Any idea about the fate of WMOT?

[Mike Stroud]

Two posts have examined, to death perhaps, the impact of the sale of the old Vanderbilt student station WRVU to Nashville Public Radio, licensee of the WPLN stations, in order to have a full-time classical format on 91.1. Perhaps lost in the mix, though, is the fate of another pubcaster that has spent the past two or three years more or less conceding its audience to WPLN, Middle Tennessee State's WMOT, which for 27 years ran a straight jazz format on 89.5 for a small but highly loyal audience, particularly among area musicians.

In 2008, WMOT lost a Corporation for Public Broadcasting grant, and the Tennessee state budget crisis hit hard the following year, prompting MTSU to consider pulling the plug. Instead, the station cut its budget back and brought on some news/talk, mainly from Public Radio International, in an effort to steal some of the WPLN listeners to NPR's signature drive-time newscasts. For about a year, it looked like it would work. But pledges didn't go up, and when the longtime station manager there retired, a newbie came in and shook up the old culture there, cutting jazz back to nights and weekends and taking up the slack in daytime classical music WPLN left behind in 2009.

However, here's where the interesting part begins. When Nashville Public Radio launched WCFL back in June, it looked for all intents and purposes like a checkmate on WMOT's attempt to steal WPLN's old listeners. Another sign of surrender is WMOT's decision to duplicate carrying All Things Considered, the motivation being that management wants listeners to keep their knobs off WPLN, fearing they might stay and not come back. WMOT has spent the better part of two years fighting its larger, better-capitalized rival, and keeps coming out on the short end of the stick.

The question is, when is MTSU finally going to lose patience and go through with a shutdown and sale? It sure looks imminent.

 

[JustinT]

Ever think a wider-reaching AAA format might work there? Something like KKXT/Dallas; grab some WRLT listeners as well as (some) WRVU fans.

 

[w9wi]

Those of you who've been here long enough...

Did Chicago's AM 1000 have *that much* of an impact down here during the days of AM top-40?

Because Mike is nowhere near the first person to typo the calls of "Classical 91-1" as "WCFL"

 

[Mike Stroud]

Those of you who've been here long enough...

Did Chicago's AM 1000 have *that much* of an impact down here during the days of AM top-40?

Because Mike is nowhere near the first person to typo the calls of "Classical 91-1" as "WCFL"

Sorry about that, friend. I'm one of the most perfectionist people I know about typing, but transpositions do occur in my writing from time to time. I suspect that is going to happen a lot in the future, but unlike us, nobody knows about the Chicago station. Thanks for setting the record straight.

 

[deltas69]

oh for the days of Lujack...and Landecker :'(

 

[Nock]

Encarta, maybe they need a board member to help shut it down.

Nock

 

[jetfli]

WMOT has no business trying to be part of the Public Radio chain. WMOT should be a media training ground for students. I would envision WMOT as a place for alternative music, news, local public affairs, MTSU-generated educational segments, and MTSU sports. While students can create programming in a vacuum, putting it on an area-wide signal will give students experience and interactivity with an audience. If MTSU feels that it is too expensive to operate for this purpose, then let them go ahead and sell it...

 

[Mike Stroud]

WMOT has no business trying to be part of the Public Radio chain. WMOT should be a media training ground for students. I would envision WMOT as a place for alternative music, news, local public affairs, MTSU-generated educational segments, and MTSU sports. While students can create programming in a vacuum, putting it on an area-wide signal will give students experience and interactivity with an audience. If MTSU feels that it is too expensive to operate for this purpose, then let them go ahead and sell it...

Actually, MTSU already has a student station, WMTS-FM. Alas, though, its power is below 1,000 watts and probably can only be heard within the city of Murfreesboro itself. Also, WMOT was, and still is, a "training ground" for broadcasting students, who do pre-recorded intros to music during the jazz schedule. In effect, the point you raise is whether WMTS-FM ought to be "promoted" to the WMOT signal, with the latter getting rid of the traditional pubradio format. It would seem to be a better fate in my eyes, but MTSU is probably looking to raise revenue by selling the frequency. That consideration will likely come up before any thought is given to re-formatting.

