Partners to close classical net for radio but see chance for growth online

Originally published in Current, March 24, 2008
By Mike Janssen

Classical Public Radio Network will shut down its broadcast operations June 30 and explore a move into online services, eliminating one of the several around-the-clock music feeds available to classical stations.

The service, produced by a partnership of Colorado Public Radio in Denver and KUSC in Los Angeles, airs on about 60 stations and six HD Radio multicast channels.

Stations still have other options if they need a classical music feed. Classical 24, produced by American Public Media and distributed by Public Radio International, airs on 229 stations. Chicago’s WFMT Radio Network, which produces the Beethoven Satellite Network, declined to disclose its carriage.

“We’re calling stations that did have CPRN to make sure they know we’re around,” says Steve Robinson, g.m. of WFMT Radio Network.

Stations also have the option of using local hosts, though that can cost more.

CPRN will lay off all of its 15 or so staffers and offer them jobs at its parent stations. But it will remain incorporated as a nonprofit limited-liability corporation—the first in the country — and work with a consultant and several classical stations to study how people explore and listen to classical music online.

“We decided that we wanted to be able to start really thinking about the Internet, and it was going to be awfully hard to do that while running a broadcast network and keeping our local stations going,” says Brenda Barnes, president of KUSC.

CPRN’s carriage is just over one-quarter that of Classical 24, but that did not affect the decision to go off air, Barnes says. Both broadcasters use CPRN for their local broadcasts and always intended to subsidize it since its launch in 2003.

“We never thought that it would pay for itself,” she says, “and it hasn’t.”

But Barnes acknowledges that CPRN had recognized the decline in classical music’s prominence on public radio. CPRN’s carriage grew bit by bit since its launch, but a recent NPR study found news programming eclipsing classical in total hours on public radio stations for the first time, according to Barnes.

“That particular trend doesn’t look like it’s going to change anytime soon,” she says. “The growth opportunities for classical broadcasts just aren’t there.”

Meanwhile, many listeners are turning to iPods, web streams and other online services for music, which in turn fuels station decisions to trim more airtime for tunes and add news.Barnes recently asked business students at the University of Southern California how many listened to classical music on the Web and was surprised when half the class raised hands, she says. One student said, “If you’re serious about the Internet, you need to develop something that’s going to grow with me.”

“That was one of those moments when I said, ‘Oh, my gosh, he’s right,’” Barnes says. “And how the heck do we do that? All of that is leading to our wanting to understand this better.”

CPRN is mapping its Internet research plan with help from McKinsey & Co. and several classical stations—KBAQ in Phoenix; commercial KDFC in San Francisco; KBPS in Portland, Ore.; and WMHT in Schenectady, N.Y. It will embark on the research within a few months, Barnes says.

Too many competitors?

KUSC and Colorado Public Radio began developing CPRN in 1998. Their early use of listener preference studies to plan playlists, known as modal music research, drew criticism, and the founders later backed away from it. But CPB’s decision to support CPRN’s launch with an $850,000 grant also sparked controversy, with some observers questioning the need for a third full-time classical stream.

National production of classical music programming continued to outpace demand, says Ben Roe, formerly director of music initiatives at NPR and now a consultant, though the market became somewhat less crowded in 2006 when NPR reduced its role in classical music and transferred Performance Today and SymphonyCast to American Public Media. “I see the CPRN announcement as the logical outcome of those same market realities at play,” Roe says.

“What’s too bad about this is that we still don’t have a single great national service devoted to classical music—with resources and reach to create the same kind of footprint and impact that NPR has established in the news and information front,” Roe says. “The problem is even worse with jazz. And given the changes in the media world, it may be too late for public radio ever to do it now.”

The three services all offer around-the-clock streams of classical music, with a few differences. Classical 24 is live, whereas hosts for the other services pre-record their shifts. Unlike the others, CPRN offers enough fundraising programming for on-air fund drives to allow stations to run campaigns nearly on autopilot.

Without CPRN, station programmers now must consider how to serve up music during the vacant hours.

“It’s going to affect us pretty significantly,” says Bill Drake, p.d. at WNIU/WNIJ in DeKalb, Ill. “We have limited options available to us.” The station picked up CPRN several years ago to devote more on-air staff to news.

Vermont Public Radio used CPRN as the backbone of the all-classical service it implemented on several stations four years ago. Last fall it started a full-time classical station in Burlington after buying a transmitter from a religious broadcaster. When CPRN goes dark, the network will switch to Classical 24.

Jody Evans, p.d. in Vermont, laments the loss. “Over the past 10 years, with CPRN and with the creation of American Public Media, there have been more choices for stations and programmers, and I think that’s a good thing,” she says. “When the choices are fewer, programming isn’t always as strong as it could be.”