WAMU's Bluegrass Country Soon to RIP

[MikeRivers]

In other news about ways to not make money in music, Bluegrass Country.org, a 24-hour bluegrass (with some extensions) music on-line streaming, HD-FM, and local low power FM station will be shutting down at the end of this year. Here's the whole article, but the gist is that they never got the financial support they had hoped for (see the thread about baby-boomers not payng for music) and they can no longer afford to keep it alive. Their studies have led them to believe that switching to 100% news and public affairs will get them a larger listener base of paying subscribers.

 

Another station around here, WETA-FM, was primarily a classical music station with a few hours of NPR news and information programming. Their new station manager decided (also through "research") that they'd get more money by dropping the classical music and going 100% news/talk. It totally flopped for them. The classical listeners were so pissed that they went to the other NPR station (WAMU) for their news and after two years of losing a big load of pledge dollars, went back to the classical programming and they're doing just fine.

 

My gut feeling is that WAMU, however, will get what they're looking for since they'll pick up more new$ li$tener$ and drop the deadbeats.

 

Seriously, if anyone here is looking for a good radio format, maybe a college or community station just getting started (or maybe Gibson????), take a look at the RFP. They aren't looking for a cash buyer, they'd really like the format to stay alive somewhere where it doesn't have to make money. They'll donate their vast music library to the winner, and I'm sure the out-of-work programmers will be looking for work.