WAMU Cuts Daily Bluegrass Programming

Subject: RE: WAMU Cuts Daily Bluegrass Programming
From: Ferrara
Date: 25 Jun 01 - 09:25 PM

Here are some suggestions for useful places to lodge a protest:

WAMU 88.5 FM American University Brandywine Building Washington DC 20016-8082

To reach a live person at WAMU FM during regular business hours: 202-885-1200

To make a comment about WAMU's programming, there is a listener comment line: 202-885-1213

For comments via e-mail: [e-mail]

WAMU FM Membership Department: 202-885-1252, or [e-mail]

I hope they are being swamped with complaints!

Rita

Subject: RE: WAMU Cuts Daily Bluegrass Programming
From: Banjer
Date: 25 Jun 01 - 06:57 PM

WMNF, Tampa, 88.5 did the same thing. Cut out the weekday 'drive time' bluegrass segment from 4PM to 7Pm and relegated it to a couple of hours on monday night (7 to 9PM) and two hours early Saturday morning (6 to 8AM).They lost my support and pledges. I can't even recall the last time I listend to their station. That was about the last radio I listened to. I found that my tapes and CD's were much better because I could decide what I wanted to hear! Public Radio is like public transportation: It's ok if you have nothing else, but if you don't want to go where it goes then it sucks!

Subject: RE: WAMU Cuts Daily Bluegrass Programming
From: DougR
Date: 25 Jun 01 - 06:34 PM

Our local PBS station features jazz and the blues. I wonder if what has happened in D. C. is a bad omen for music on PBS stations? As Bill D. hinted they all might convert to the low cost "Call in" talk shows which attracts the same audiences over and over.

If they feel a large enough pinch in the pledge drive, you might see bluegrass return to Washington.

DougR

Subject: RE: WAMU Cuts Daily Bluegrass Programming
From: M.Ted
Date: 25 Jun 01 - 05:45 PM

There isn't much to listen to on Washington area radio-- the good stuff is gone or going--I am horrified at the direction that public radio stations are moving--not that I begrudge them corporate sponsorships, but they are absolutely selling everything down the river for the sake of those underwriting dollars(including the listenership)--

Many public radio stations actually had more listeners when they had community based, mostly volunteer staff(some even had good news departments!) but brought in "professional" staff, whose real priorities were to raise money that went to expand the salaries of "professional' staff--

Public radio programming can get to be the equivalent of a "vanity press"--programs without listeners, paid for, as a taz-write-off, by corporate sponsored foundations that see it as low-cost advertising to a more upscale demographic than they get on the "Adult Contemporary" stations--

Subject: RE: WAMU Cuts Daily Bluegrass Programming
From: Bill D
Date: 25 Jun 01 - 05:33 PM

they really went out on limb with THIS one....they are adding MORE news and talk,and the hourly count of listeners will go up, but it will be the SAME people who listen to all the other news & talk shows, and those folks arent going to contribute twice. The bluegrass/folk crowd has been increasingly shoved into dark corners in recent years, and they sent a lot of $$$$...we shall just see, hmmmm?

Subject: RE: WAMU Cuts Daily Bluegrass Programming
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Jun 01 - 05:08 PM

They've lost me as a contributer to their fund drives. I rarely listened to any other radio station. WETA did much the same thing years ago, and now just has Mary Cliff on Saturday nights. WAMU hosted a song and music stage at a 'Celtic' festival the weekend before last. WAMU's stage announcer on Sunday was Mary Cliff of WETA.

Subject: WAMU Cuts Daily Bluegrass Programming
From: M.Ted
Date: 25 Jun 01 - 03:29 PM

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