WCRB (was re: WKLB Frequency Change?)

[Rob Landry]

On Wed, 11 Jul 2018, A Joseph Ross wrote:

> Well, it did make the format less irritating.  And I think they tended 
> to use more shorter works, rather than single movements of longer works.

The challenge is to maximize average time spent listening. Traditionally, 
classical stations have low average TSL, even if the average length of 
classical recordings is longer -- about 12 minutes, unless I misremember 
-- than songs in any other format.

In drive time, where listeners need frequent news, weather, and traffic 
updates, the problem becomes acute. Playing movements is the answer; 
listeners want to hear their favorites, not some obscure piece of music by 
someone no one's heard of. Yet many of these favorites are too long for 
drive time if played full-length.

Outside drive time, the clocks called for the first piece in each hour to 
be a full length piece, anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes long. The rest of 
the hour would be filled by shorter pieces, some of them movements. There 
were also "classic clusters" of two or three very short pieces (e.g. 
"Flight of the bumblebee") combined and scheduled as one element. The 
scheduling algorithm had to be flexible because we tried as much as 
possible to avoid scheduling for length; we wanted to play the best loved 
and most attractive of the available pieces of music for each slot, 
regardless of length. That meant a commercial break scheduled for 24 
minutes after the hour might run at :17 past or :32 past.

But it worked, and we did achieve a 4.5 share. That was in the old 
five-county Boston metro, though, before they added part of Worcester 
County and southern New Hampshire. The best we ever did in the expanded 
metro was in the mid threes.

Nassau's WCRB at 99.5 still had a 3 share, despite Mario's departure, the 
change from diary sampling to PPM, and the move from the Newton 
transmitter site to the Andover one. When WGBH took over the ratings sank 
like a stone.

Mario's format lives on; see http://classical959.com if you like 
commercials, or http://classicalwscs.org if you don't.


Rob