide variety of specials, our national organizations are presenting concerts by a highly diverse array of orchestras, opera companies, and chamber groups and distributing them not only all over the U.S. but also all around the world.

The “demise of classical-music radio” is old news. We are experiencing a Renaissance, and the best is yet to come.

Stay tuned. •

Steve Robinson is general manager of Chicago’s WFMT and the WFMT Radio Network. Robinson has been a classical-music radio manager, producer, and fund raiser for 48 years and has worked at stations in Boston, Berkeley, Vermont, New York, Nebraska, and Chicago.