This week, Spokane Public Radio made some changes in the formats for its three program streams.
For 45 years, KPBX has mixed national and local news with several genres of music. During its time on the air, KSFC has been a news and public affairs station. KPBZ has presented an eclectic mix of spoken word programs. All three have experienced some degree of change. They've been rearranged into single-format stations: SPR News (KPBX), SPR Classical (KSFC) and SPR Jazz (KPBZ).
Doug talks about the new program streams — and listener reactions to them — with General Manager John Decker and Program Director Henry McNulty.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Doug: For years, when Spokane Public Radio made programming changes, it did so incrementally, replacing a program or two at a time so as to minimize the effect. This week, we broke with that tradition and made deeper changes. More on that in a minute, but first a little background.
Since 1980, KPBX has held a niche place in the Spokane radio scene. It had always had a mixed format, with classical as the dominant music genre, and others, jazz and folk, mostly sprinkled in. NPR and local news have anchored the morning and afternoon drive times.
It's a format that works for listeners who tell us they appreciate the program diversity. The problem is, it doesn't work for enough listeners, which is one reason for the changes. So we take the story from there with John Decker, SPR's General Manager, and Henry McNulty, the program director for what is now SPR Classical and SPR Jazz.
So John, what was the decision about changing the format in a kind of drastic way, going from that multiple parts in one station to one format?
John Decker: It's mostly about opportunity and about saving the station. And it seems like a really dramatic way to focus it, is that we are saving the station. But this station has had a rough patch over the past few years, and doing the same thing over and over again is not a recipe for success. And that became very, very clear in the first few weeks, first few months of my tenure here at Spokane Public Radio. So there's that.
There's the financial reality of who we are and what we're doing and how we're trying to survive in this world. On the other hand, there's this opportunity that we have with the frequencies that the station owns.
The idea behind a single format station is well known, and it's well researched, and that's something that Henry can talk a little bit about too. It's well researched as being the strongest way to attract an audience and to provide public service. And at the end of the day, we are a radio station.
We're also a business. And so you kind of look at what we have here in Spokane, which is the three stations, the three main signals. And for a moment, let's just talk about what that means.
It provides us a way to provide 24/7 news and 24/7 classical and 24/7 jazz and really build up our audiences. We needed to make a bold statement about what direction the station needs to go in. I said before, we could have kept doing the same thing over and over again and sort of nibbled around the edges a little bit.
But if we want to put our shoulder into making Spokane Public Radio a much better partner and survive financially in the years ahead, this is really what we needed to do.
DN: Henry, you went and talked with other stations about those stations that are now single format stations that have made that same voyage that we're making right now. Tell me what you heard from other places.
Henry McNulty: They've had very similar journeys as we're having now and this is part of a wider industry trend that has been going for the last 25 years or so as stations have realized that they can best serve their listening audience by focusing on one format, focusing on one genre, so that when you turn on the radio as a listener, you know what you're going to get. You know that if you're a news fan, news and information, that's what you're going to hear.
If you're a classical fan, that's what you're going to hear. And other stations have had great success with that and found that in the end, even though there's a period of adjustment, listeners find that that is beneficial to them and they enjoy those formats.
DN: So then you had to make the decision about what was going to be the format for KPBX. How did you make that?
JD: I want to acknowledge here that it isn't my decision to make. I mean, this is something that lands on my desk and ultimately my responsibility. But this is something that we, Doug and Henry and the other people in the building here on North Monroe. We made this collectively and it became really obvious what we needed to do because doing the same over and over again wasn't going to help us out.
You put the strongest format on the strongest signal, full stop. And news and information really is the strongest format that we have in the public media world. More stations are very successful as news stations and even head-to-head or even markets where there are news or music, the news audience tends to be larger, tends to be very diverse and frankly a little bit younger than just the classical music or even the jazz music might be.