If WMTS were to take over 89.5, it would possibly go some way to fill the void left by WRVU's demise as an on-air operation. Kids would have something to listen to, anyway. Some of WMOT's problems might have been avoided if it had done a little diversification of programming (even jazz fanciers got tired of it every once in awhile), but, as is typical for entities associated with higher education, the long tenure of staff members there created a rather hidebound, complacent culture, largely insensitive to the fact that jazz listeners were dying off by the day. The only real reason the all-jazz format survived as long as it did was the support given by Nashville's musician community--elsewhere in the country, old NPR jazz outlets gave way to news and talk years ago. Jazz has not been a popular nightclub offering for years, except for high-priced martini bars and the like. Much like college rock, accessibility was a problem, especially with the "bop" era from the end of World War II to the mid-1960s. The station did present great variety, but without other things in the culture to aid in the educational effort (e.g., music education in schools), it could only do so much. With classical music, there is a large clientele of the well-heeled and the corporations to make up the slack, but jazz has never been the beneficiary of that kind of largesse.

Basically, to make things short, WMOT got stuck in the world of 1982, when the format started. At that time, jazz was one of only a few acceptable formats on public radio (classical, folk, and drama were others). Rock of any kind was considered "low-brow" and too youth-oriented to boot. The station had a small but tenaciously loyal following for many years, and that probably induced the people there not to fool around with format tweaking. By the 2000s, the station was starting to show its age, and the financial recession of recent times really told on it.

Bear in mind all of this is mere speculation; much like the WRVU episode, MTSU will seal its lips until a sale is made. I just see a lot of the same forces in the Nashville Public Radio acquisition at work here also.

 

[TheBigA]

Bear in mind all of this is mere speculation; much like the WRVU episode, MTSU will seal its lips until a sale is made. I just see a lot of the same forces in the Nashville Public Radio acquisition at work here also.

One would think that with the incredible wealth, as well as the entrepeneurial spirit of the Nashville music community, that a group of musicians or music lovers would get together and offer to buy the station to promote quality music. I've sat in numerous meetings with groups like the Future of Music Coalition, listening to them complain about radio. When I bring up the fact that radio ownership isn't restricted to corporations, and any of them could buy a station, they get extremely defensive. It wouldn't take a lot of money, and it would be interesting to see if actual musicians could attract more money for radio than broadcasters. Maybe we already know the answer.

 

[jetfli]

One would think that with the incredible wealth, as well as the entrepeneurial spirit of the Nashville music community, that a group of musicians or music lovers would get together and offer to buy the station to promote quality music.

Most musicians that are making it big are only interested in wise investments :

Actually, unless you are making it big, or writing for someone who is, you're most likely on food stamps...

 

[TheBigA]

Actually, unless you are making it big, or writing for someone who is, you're most likely on food stamps...

Sounds a lot like radio....

Obviously my comments aren't aimed at them. But there are quite a few who are well off, and are also activists in the music business. Rather than complain about radio, it would be more productive if they owned a non-com, and showed everyone else how to do it better. Just look at the names of the top contributors to the Future of Music Coalition.

 

[Tibbs4]

I LIKE where you are going with your thoughts, Big A. I can only imagine what those meetings are like, though. Attorney's trying to lead music types...or VICE versa. Sounds like a lot of tail
chasing, rhetoric and no decisions to me. But, virtually no dead air...

Nock get the best post line directed at encarta for July, 2011. So far.

 

[Mike Stroud]

I suspect my comments about the musician backers of WMOT got things off track here. I cannot foresee that any group of them would actually step forward to form an NGO to run the station--WMOT to them is probably a nice bonus to living in the area, but nothing to really fight for, like WRVU was to some indie rock groups. In a place like New Orleans (which has a community station that primarily plays jazz, blues, and Louisiana music) or New York (the long-standing WBGO), it would be a different story, but Nashville is a corporate town, a factory for the country and CCM genres. All of the musician interest was purely incidental and not really by design on MTSU's part. If the musician support had really been substantial (in terms of pledge money), the station wouldn't be in the trouble it is now. And in any case, musicians are vastly outnumbered by ordinary middle-class, 40-or-50-something types who couldn't give a you-know-what about music in the first place, their youth having long since passed. NPR to them means news and talk; all of you professionals on this forum know that.

Again, the only plausible place for WMOT to go, as I see it, would be for MTSU to promote the student station to 89.5 and to pull the plug on that tiny transmitter. Or better yet, maybe a situation could be worked out where the old WMOT jazz format could run in, say, the mornings (when the students are in class) and the students could have it the rest of the day, with maybe BBC World Service overnights or something. However, as I mentioned earlier, the listeners are not going to have much of a say over that, and the same ideas that University officials were contemplating in 2009 about selling the frequency are probably still on the table, with the economy, and thus state revenues, not having improved a bit since that time.

