Association of Music Personnel in Public Radio 
Summer 1999 

       When investing in cultural stocks becomes a routine financial activity, as one day it certainly must, investing in classical music will be all the rage. 

       More people than ever before know that classical music exists. Many of them even know what classical music sounds like. 

       Andrea Bocelli and the Three Tenors are huge hits. Charlotte Church is on her way up. Bernard Holland compares young girl violinists in a Sunday column in the New York Times . That old flick Amadeus continues to resound, and Mozart sales continue to grow. Public television gives major space to broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera and New York Philharmonic and to specials like Turandot from the Forbidden City. Mixing sophisticated artistic concepts and soap opera, Hilary and Jackie becomes a mild hit and is widely discussed in the leading media. Modern music, once a doormat, has not only benefited, it has helped to lead the surge. 

       John Adams’ music is everywhere. Pierre Boulez is a celebrity. The Kronos Quartet is the most well-known string quartet of the day based on its playing of almost totally unknown composers.  Were they to modify their artistic credo and perform a Beethoven cycle in major cities around the world, it would become a media event of monumental proportions and a very difficult ticket to obtain. The best young conductors, like Nagano and Salonen, are more attuned to the music of the 20th century than to classical war-horses; and they are profoundly committed to being present at the creation of the music of the 21st century. 

      This widespread availability and recognition has been achieved without the presence of conventionally titanic interpreters of the mainstream repertoire such as Toscanini and Furtwängler, Heifetz and Oistrakh, Rubinstein and Schnabel, or Casals and Piatigorsky. It’s true that such figures still cut a wide swath through the classical music world through their myriad recordings, but it’s not the same as if they were appearing regularly on the concert stages of the world (imagine how gigantic the classical music economy would be then!). 

      A large and pivotal part of the industry’s success must be credited to classical music public radio, which has played and continues to play a pivotal role in building awareness of classical music as a distinct musical genre and in promoting the sales of the vast range and proliferation of classical music products. 

      Classical music public radio makes it possible for record companies to attain visibility and credibility. It provides key advertising and promotional means and venues for orchestras and opera companies and chamber music series. Classical music public radio trains professionals in what William Kraus calls the “high art” of articulating the classical music experience to audiences with a wide range of backgrounds and listening skills, making, as Kraus says, “the complex simple and accessible.” 

      There is no doubt that classical music public radio is profoundly attuned to its audience. Based on my work with more than 200 stations from 1991 to 1998, I’ve found that classical music public radio enjoys not only an intimate relationship with its core audience, but also a deeply committed one because of the perception that classical music is an endangered art form that needs not only proper support and nurturing but protection from bullying. 

      Classical music public radio could do more. 

      Its hybrid status, as a not-for-profit animal whose lack of adequate public funding requires it to raise money and occasionally operate as if it were a for-profit business, tends to makes it conservative at just those crucial points of audience development and promotion where it should be most innovative and daring. 

      Classical music public radio also needs to acknowledge the truth of Kraus’ dictum that the education of the untrained “should be done as creatively and as unobtrusively as possible” and be on its guard against advocates who, in trying to attract and upgrade listeners, wind up being either patronizing or heavy-handed. “Untrained audience members,” Kraus said, “are not stupid. Anyone trying to educate the people in this market segment should approach them as the teacher of a night school comprised of late-blooming philistines approaches her or his clientele: respectfully and very, very carefully.” 

      Above all, classical music public radio needs to learn how to leverage the pivotal role it plays within the classical music industry, an industry characterized by the unfortunate inability of many of its major players to work together. 

      Classical music public radio has two enormous advantages. Although it lacks a formal network designation (aside from NPR, which many listeners assume is the umbrella for all classical music public radio and which has too many disparate interests to adequately represent the unique growth potential of classical music public radio), it has two powerful resources, widespread public access and a distinct musical genre, that could allow it to function as a broad national network. Such a network would have tremendous power to reach out and communicate with one voice without sacrificing local and regional identities, and to stabilize and increase growth and financial prosperity without compromising agreed-upon standards and goals. 

      To take this step, classical music public radio needs to think of its listeners not as 
financial supporters mired in a co-dependency relationship, but as financial stakeholders in a system where the growth of special interests and niche markets within the larger whole would represent a core value as much or more than merely providing pleasant background music or news-and-information programming. 

       The second advantage is that, at a time when media exposure is paramount to financial success, classical music public radio should understand how to use the media comprehensively to explain itself to the public and promote its goals. 

       In fact, classical music public radio could move forcefully to the forefront of the cultural entertainment industry by implementing a national public relations and marketing initiative on behalf of its stations through the general print and broadcast media. 

       Like similar national initiatives on behalf of other industries, a national classical music public radio initiative based in communications would create a unified vision, identity, and action plan through a comprehensive internal dialogue, then implement it through a range of communications and promotional activities, operated as a single entity under the aegis of an aggressive governing body (such as AMPPR) that would provide the resources for making decisions about how to respond to the industry’s business challenges and opportunities. 

       Of course, in order to communicate effectively to the public, either through the media or directly, an organization must know what it wants to communicate and to understand that the simpler the message and the fewer the number of messages, the easier it is to be successful. 

       It is my understanding, however, that classical music public radio currently has neither a single set of agreed-upon messages nor any highly developed communicating mechanism with which to promulgate the many messages it does have. It is not surprising, therefore, that the general media, despite their generally adequate critical and feature coverage of classical music, are often perceived as being uncooperative, incompetent, and hostile to classical music public radio. 

       Perhaps most surprising about classical music public radio’s approach to the media is that, in an information age, the approach that is largely unconcerned with providing information, either to the media or to the public, about the inner workings of how classical music, taken as performing units similar to sports teams, actually works. More often, classical music public radio talks about music as if it were primarily a life-enhancing experience and only incidentally a technically demanding entertainment event. 

       Several years ago, a first-chair player in a major orchestra advocated more detailed media coverage of the orchestral rank and file and less of the conductors, soloists, and composers. “By personalizing players in the orchestra to the audience,” Los Angeles  Philharmonic principal oboist David Weiss explained, “the press could very well increase the popularity of classical music and generate greater interest in musical events. . . . It is all too easy to forget the precarious position of classical music these days. Unless all of us begin thinking ahead, we risk classical music slipping onto the endangered species list.” 

       In other words, classical music public radio needs to teach its audience what makes music tick, how to identify with the rank and file making the music and how to distinguish good performances from bad, basic skills that are essential to most people’s enjoyment of art forms, whether they be string quartets or professional basketball games. Above all, classical music public radio needs to stretch itself and its constituency from listeners to potential sponsors and beneficiaries. 

       What makes these prospects so exciting as the new century approaches is that they are all possible if classical music public radio can find the will and the leadership. If not, there is an array of competing forces that will see the opportunity that taking a leading position on behalf of the classical music industry in representing it to the public offers, and be more than willing to step into the breach.