Before moving to Sarasota, Joan McKniff lived in Paris, and before that Washington D.C. and New York City. Like many transplants from big cities, she says when she moved to West Central Florida, one of the things she had to adjust to was a dearth of interesting news and information programs on the radio.
To McKniff, National Public Radio had always meant "lots of interesting shows," but for years she couldn't hear any on the Tampa Bay radio NPR affiliate, WUSF. She ultimately purchased a laptop computer so she could listen to BBC and NPR. "I couldn't get over the mostly music-only programs here," she says. "Especially as there are so many ways to hear music."
For McKniff and thousands of others in the Tampa Bay, the wait will soon be over. On Thursday, September 15, when Morning Edition signs off at 9 a.m., instead of news anchor Carson Cooper doing his usual exchange with Russell Gant leading into seven straight hours of classical music programming, listeners will hear the BBC Newshour, followed by Washington talk show host Diane Rehm, followed by Fresh Air with Terry Gross and several other news and public affairs shows until All Things Considered comes on in its usual 4 p.m. slot.
The weekend programming will be dramatically different as well, with a lineup representing the best of public radio that isn't hard news, such as Sound Opinions, hosted by two nationally respected rock critics with exclusive interviews and performances (in July it featured a lengthy discussion with Pavement leader Stephen Malkmus), food shows like The Splendid Table, and On the Media, an incisive look at press coverage. Less familiar shows with good buzz include Snap Judgments, which will air at 1 p.m. on Saturday after the public radio cult favorite This American Life (moving from its previous slot on Saturday nights).
But what about the station's extensive classical music programming and night-time jazz?
Jazz will continue to air overnight as before, actually beginning an hour earlier, at 9 p.m. But the mainstay of WUSF's daytime programming, classical music, will now be accessible only by tuning into a completely different frequency — WSMR- 89.1 FM.
The general manager of WUSF 89.7, JoAnne Urofsky, said the station held focus groups and conducted an online survey over the past year, and kept an eye on Arbitron ratings. All showed the same thing: There were simply more people listening to news and public affairs than to music.
"We've been watching the numbers change for a long time," she said recently at her office on the USF campus. But changing the programming was a difficult decision for management because of the strong connection between the station and its classical music fans. "Then the opportunity came up to acquire this other station and we thought, we're not going to serve everyone who loved the classical music, but we're going to be able to bring a lot more people to it, because just naturally the way people use radio, people will listen to a single format station much more because they like knowing every time they tune in, it's going to be something they like."
WUSF's move reflects a trend that's been occurring in many stations like theirs — that is, the switch from a news/music format to all news & information.
Karen Everhart writes about public radio for Current, the public television and radio trade magazine. She says that the commercial classic formula is no longer viable as a for-profit business, so public radio stations that have the "wherewithal" to purchase a second channel and program news and classical music on separate stations "put themselves in a great position to expand their audience base."
WUSF is such a station, and it's getting what the industry considers a relative bargain in acquiring WSMR, a Sarasota-based station, for $1.275 million through a loan from the USF Foundation.
Both WGCU in Fort Myers in 2008 and WUFT in Gainsville in 2009 made the programming switch that WUSF is about to undergo, eschewing news/classical for news/information. But they opted to relegate their classical programming to their HD stations, which far fewer people have access to. (HD stands for "high definition" radio systems, which allow stations to broadcast digital audio, multiple program streams and traditional FM all on the same frequency. Listeners must purchase a separate radio to get HD programming, or access it via the Internet.)
Rick Johnson is general manager of WGCU in Fort Myers. He says that since his station's format changes kicked in, he has seen an increase of support. In the spring of 2009, six months into the new schedule, the station heard from 600 new members, a record, and twice as many as in spring of '08.
Larry Dankler is director of programming at WUFT in Gainesville, which made a similar transition last August. He says that fundraising initially took a dive at the station, which is situated on the campus of UF. There were public protests, too, with news reports of unhappy classical music listeners holding signs that read "Less Talk, More Bach."
But now, says Dankler, "We are seeing really good numbers," and he also notices that the station is seeing a number of new members join, particularly in the 25-54 age demographic. According to Arbitron, the average age for news/talk is considered stable, with 70 percent of its audience over 45 years old. For news/classical, 62 percent of listeners are 55 or older.
WUSF is essentially catching up to what the rest of the network's affiliates have already been doing. An Arbitron report on public radio shows that a dozen more stations adopted the news/talk format in the past year, and that news/talk captures nearly half of all public radio listening in the country. And of the network's top 25 markets, only three — Atlanta, Houston and Tampa — had been outside the news/talk format (and Houston is now making the transition as well).
But although some classical music listeners may be bummed about the transition, there's another group of folks with a vested interest in WUSF's changes.
That would be the Tampa Bay area's community radio station, situated to the immediate left of WUSF on your radio dial, WMNF 88.5 FM (where this reporter toiled from 2000-2009). WMNF has paid annually for years to air NPR news headlines at the top of the hour and to broadcast Fresh Air with Terry Gross. Since 2003, WMNF has aired Fresh Air the day after it comes down off the satellite, but WUSF will now begin to air the show every day at noon, when it's fed live to stations across the country.
WMNF Program Director Randy Wynne says the station currently spends $18,000 annually for Fresh Air and NPR headlines, and for the past two weeks has been experimenting with BBC news headlines in their place. The station intends to conduct a survey of listeners to determine which news service they prefer.
When asked how he thinks WMNF's programming might be affected by WUSF's conversion (WMNF airs four hours of public affairs daily between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.), Wynne said that audience data in the past indicated that many news listeners in the Tampa Bay area would create "a composite station"; that is, they would tune in to WUSF for their morning and late afternoon news shows, but flip to 88.5 during the middle of the day when Fresh Air, Democracy Now and a local talk show airs (hosted three days a week by Rob Lorei, with the other two days featuring alternative health and the local arts). He also said that programming changes, which he had been contemplating, are now on hold until the effects of WUSF's changes become obvious.
WUSF's JoAnne Urofsky says she's heard from many listeners — both those excited about the move, and the diehard classical music enthusiasts who aren't as pleased. The classical signal, 89.1 FM, will resume broadcasting on September 15. Its reach will not extend as far as WUSF's 89.7 channel, but Urofsky says where the new signal falls short, her engineering team will place a translator station on a tower on the USF Tampa campus, which will extend the signal through Pasco County and into parts of northern Pinellas and Hillsborough counties. But she confesses that Polk County will not get the signal immediately, so the station is looking at translators that could send the signal there.
That may not be ideal, but classical-loving audiences in Gainsville and Fort Myers were stuck with only an HD-signal, which after several years and lots of local promotion simply has not caught on with radio listeners in the U.S.
A report commissioned by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting called Public Radio in the New Network Age says that "for the near term, HD2 and HD3 channels are not a viable choice for the presentation of multiple, differentiated services aimed to reaching measurable audiences."
WUSF currently airs its local public affairs program, Florida Matters, on a weekly basis. Might there be something local on a daily basis to fit in between the national programs, as is done at other NPR affiliates?
"We have thoughts about that," Joann Urofsky says. But first and foremost, she just wants to make sure that the transition to a new station and two new formats on the same day is a success.
"I think a year from now, we'll have a different conversation about that."
wmnf, wusf, classical music, npr, talk radio, terry gross, fresh air, joanne urofsky, randy wynne, community radio, larry dankler, rick johnson, fort myers, wgcu, wftu, hd radio, on the media, joan mckniff, Karen Everhart, current, mitch perry, news
This article appears in Sep 2-8, 2010.