This is a followup to my earlier posting reporting on the death
of broadcasting from the Xavier University campus.

And now the followup review: The new WVXU station in Cincinnati,
owned and operated by WGUC, the classical music outlet (now an inde-
pendent nonprofit corporation, no longer affiliated with the Univer-
sity of Cincinnati), began broadcasting at midnite on August 22. It
is probably all that could've been expected, considering the circum-
stances.

As was expected, NPR news and talk programs that were impinging
on the classical music schedule have been moved to the "new WVXU"
on 91.7. As in some other cities, one channel is now all-classical-
all-the-time -- vitally important to the conservative burghers of
conservative Cincinnati! grin -- while the other channel is NPR-
oriented. (Never mind that for a long time WGUC has been criticized
for being too much of a "top 40" classical station. That's what
its loyal listeners want to hear. All-Beethoven-all-the-time is
just fine with them! But we digress.)

For the talk station they've kept the old WVXU call letters.
That's in somewhat bad taste under the circumstances and I suspect
likely to be a drag on fund-raising for some time. A clean break
on call letters would probably make it easier to accept the situa-
tion for those people who have any reason to identify with either
Xavier University (such as alumni) or the former station (even if
only as listeners or visitors to its studios) for the past quarter-
century. It will be interesting to see what kind of reaction they
get to their first on-air fund-raising talkathon. Will it succeed?
Or will it fall flat on its face? I think they'd do better by
changing the call letters.

The new owners have ditched almost all the locally-produced pro-
grams that made the old WVXU famous. In their place is an expanded
lineup of national NPR programs. When the station purchase was an-
nounced several months ago, the classical station claimed that they
would be saving money by having one organization operating what had
been two stations. Does buying national programs instead of relying
on volunteers achieve that?!?

In any case, some programs that are new to local NPR radio, or
not heard here for a while, have the same themes as the former lo-
cal programs that've been dropped. The new owners are apparently
trying to appeal to the old audience but in a different way. The
amateurs are out; professional announcers, both national and local,
are in. Longtime blues host Lee Hay has been kept on. 60-year
radio veteran Oscar Treadwell, the Nat Hentoff of local radio jazz
(history and lore), is back. Rebroadcasts of 1940s programs are
out; Stan Freburg's version of that genre is in. The local big-
band, swing music broadcast is out; the NPR version of same is in.

One of the most noticeable differences between the old station
and the new is the greatly expanded emphasis on news. They now
have a five-person news staff, beefed up by stealing away the entire
news crew of the other remaining local NPR affiliate. Is this a
big gamble, or what? Do they think they can bring back the days of
Morgan Beatty and the Texaco Five-Star News? Or Tony Marvin and
the Mutual Network News? Or build their news staffers' names into
household words like the way Douglas Edwards's name was known to
everybody in the days before Cronkhite and, later, Rather? It may
be a big gamble but the answer seems to be that this is how they're
going to give a personality to the new station, since otherwise the
station won't have disk jockeys and other familiar voices for lis-
teners to identify with.

Overall, as I said at the start, the new station's schedule is
pretty much what had to be expected. It's not a big surprise.
As far as NPR listeners' interest is concerned, it looks and sounds
like business as usual. Most listeners to the former station will
probably be satisfied with the new programs that are similar to
what they used to hear.

But as I said in my previous posting, this is NPR radio and what
that means is begging for money. The all-important question is
how well they do in their fund drives. Will the station retain a
strong following and raise a lot of money? Or will too many devot-
ed fans of the old station drift away to other local nonprofit sta-
tions, not to mention the many semi-local signals easily pulled in
from stations 30, 40, 50, or more miles away? (When I first tuned
in a digital FM radio I found it was possible to get stations here
in Cincinnati on 79 out of 100 FM channels! Radio experts with
more advanced gear can probably do better than that! So there's
plenty of choice out there!) Time will tell.
--
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david moeser -- erasmus39 on yahoo
Censornati, Ohio - USA
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* "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" *

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