San Diego used to have a classical radio station that had the most powerful transmitter of all San Diego's stations. With the most powerful signal a station can reach the greatest area. Covering the greatest area means that it potentially has the largest number of listeners and can possibly charge the highest rates for advertising. But classical music has a few problems when it comes to advertising. The music that gets played is just too long and that doesn't leave much time for ads. And classical music's audience isn't the 15 to 35 year old males that advertisers love so much. So they changed to a format (then another and another) that can make more money from advertising.
They sold their record collection to an AM station that changed its format to relaxing classical music. This relaxing classical programming came from a station in Boston that went out to many commercial stations. (They never did much local programming with the record collection they bought.) The programming had to accommodate all the stations' advertising needs. So they played a lot of short pieces that stations could either play or replace with commercials.
There was one short piece they were especially fond of. They seemed to play the Minuet from a Boccherini string quintet many times a day. They played it so much that they often wouldn't bother telling us who the composer was or the what it came from. They would just call it "The Minuet." I would call it overkill.
Their main programming was never very bold and never played anything that took more than 20 minutes.
I wasn't thrilled with their very safe choices of music so I took up listening to Internet streams from stations like WQED, WQXR, and WCPE. That worked pretty well but only at home. I want to be able to listen to music on the road.
So we got Sirius Satellite Radio. And we're glad we did. They've got three classical stations that now includes Metropolitan Opera Radio that plays live broadcasts three or four times each week all through their season. We get to hear all the operas that the Met performs several times each. That's way better than Major League Baseball, I'll tell you!
Anyway, one morning last year I woke up and didn't want to get out of bed so I turned on the radio and pressed my preset buttons to listen to some relaxing classical music. There wasn't any. It turned out that they couldn't attract enough advertisers that they switched to some other format. This left San Diego with no full-time classical radio.
The public radio station in San Diego took up playing classical music in the evening and early morning. They even play recordings of the San Diego Opera performances. Their programming is set up to let stations play five minutes of news at the beginnings of each hour so that means that no piece of music can be as long as 55 minutes. I don't think I've heard them play anything longer than around 40 minutes. So no Mahler symphonies. What a shame. Life without Mahler is not a good thing.
So all of you out there be happy that you can tune in to classical music.
Friday, February 15, 2008
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8 comments:
Poor Chuck 'n' Jerry! Why don't you send your rant to the San Diego Reader or some similar publication?
How on earth do you find out why stations play what kind of music and what record collections they have and where they got them and so on, and how do you remember all this? And how did you find out what age/sex group advertisers like?With satellite radio on the road and your vast music collection at home, do you realoy need classical radio?
Somehow my identity got wiped out and I don't remember how I got it set up in the first place. So I am now "Anonymous."
maggie
Somehow my identity got wiped out and I don't remember how I got it set up in the first place. So I am now "Anonymous."
maggie
My question is the same as anonymous maggie's. I thought you had a portable Sirius unit?
Plus, there is itunes!
No, I don't need classical radio since, as I said, I have satellite radio that has some excellent classical programming.
And, having no children in elementary school, I don't need music education there. Since I don't need it, I suppose there is no need for it. Right?
Back to anonymous's questions...
When the FM classical station changed format, the newspapers told us what they did with their record collection. I had hope that selling it to the new station was going to mean that the local programming would continue. I was very disappointed when they ran that dreadful syndicated stuff.
Advertisers know what sort of customers they want their business to come from. Skateboard shops figure that teenage boys are likely to spend money in their stores so that's a group they want to hear their messages. So they pay companies to find out where they are likely to hear their ads. Like the Nielsen Ratings people find out who watches which TV programs there are companies that find out who listens to what radio stations. Advertisers find out from them when and where they can buy time to reach their target audience.
We subscribe to XM, and I enjoy classical music in the car and in the house. I also load my iPod with classical music and operas.
The classical music station in ABQ played little bleeding chunks all the time, and in the summer some jane reviews the Santa Fe Opera season--opera for tiny tots. One season when the SFO did "Lucia" the opera-for-tiny-tots woman described the sextet ("Chi mi frena in tal momento?") at the end of Act II but then played a chorus from a different act. At the end of the selection she asked, "Can you believe there were only six voices in that piece?"
And I asked, "How dumb do you think we are?"
--PegBert
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