So it's very basic industry best practice. Put the strongest format on the strongest signal. And I need to acknowledge the fact that there are a lot of folks that have, and we'll talk about the feedback here in a minute probably, I want to acknowledge the fact that there are a lot of folks that really liked it the old way, really liked being able to hear classical music in the middle of the day in a smattering of jazz, you know, Rachel's show at two o'clock on Fridays. And it's that connection that they had to SPR as a very unique radio station.
And I want to acknowledge as we go forward with the changes that that does mean something. And that did mean something, as you guys know, that did mean something to us in our conversations inside the building to acknowledge how loyal an audience we do have and the risks that we are taking in making these particular changes.
DN: One of the unique parts that you talk about is that we have lots of music producers who volunteer their times for the most part. And they have shows that have been on for years and years. So how did you decide when you had a news station and a classical jazz station and jazz station, some of those fit nicely into the genres of those radio stations, but some didn't. Kevin Brown with bluegrass, for example. How did you figure out how to put those music programs in the places you have?
JD: Well, I really wanted to keep them. First of all, I don't want I don't think it's necessary to make any wholesale cancellations. And I really didn't want to because we want to maintain as much of the legacy of the stations as we have. So I think folks when they listen on Saturday and Sunday nights, they'll be really pleased that we've kept the shows and that they are there back to back. So you'll hear all of our local shows, the local music shows anyway, on Saturday and Sunday nights. And the idea here, again, is that if you like one music show, we think you'll like the other ones.
So you can listen to them in one spot and just keep your radio tuned to KPBX and you can hear Kevin and Zan and Mike and Rachel and the other shows that we produce here. And again, I think that those are shows that provide a lot of character to the station. They're just sort of miscast where they were before. Rachel does a great job with jazz, but at two o'clock on a Friday afternoon totally disrupts the listening patterns that, you know, one would expect. And we do want to be there for our audience. So I think we can do both of them simultaneously.
DN: Listeners have called, and some of them asked, is this a result of us losing federal funding, public radio losing federal funding, therefore we lost money, therefore we can't afford to keep on with the programs that we've had. What would you say to that, John?
JD: Yes and. This is something that we've needed to do for a long time. The loss of federal funding just made the need more acute.
We've been working on this project for about six months, and in the back of our minds here at the station, we sort of knew that this was a possibility. I would say today as well, I would say that even if the CPB funding had been continued from year to year, that we would make these changes anyway. Because even with that money in our budget, it was clear that we were running out of time, right? We were running out of time before our expenses greatly surpassed our revenues, and this is a change that we needed to make.
So the loss of CPB funding just makes it more acute. It just means that we have a $250,000 hole in our budget that it's now even more important that we follow through with what Henry is alluding to as far as really focusing on these individual formats and really looking at it as an opportunity to grow. This isn't us taking a step back by any stretch. This is about us providing a much wider canvas to grow and for us to paint on to increase our public service and increase the local shows that we do here.
DN: Let's talk about how listeners have responded to this. What are you hearing from, I guess, secondhand and firsthand from people you're talking to?
JD: I've made it a point to return every phone call and every email that I've gotten over the past couple of days, and I do that as a matter of pride because feedback is a gift. Even bad feedback is a gift. Or let me rephrase, all feedback is good. Sometimes the feedback can be not positive. That is to say, feedback about someone being upset.
I've been very pleasantly surprised that it's about 50-50. We've received calls and emails from folks that are happy now that they can hear news 24/7 or happy that they've got a place to hear classical music 24/7 that sort of acknowledges that we've sort of been in between formats on the stations for so long.
On the other hand, of course, there have been a lot of folks that are really unhappy because they live in an area that doesn't get KSFC or doesn't get KPBZ, and that's a problem. I mean, it really is. We knew going into the project that we ran the risk of really upsetting some folks, especially in the rural area, who aren't going to be able to hear Jim at 9 o'clock on their radio anymore.
