WAMU Cuts Daily Bluegrass, Country Shows
By Frank Ahrens Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, June 23, 2001; Page C01
Public radio WAMU is taking all weekday music -- bluegrass and classic country -- off the air and relegating it to weekends and its new Internet site beginning Monday.
After a decades-long presence on the American University station, WAMU-FM (88.5) has decided that the traditional American music no longer holds listener interest during the weekday afternoon drive.
As of Monday, the 3 to 6 p.m. time slot -- occupied by bluegrass host Ray Davis on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday and classic country host Jerry Gray on Monday and Wednesday -- will be filled by news and talk. From 3 to 4 p.m., WAMU will air "The World," an international news show. From 4 to 6 p.m., it will air two additional hours of "All Things Considered," National Public Radio's evening newsmagazine.
WAMU will continue to broadcast bluegrass from midnight Saturdays to 6 a.m. Sundays, as well as "Stained Glass Bluegrass" on Sundays from 6 to 10 a.m. The weekend schedule shuffles significantly, as WAMU picks up new shows and drops a current one -- the quiz show "Whad'Ya Know." Gray's classic country show on Saturdays, from 3 to 6 p.m., remains. Davis has been offered a Sunday slot from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., but has not decided if he will accept it, says his wife, Mona.
Davis would not comment on WAMU's decision to drop his weekday show, but Mona Davis characterized him as "disappointed."
The station is launching a Web site Monday: www.countrybluegrass.org">www.countrybluegrass.org, paid for by a $10,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The site will broadcast the station's country and bluegrass music exclusively, around the clock. The site will begin by broadcasting tapes of Davis's and Gray's shows. Gray will continue to tape shows for the Web site. Davis has not decided if he will do so.
The Internet site is good news for the approximately 7 percent of all listeners who tune in to radio on the Internet, but bad news for all bluegrass fans who listened in their cars, when Davis's and Gray's weekday shows generated big pledges for WAMU.
In the most recent pledge drive, Davis's bluegrass show was the station's number two pledge generator, after perpetual top-earner "Morning Edition," NPR's morning-drive newsmagazine. No other Washington area stations play bluegrass.
WAMU General Manager Susan Clampitt -- who succeeded F. Kim Hodgson last June -- says the Web site proves the station's commitment to bluegrass. The numbers, she said, made the final decision about continuing on-air bluegrass: At 3 p.m. each weekday, when Davis's and Gray's shows came on, WAMU lost 90 percent of its listeners.
Further, she said, bluegrass pledges account for only about 5 percent of WAMU's total revenue, which is composed of pledges, federal money, corporate underwriting and grants. (Pledges account for about half of WAMU's revenue.)
The rumors of bluegrass radio's demise had been circulating for several months; during the presidential election recount, WAMU replaced afternoon bluegrass with news programming. Bluegrass fans were sure the recount hiatus provided pretext for eliminating bluegrass altogether.
They were partly right. Clampitt says WAMU began research on bluegrass last fall and, during the election recount, received overwhelming listener encouragement to knock off afternoon bluegrass.
"We are perceived as a public radio station for news and information," Clampitt said yesterday afternoon. "There is a strong desire from listeners for more of it."
That hasn't always been the case.
Washington was once "the Nashville of bluegrass" and remains vital to the development of musicians. Years ago, WAMU played several types of music but eventually jettisoned all save bluegrass because, primarily, it was the most reliable pledge-generator. Further, as radio becomes more homogenized, hearing bluegrass on a Washington station provided a strong sense of regionality absent from much of today's radio.
Reactions to WAMU's decision were strong.
"I'm very sad," said Hodgson from Davidson College in Davidson, N.C., where he runs the school's classical public radio station. "It was something that made WAMU truly unique."
Hodgson said that for years radio consultants told him that "WAMU could be the biggest, richest, most fabulous station in the network if you'd just get rid of that ridiculous bluegrass."
But even though Hodgson cut six hours of daily bluegrass down to three hours, he resisted killing it outright during the week.
"[WAMU] was generally raking in $300,000 to $700,000 a year more than I could spend, anyway," he said. "We were providing a unique public service not available anywhere else. Why did I need to be the biggest, richest and most fabulous?"
Bluegrass's most influential fan in Washington may be Rep. Howard Coble (R-N.C.), who has become friends with Davis. Coble's driver knows to keep the radio tuned to WAMU in the afternoons while ferrying the congressman, who often sings along to the songs.
"There is a term we use in the rural South: I am hopping mad," Coble said, from North Carolina. "This has busted my bubble."
In protest, Coble said he would withhold his annual pledge to WAMU.
Kevin Appel, a lawyer for Arlington County and a longtime bluegrass fan, has formed the Coalition to Save Bluegrass, designed to pressure WAMU into reversing its decision. The group's first mailing urges bluegrass fans to lobby and boycott WAMU, to demand a refund of pledges directed at bluegrass shows and to urge congressional intercession.
Appel points out that Washington has two public radio stations -- WAMU and WETA (90.9) -- that now air the same news shows. Which, Appel says, undermines public radio's mission to provide diverse programming.
© 2001 The Washington Post Company