No more obnoxious ad spots: King FM going listener-supported

  "[The] vision worked well for a time, but the handwriting is on the wall, with all the changes in media, commercial advertising is no longer a fit for [a] KING.”

With that, KING-FM’s board president Chris Bayley Tuesday, made the long anticipated announcement  that the classical station will flip to listener-supported.

Feliks Banel in Crosscut:

Listeners should notice a big difference come July 1 next year, with more music, fewer interruptions and no more jarring commercials for mattresses. Ridewood says that the station currently plays 11, 60-second commercials per hour, and in the new arrangement will instead play only “four or five, 20-second underwriting announcements” during the same period.

The 62-year-old station was set up to play the music that philanthropist and media mogul Dorothy Bullitt loved and be a cash cow for local arts institutions: ArtsFund, Seattle Symphony and Seattle Opera. Ad sales are handled by third parties.

The new model must get approval from the IRS and the FCC, then it will join the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Bullitt’s daughters, Harriet Bullitt and Patsy Collins created a supporting structure that kept the station in the classical format and public service for the arts after their own deaths.

(photo: Dorothy - credit, HistoryLink)

Bayley says they'll do even more local programming and outreach through “a new education mission.” The station says “the listener relationship will drive our mission and product, rather than ratings.”

KING-FM explains the change on its website, here.

"This is the next logical step in our evolution as a great classical station,” said. “KING’s founder Dorothy Bullitt built a legacy of great classical programming and innovation at KING FM. Then her daughters, Harriet Bullitt and Patsy Collins, gave the station to the community, endowing us with their vision that the station would not only be part of Seattle’s arts and culture framework forever, but that through advertising it would also generate financial support to the symphony, opera, and smaller classical performing groups."

Comments

[Coiler]

Bring back Tom Dahlstrom and George Shangrow

[sparky]

I will be happy to send them a few bucks...

[Nantuckett]

Totally agree with Coiler. Tom Dahlstrom and George Shangrow are much missed.

[KNHCradio]

Good move!

[Erictheeditor]

No more commercials but there will be pledge drives.

[Jake Bottero]

Pledge Drives are the number one reason I've stopped paying attention to Public Television. I understand their purpose, but I just can't take it. They so totally disrupt any semblance of a "regular schedule", it is impossible to enjoy a program series. Just when I start to enjoy and look forward to watching a show every week, it's gone and in its place, I get the same Best of Doo-Wop that I saw last time (three months ago? Seems like it), and the time before that, and last year, and the year before than...

[ksr]

You have to accept one or the other. If you don't like commercials, you don't like underwriting ads and you don't like fundraisers, just how do you expect a broadcaster to operate? If you can't accept any fundraising solicitations, you should stay with your Ipod, CD player or satellite receiver. You'll never take all forms of commercialization from radio, unless you wish to support their operations from your own personal checkbook.

[N.P. Thompson]

Who on Earth would pay money to support KING-FM? It's a wretched station with change-the-date playlists as well as a long, ignominious record of human rights abuses as part and parcel of Jennifer Ridewood's sickening and inhumane HR practices. Ridewood (also known as Ringworm) and her hench-woman Marta Zekan schemed for years to find a way to fire Dahlstrom before they actually carried it out. To say nothing of the male employees (underlings) whom Miss Marta hits on sexually, then makes up excuses to fire when they (understandably) refuse to go to bed with an overweight hag like her.

[N.P. Thompson]

Postscript: The rumors that Jennifer Ridewood is a hermaphrodite are not entirely unfounded.

If the idiot Board had any sense of ethics or scruples, they would have set her out on Harrison Street for trash pick-up ages ago.

[sparky]

She turned you down again?

[joanie]

Speaking of ad spots: driving home just now I noticed four ad spots on KUOW. True, the announcer just says thanks for the support of . . . but it included Cupcake Royale, Visa, some kind of retirement brokerage(?), and another one. Each got several seconds of time and a short spiel. So, so much for listener supported. An ad is an ad is an ad . . .

[Joyce Nielsen]

I stopped listening (and supporting) King FM the day Tom Dahlstrom was let go. It would be great to have and George Shangrow back on the air.

[David]

KING has always been "listener supported"; Loyal listeners patronized sponsors who in turn supported the station.
This move is another clear reflection of our entitlement society. Imagine taking a successful corporation like KING in its prior life, contributing its substantial profits to local arts organizations and converting it to one seeking public and government handouts instead.
I suspect great benefits will flow to staff under NPR's guiding hand with endless, boring appeals for funds. For shame.