The iPod and a growing need for local news have done the unthinkable: They have cost Chicago, one of America’s great jazz cities, its last major source for jazz programming on local radio. WBEZ, Chicago’s National Public Radio (NPR) member station and among the oldest public radio outlets in the United States, has decided to scrap scheduled music programming - the bulk of which was nightly jazz - and move to a 24-hour news and public affairs format. The change - which has sparked a backlash from loyal fans - speaks volumes about the worries facing independent radio stations.
Downloadable music and streaming Webcasts are competing for their music listeners, and local news, threatened by consolidation in the commercial media, is taking on greater importance. In addition, WBEZ and many other public radio stations say their programming has not kept pace with a changing US population. “Local news has simply been abandoned by the commercial broadcasters and sometimes even the commercial newspapers,” Ken Stern, executive vice president of Washington-based National Public Radio, told Reuters. “What you see as a trend is stations like WBEZ investing heavily in local news and information,” Stern said.
WBEZ and NPR’s other so-called member stations raise their own operating funds - much of them from individual listeners - and pay providers such as NPR for syndicated shows such as the daily news program “All Things Considered.” Around the United States, changes similar to WBEZ’s are taking place. Connecticut Public Radio’s WNPR-FM dropped most of its classical programming in favor of news and information early in June. WETA, another public FM station in Washington, DC, made the switch to all-talk more than a year ago. Stations in New York, Boston and elsewhere have made similar moves.
To loyal listeners, the format changes don’t go over easily. WBEZ’s plan, which doesn’t take effect until next year, has sparked a backlash from public radio patrons in the nation’s third-largest city, once the country’s jazz and blues hub and still home to a thriving alternative music scene. “We feel very empty,” said Mike Widdell, co-founder of the Web site savethemusiconwbez.org, a grass-roots effort that has collected more than 3,500 names on a petition to veto WBEZ’s plan. “It seems like a decision that was made arbitrarily and without the input of listeners.”
Chicago Public Radio said it also took a hard look at demographic trends before announcing in 2004 that WBEZ would shift to all talk. The station’s audience has become increasingly homogeneous, yet public radio is compelled by a federal mandate to serve as broad a group as possible, station manager Torey Malatia told Reuters. In any given week, about 600,000 people, or roughly 8 percent of the 7.6 million potential listeners in the greater Chicago area, tune into its channel at 91.5 on the FM band. Most are white, upper middle class and well-educated; many live on the tony suburban North Shore, he said.
Chicago Public Radio’s new strategy calls for reaching a more diverse audience - putting mics in the hands of listeners, for instance, to let them produce their own shows, and adding satellite bureaus in the inner city. The station aims to go after untapped Hispanic, black and youth listeners, among others. “The problem is if you look at that slot of audience vs. the population we are meant to serve … this is just a sliver,” Malatia said. “This is a major decision for us and we knew it would have a strong reaction from people.”
(Source: Reuters)
on Jul 6th, 2006 at 15:40
Great news! Hopefully, now we’ll have more BBC relays in Chicago.