Many who read my blog know that my core belief about the future health of public radio is tied into the idea of a Copernican shift in the relationship between the station and the listener.
A shift from Content to Contact - from Transaction to Personal. Sounds nifty but many have also asked me what this means in practice.
So I called Dan De Vany at WETA last week to find out how this might be working in Washington post WETA's shift to all Classical. What did it mean to transform the relationship from a transactional one to a personal one?
First of all some numbers.
As context, remember that WGMS had been the classical leader in DC but had changed formats - this shift had given WETA the opportunity to end the "News Arms Race". WETA took over the WGMS library and three key WGMS people who had important relationships with the audience. - the program director, Jim Allison, who had the pulse of the audience, two on-air hosts, John Chester and Chip Brienza, who had their hearts.
In the first book, WETA's share jumped from 2.1 to a 4.9 share. In the DC station rankings its rank jumped from 17th to 5th. This happened all but overnight. The money followed immediately. In the first pledge drive WETA raised almost $600,000 - its most successful drive ever.
What did this mean? Part of this shift was that there was an established audience that had lost its station, WGMS, that had snapped to WETA in gratitude. But the deeper question for Dan and I as we talked was to explore what was it about classical music in DC that made it such a compelling format.
Dan's research has told him that the classical music audience is more attached than perhaps any other. The average listener to the new WETA listens 8 1/2 hours a week. But the core listeners listen almost 15 hours. There are signs of a different listening pattern here - a pattern of attachment. As Dan went deeper, he found that what these listeners wanted more than anything was a "Refuge". They wanted a refuge from the pace and turbulence of the other parts of their lives.
Think of this for a minute. This is not "Content". This is an "Experience". This is a "Space" this is a "World". This is an opportunity for the person to get connected to the universe. (If you think that this an exaggerated claim I dare you to spend time with Dr Jill Bolte Taylor here giving her stunning lecture at TED).
As I listened to Dr Taylor, I had a huge aha. We live in a world that is largely left brain. It is all about how separate we are. In this world everything is a transaction. But, starved and waiting is our right brain. This other person who is also us is connected to the universe. Tamped down by modern life, like the prisoners in Fidelio, this other part of us yearns to set free and to be connected.
Great music is I have found a doorway to this freedom.
There are times when listening to great music that we open to the full potential of being human. Surely you have had those moments when you have had to stop all else and have felt the hairs on your neck rise as something happens to you? Here is my all time favorite - the final moments of Mahler's 8th Symphony with Simon Rattle. Please take a few minutes and watch/listen to this and tell me that you are not moved. When the children stand I gasp.
Time stops.
Or have you had hard work to do, like write up an interview like this, and you do as I am doing now call on the power of great music (Listening to Sibelius 5th Symphony) to open up the creative part of you? Or surely, you have had a long day and you curl up in your chair with your dog by your side, a good book in your lap, a single malt by your hand and listen to great music?
This is not Content - this is Contact.
Back to Dan.
You can imagine the tension at WETA after the change. Had they made the right call? The emotional price had been very high. Had they done the right thing? Well it looked as if they had from the numbers. But then they started the second pledge drive....
Three days in and it was not going well at all. Dan and the team had been running the typical scripted drive. You know what he means by that. They were dying on air – little money was coming in. Few calls – Not much money. Been there yourself?
What was wrong?
What was wrong was that they were treating the whole thing as they had in the past. They were trying to make transactions with listeners – you give us this and we’ll give you that – a premium for a pledge. They were treating the audience as consumers of a thing. They were not connecting to where the listener was.
On day 4 of the drive they threw all the scripts out and talked for the first time from the heart about their own passion for music and what it meant to them. For the first time they found the energetic frequency of their new audience. They tuned in. The calls picked up as did the money.
I think we call this a learning experience don't we?
Having rescued the drive in a moment of sheer terror, Dan and the team now had to take what they learned and develop a deliberate plan for the future. They had to develop a plan for Contact. Fortunately WETA had hired a new VP of Individual Giving Mary Kay Phelps. Apart from being smart, warm and thoughtful, Mary had a special attribute. She had not come from a pub radio background. She was not embedded in how "we have always done this."
Nor was she was she over attached to having to invent it all here. So WETA looked out at who might be able to teach them about having a new relationship with the listener and they found KUSC. KUSC also was an all Classical Station in a major market. KUSC had a strategy for Contact:
They knew at the core that the relationship was based not on logic or on a deal but on emotion and that emotion was based on an experience - a singular and a shared experience that classical music could give people. Many have said that if humans were to be judged by some alien and wise species, this kind of music might be the one thing that saves us from being condemned as barbarians.
So they gave up on the tired and maybe fake idea of "Membership" but sought instead a commitment - a commitment from someone who believed in the same things as the station did - that classical music was a public good. They know that Commitments are not one offs but are long term. KUSC looks for people who will give over time. KUSC looks for people who wish to share their experience with others - who wish to build this space for as many who care to enter it. It is not all about them and what they get but all about us and what we can give to each other.
This is not a subtle difference. Look deep into the idea of Membership and you will find it is usually about if you do this we will do that. Or it may be if you don't do this we will go off the air. The word Tawdry comes to my mind. There is something not a little sad and dirty about such a relationship.
KUSC look to a philanthropic aspect of people. The benefits are not a premium but what you have done for the community.
Most importantly "Pledge Speak" is a no no.
The corporate and the scripted voice is banned. For this is the voice of separation and the voice of transaction. Using the "Pledge Voice" is dissonance for a committed listener. If you have not done so - please go back and listen to Dr Taylor. As she reaches the peroration of her talk I defy you not to be moved. She is the very embodiment of what I am trying to tell you about. At the end of her talk, she is utterly transcendent.
So with trepidation, Dan and the team recast the next pledge drive using some of these principles. The goal was to raise $480,000 and to cut the time of the drive from 11 days to 8. No pressure! How did it go?
They averaged $50,000 a day and raised over $130,000 on the last day. No scripts. No traditional premiums. But a new kind of premium. Today we often share music with someone we love. It is an act of intimacy. When I share my mix with you, I open up part of my soul to you. I show you an inner art of me. This was the premium. Some of the announcers hosted discreet hours of music featuring special selections and offered out a more contemplative side of their lives in an adagio mix. Total monetary value of the mix - nothing. Total emotional value of the mix - everything.
Now what?
WETA have a comprehensive off air process. Direct mail and so on. Now they are working to align this to Contact. All the language and the message has to be changed to align with Contact.
A critical shift in values is to decisively reject the "Burning Platform" idea and to got to the Build the City on the Hill. People want to be connected to something that will grow and where they can be part of the growth. We all tire quickly of the crisis.
Dan and the gang are learning that it not enough to say that classical music is great - they have to live it themselves. They like Dr Taylor have to embody this. 90.9 in DC has to become a place. Living this means that they understand and act upon the knowledge that they do not offer a steam of content, though they do. They now know that what they offer is a Place. They offer a Refuge. They offer a Refuge in a world that is overwhelming. A world that is usually loud and crass. A world that often isolates us from others and more importantly from our very selves.
They are learning that they are the keepers of a Haven. A Haven where the age old customs of hospitality still apply.
They are learning that most of the world is disposable. Content is disposable. People are disposable.
In this context, they are struggling to find out how to make what they do non disposable. How to make you non disposable. What might this be worth? Can you see hwy this may be different?
Is this idea just applicable for a classical music station?
Dan and WETA are not there yet. But they are on their way. It feels real to them. It feels real to those that love classical music in DC too. And surely the voyage is taken together and maybe it never ends either.
