I'm not aware of any commercial classical radio stations. I think they're all NCE.
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Christmas in Philadelphia
- Thread starter Miguelito
- Start date
I'm not aware of any commercial classical radio stations. I think they're all NCE.
I believe that's now true, but irrelevant to the point I was trying to make, which was about popular and radio (regardless of status) preferences in classical music.
The three stations I listen to (WFCR, WSHU, WMNR) are all noncommercial and, while they all dig deeper into the classical catalog than commercial stations like WQXR (before it went noncomm) and WCRB (ditto, and it had a 250-work playlist in its days as "Classical's Greatest Hits.") used to, they are merely playing more Bach, more Mozart, more Mendelssohn, more Debussy, etc., not searching out contemporary or near-contemporary composers to introduce to their listeners.
Why? I'd imagine it's to avoid tune-out and make sure the donors who foot most of the station's costs are kept happy. And apparently, what makes them happy is hearing every one of Mozart's 41 symphonies every once in a while, not just the warhorses, although the warhorses certainly get played more frequently. That makes sense, seeing as how fans of the genre usually have favorite composers and enjoy their individual styles whether the specific piece is well known or not. Would listeners want to hear a completely new work by a totally unfamiliar living composer a few times a day? At least around here, they've never even had that opportunity.
Note about music testing of currents: adding songs at the time of their release is a pure programming decision.
In the first weeks of play of a song, "testing" a song (assuming a station has weekly "callout" testing) will not yield any definitive results. Many believe that until a station has played a song 100 to 125 times, no testing can be relied on; for most stations that do test, that means somewhere approaching three weeks at typical "new" rotations.
In any case, it's unlikely that stations spend money on call-out during the approximately four weeks of Christmas programming, as any actionable results come too late in the season to make much difference.
How would a programmer determine if a new Christmas song introduced that year should be brought back the following December if no testing is done on the Christmas music?
Mostly gut feel and monitors of how many other Christmas stations played the song throughout the season.
A very few stations test Christmas music with a small participant group during the season; that data is used for the next season's list.
What I am saying is that callout (which is often not done on the phone any more) is not a good methodology for testing new Christmas songs and they whole callout system is prone to miss-reads the nearer you get to December 25 because participants are either rushed, unfocused or not in the mood to do a music survey.
For us, we made that decision based on the popularity of the artist. In the country format, when Faith Hill released the Christmas song for the Grinch ("Where Are You Christmas") 20 years ago, country stations played it out of the box. It was a top star singing a song from a popular movie. It's still among the most played now. Radio stations played it often enough for it to chart in the airplay Top 30. Same with Taylor Swift ten years ago.
But then again, if they have such a curiosity, the music is readily available. It's not as though this is a new problem. Leonard Bernstein had to go pop, and host a TV show to get some of his compositions heard. As in the popular world, it's the job of the musicians and their team to get their music heard. My local symphony offers packages to members so we can hear new and experimental works. So there are ways to bring new music to the public if they're interested. Those last three words are important.
Music Choice starts the day after Halloween until January 5th, about two months, SiriusXM on line and Slacker have it all year round...
October 2 and WBEB has not flipped the HD2. I guess maybe the new powers-that-be aren't exactly sticking to the old playbook!
Maybe the signal flipper forgot to set an Outlook reminder. 
I believe WCRI 95.9 Block Island, Rhode Island is a commercial classical station. Up until 2014 when they were sold to K-LOVE (as part of the sale of the FM) there was Beethoven 1290 in West Hartford, Connecticut, but they weren't 100% Classical as they carried play-by-play of multiple sports from both high Schools in West Hartford. 490 watts/day 11 watt/night.
Good question. This morning HOT 93.7 the hip-hop station in Hartford mentioned that R&B artist John Legend would be releasing a Christmas album. (on November 15th?) They mentioned some of the songs and they included several traditional song including Silver Bells.
WCRI is, indeed, commercial, owned by people involved with formerly commercial WCRB Boston. It also is not 100 percent classical, as it has a daily evening jazz program.
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