I really acknowledge the fact we've got a lot of loyal audience members who have taken the time to write us an email, and we really want to acknowledge their loyalty to the station over the years. I know that it seems like this was unneeded to them. For them, the radio listening was set. They had a habit. They listened to the station when they wanted to listen to it. Their pattern was locked in, and for them, there was nothing wrong with KPBX, and that's absolutely true. However, from our perspective, we just couldn't keep doing that and expect to be able to survive much longer, much less be able to grow and provide them with more of what they're looking for.
DN: I guess we can give what little bit of engineering help we can in terms of if I am losing my access to KPBX here, how can I somehow find it, or how would you steer me toward something else that I'm looking to listen to?
JD: Yeah, there are lots of different ways that you can hear. The streams from Spokane Public Radio, you can hear them through our website on your computer. You can hear them through your smart speaker. You can hear them through Apple Music or Google Play. If you have an HD radio in your car, or perhaps you're one of those folks that have one at home, you can pick up the other channels through the radio, through the air. So there are lots of different avenues to access where the content is, and we've talked about this as being an evolution for the station.
Spokane Public Radio up to now, and for a while yet anyway, we are very, very heavy on the broadcast side of things. We have done very little in the digital world, which means that we run the risk of being irrelevant to an audience that's growing by the day that consumes content on a digital platform. And again, in deference to the folks that listen to radio only, the fact is that we need to do both.
We need to focus, and we need to invest in digital, or here again, we will not be a going concern. We will be a gone concern. So there are, as I was saying, there are different ways that you can access the programming. I recognize it requires a computer or a phone or a smart speaker, but it is definitely out there, and folks have told us that they've appreciated that.
DN: We in the news department, over the next month or so, we're going to create a news podcast, a daily news podcast of somewhere in five to ten minutes that you can pick up in the morning. Henry, you've got lots of other programs in terms of music and arts online. Why don't you tell us a little bit about that?
HM: We, for the longest time, have had From the Studio, which consists of interviews with various local arts organizations about upcoming productions or about their companies as a whole, and also sometimes features traveling acts. I've recently been talking with some composers from around the country.
So we're able to bring in interesting people to talk to, and while that does end up on air in a traditional way, those are also being posted to the website regularly as streamable podcasts. So if, say, you missed it in real time, you can always go back and listen to it, you know, when you want to, and we live now in an on-demand world.
There are, as John was talking about, many different ways to access what we do here at Spokane Public Radio, and one of those is on-demand. In fact, many of our shows that we've had for decades are now being posted online, and you're able to hear those whenever you want to. If, say, you missed the broadcast, you still have an opportunity.
JD: In closing, I really want people to know that we acknowledge them, and I empathize. I've been in this business for over 30 years, and as a listener, as a radio listener myself, I know what they're going through, right? I know what it's like to fall in love with a radio station because it's got exactly what you want to hear exactly when you want to hear it. We don't live in that world anymore, and we have to acknowledge the future along with acknowledging the past and these listening patterns.
We are in a world of very competitive media companies, and Spokane Public Radio, as a broadcast entity and as a content entity, needs to evolve. These changes are going to strengthen the organization, and for the folks that have threatened to pull their membership, I say please give us a little while to get this worked out, and in the long run, a year, two, three, five, ten years from now, I think Spokane Public Radio will be in a much better position, and we'll look back to this week, to these days, knowing that we did the right thing when we had to do it, and I just ask our audiences to give us a minute, right? Let us get this worked out. Take a minute to listen to the stations, to really enjoy the new shows as well.
It's not about losing the shows that you like. It's about also opening your eyes and your ears to new shows that you haven't heard before, voices that you haven't heard before. Diversity of schedule is really incredible now.
I think that we're really proud of it, so I acknowledge, I hear you. Believe me, I hear you, and I empathize. So just please stick with us, and I'm sure you're going to enjoy what you hear over the next few weeks and months.
If you have comments, you can email them to kpbx@kpbx.org or call 509-328-5729.
