Unlikely Sources
Written Sep. 29, 2008 by Sean Ross in Content with 3 Comments
It's been a long time since I expected to be informed of a major breaking news story on a music radio station. The last time it happened was Columbine and that I had to hear about on London's Capital FM, which still did top-of-the-hour news throughout the day in 1999. If I'm at my desk listening to music radio, it will probably be a co-worker or a stray visit to a news-oriented Website that fills me in.
In the case of the House of Representatives' decision to reject the bailout bill this afternoon, I did get the news via IM. I didn't hear it mentioned on the music station I was listening to. But a few minutes later, I switched over to student-operated commercial Modern Rock outlet WBRU Providence, R.I. Almost immediately, I heard a news bulletin about the bill, right between One Day As A Lion and Stone Temple Pilots. Fifteen minutes later, there was another top-of-the-hour bulletin, this one featuring a different newscaster. It was a lot of news on a music station by today's standards.
It makes one realize that if there are fewer places to train jocks, then where else would you expect to hear a newscaster-in-training except a college-run station? And wonder: where do these newscasters go next when they graduate (literally or figuratively), particularly if they want to report hard news? In any event, it reminds one again that news will be one of the things that allows people to connect with their radio station in times of uncertainty.
Reader Comments
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I'm a Brown University / WBRU grad, and the station has smartly held on to many of its news elements. I believe they continue to win AP awards for local coverage.
One of WBRU's main purposes is simple - it's an educational workshop for students. And it's not just for students looking to get into rock radio.
The front office, sales department, promotions, programming, tech, and marketing departments are all filled with Brown students learning what it's like to operate a business such as WBRU. They continue to play jazz and blues overnight, and run the 360 Degree Black Experience in Sound all day on Sundays.
It's definitely an anomaly these days, but it continues to work because of its history in the market and the passionate folks who work there.
Sorry for chiming in again, right after having posted something, but I need to put my two cents in about my alma mater, which is run in much the same way as WBRU, and never seems to get the attention it deserves.
WRUF ("AM 850" and "Rock 104") in Gainesville, the University of Florida owned stations, again, two fully commercial stations; the FM with a complete jock staff of students, and the AM with a complete news/sports department and board op staff of UF Broadcasting students. I was fortunate to work there myself, at both the AM and the FM. There were many big names who got their training at WRUF as well (Red Barber, Rich Fields of "The Price Is Right", to name a small few).
I haven't even mentioned the NPR affiliate the University owns, NPR affiliate WUFT/89.1, also student staffed, and the two TV stations, one a PBS affiliate which produces an afternoon newscast completely done by students!!
Even in drive times, most music-formatted stations don't run any newscasts. Some don't even have weather forecasts or traffic reports.
A few years ago, Westwood One began distributing one-minute hourly radio headline newscasts produced by NBC News/MSNBC. I had thought a lot of music stations would be interested because:
(1) They are only one minute long. There's little chance of tune-out, especially if the DJ were to announce a couple of songs that would be played "starting one minute from now". Then the newscast.
(2) They wouldn't have to hire a local news person.
(3) They could stand-out as a place for some news among commercial FM and music-formatted stations.
Certainly, if I were programming a music-formatted FM and if these newscasts were available in my market, I'd take them for the reasons outlined above.
But I don't think many music stations have taken advantage of this. For instance in Boston, these newscasts are being run by WTKK-FM, which programs talk.
A missed opportunity.