 

[JustinT]

Encarta, maybe they need a board member to help shut it down.

Nock get the best post line directed at encarta for July, 2011. So far.

In talking with others in the industry, I had been told that a listener-supported deep AAA format would be successful in the Nashville market - I was curious as to whether anyone would feel similarly.

 

[TheBigA]

In talking with others in the industry, I had been told that a listener-supported deep AAA format would be successful in the Nashville market - I was curious as to whether anyone would feel similarly.

In which industry? Radio or music? Because the small group of music industry folks would probably love it, especially if you incorporate Americana artists. But the serious question is can you come up with enough dedicated listeners who will pay the money. I don't know about that. For all the talk about Music City, Nashville has trouble supporting non-country venues. People don't like to pay for things in Nashville. That's why a lot of artists don't play there.

Get the business side worked out first. Make sure you can pay for it, before spending too much time on programming. Because I've been a part of a lot of listener-supported stations where they spent all their time on the music, and ran out of money. Even if it's a hobby, and most of the staff are volunteers, you will have about a million in annual bills to pay, if you include rent, insurance, utilities, legal, technical, and other costs. We were fortunate to get a lawyer to donate his time, or we would have gone belly up very early.

 

[firepoint525]

One would think that with the incredible wealth, as well as the entrepeneurial spirit of the Nashville music community, that a group of musicians or music lovers would get together and offer to buy the station to promote quality music.

There was the suggestion during the (almost) format change of WSM back in 2002 that a group of country musicians put their money where their mouths were, and outright buy WSM rather than complain about the direction that it was going. Seems that most of them were more interested in singing jingles for WSM than in trying to save it. Then there's this...

Most musicians that are making it big are only interested in wise investments

Not even a potential tax writeoff was enough to entice any of them to buy that money pit! :

 

[Mike Stroud]

In talking with others in the industry, I had been told that a listener-supported deep AAA format would be successful in the Nashville market - I was curious as to whether anyone would feel similarly.

In which industry? Radio or music? Because the small group of music industry folks would probably love it, especially if you incorporate Americana artists. But the serious question is can you come up with enough dedicated listeners who will pay the money. I don't know about that. For all the talk about Music City, Nashville has trouble supporting non-country venues. People don't like to pay for things in Nashville. That's why a lot of artists don't play there.

Get the business side worked out first. Make sure you can pay for it, before spending too much time on programming. Because I've been a part of a lot of listener-supported stations where they spent all their time on the music, and ran out of money. Even if it's a hobby, and most of the staff are volunteers, you will have about a million in annual bills to pay, if you include rent, insurance, utilities, legal, technical, and other costs. We were fortunate to get a lawyer to donate his time, or we would have gone belly up very early.

Actually, there's already a commercial outlet with an AAA format--the independently-owned WRLT, which has held onto that format for over 20 years because of its not being part of a chain. I seriously doubt MTSU wants to get into competition with a commercial broadcaster anymore than it wants to tangle with WPLN. The only NPR station with a format like that in the region is Chattanooga's WUTC, which mainly airs it outside the drive-time slots, with the typical NPR/PRI/APM news/talk mix during those times of day. I have no idea how "successful" WUTC has been; most NPR stations/networks in the South generally go with a more conservative classical-daytime/news & talk--drive-time split, so WUTC is probably something of an anomaly. In any case, though, I suspect WMOT would have already made the move to AAA if it hadn't been for WRLT.

Again, I reiterate: there are not many options this station has left if it wants to survive. Its fate may already have been sealed anyway with the Nashville Public Radio acquisition of WRVU.

Being a non-professional, I am quite curious about BigA's assertion that a non-commercial station goes through at least a million dollars a year. I trust he is talking about public radio outlets, not college stations or community stations. The few instances where I have seen financial figures from the latter category usually place annual budgets in perhaps the high five or low six figures, not seven. NPR is a different story, especially with state government, colleges or universities and professional staff. If he would be so kind as to maybe elaborate more about such high costs, I would be persuaded.

 

[TheBigA]

Being a non-professional, I am quite curious about BigA's assertion that a non-commercial station goes through at least a million dollars a year.

You'd be surprised. I'm sure Radio Free Nashville doesn't spend a million a year. But is that your aspiration?

There needs to be some paid staff. There needs to be a facility. It needs to be insured and maintained. And the government is going to dump a load of paperwork on you. The issue isn't how much, but rather how do you pay for it. I've learned that if you build it, they may NOT come. Then what?