By RODNEY HO/ rho@ajc.com, originally filed Wednesday, February 10, 2016
Last year, classical music fans were distraught after 90.1/WABE-FM dropped classical music from its daytime lineup.
Jeffrey McIntyre, a 60-year-old East Point resident and church musician who has been listening to WABE since the late 1970s, started a Facebook page Bring Back Classical Music. Over the past year, it has built up 1,200 members.
"I felt like the station's reputation was built on classical music," he said. "We felt betrayed. It's been pretty much taken away from us."
Soon after the change, McIntyre said he met with John Weatherford, chief operating officer at the time, who explained the logic behind the move. He later wrote new CEO and board chair Wonya Lucas, who joined the station last spring. He said she didn't respond.
"I was puzzled," McIntyre said. "They were going to a format where they had no competition to one that is already saturated, the format of talk. I don't get that."
Last month, two days before the quarterly WABE board meeting, McIntyre decided to rally his Facebook troops and have them gather before hand for an old-fashioned protest with signs.
"It was the first anniversary of the switch to talk," he said.
About a dozen folks showed up.
"I like curated music," said Kevin Pritchett, co president of the Pro-Mozart Society of Atlanta and one of the protesters. "Tell me who the conductor was and the connection to Atlanta. Tell me those things!"
Nancy Jones, a Norcross home school teacher, said her exposure to classical music on WABE growing up in the 1960s has helped her to this day. Her son is now studying music and she said without WABE, that may never have happened. "For us not to have at least one classical music station in a market this size is ridiculous," she said.
Some board members stopped to talk to the protesters. McIntyre said Kevin Ross, vice chair, was especially receptive to his concerns both before and after the meeting. (Ross, through a spokesperson, referred all questions to Lucas.)
Before the meeting began, Lucas came up to McIntyre and noted that she grew up listening to classical on WABE. The board later allowed him to speak at the meeting. Board secretary Chuck Taylor told him at the meeting that WABE's HD channel has a separate full-time classical feed.
Taylor, in an email after the meeting, declined to comment but provided the station's official response regarding classical music. It's the same paragraph Hilary Silverboard, senior vice president of marketing and business strategy, sent me as well:
We appreciate our passionate classical music fans and continue to serve them 24 hours a day with a constant presence across our radio and digital platforms. Fans can access classical music on radio in the evenings and on weekends. We also offer classical music via streaming from WABE.org or the WABE 90.1 app as well as on the 90.1 HD2 channel. We remain committed to our local news and information strategy during the day as well as our national NPR programming.
Lucas also spoke with McIntyre after the meeting. To him, "she's a functionary of the board. She'll do what they tell her to do."
WABE had previously set aside money to cover the increased costs related to its expanded news/talk lineup. During the board meeting, management said both underwriting and individual donor giving were ahead of budget and finances are in good shape.
At the time of the change, Weatherford told me that this switch was in the planning stages for a long time. The addition of Georgia Public Broadcasting's news/talk lineup on WRAS-FM in the summer of 2014 may have been a factor in facilitating the switch, he said, but not the primary reason. Over the years, news/talk had drawn better ratings for the station than classical and brought in more pledge dollars.
But WABE ratings did fall last year by 21 percent from 2014, according to data I collected from Nielsen Audio.
McIntyre acknowledges that classical music tends to draw an older audience than news/talk. But he also said older folks listen more to traditional FM radio. Why not cater to them?
"Everybody [on the board] that spoke to me personally except Chuck Taylor gave me hope there is the possibility of getting classical music on the FM format again," McIntyre said. But he's realistic. "The change of format didn't come quickly. It isn't going to be changed back quickly."
He plans to organize a bigger protest for the next quarterly meeting in April.
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