The audience is declining, funding is a struggle, and the station's own staffers are at odds over whether to play more music or focus on news and public affairs. So when Bobby Hill set out to create a new schedule for WPFW (89.3 FM), he knew his every move would be scrutinized.
But Hill has managed to do the impossible, adding seven programs and 15 new hosts while eliminating only two shows from the listener-supported station's schedule, which premieres this month.
The demise of smooth jazz WJZW (105.9 FM), which switched to an oldies format in February, left WPFW as the only on-air source of jazz in the Washington area, and the 31-year-old station has had a decade-long internal dispute about just how much of its airtime should be devoted to that music.
The other four stations in the Pacifica Radio group of noncommercial stations -- located in New York, Berkeley, Calif., Houston and Los Angeles -- focus much more heavily on public affairs and news from a left-wing perspective, but WPFW was created with the intention of being primarily a jazz station, and Hill is now nudging the station back in that direction.
By cutting a reggae show and a world music show -- while adding two more hours of jazz a day to boost the total to 15 hours on weekdays -- Hill has put down his marker. “Jazz is our mission," he says. Even as WPFW's audience has slipped from 240,000 listeners in 2000 to 186,000 this year, and even as listener donations missed the $500,000 goal by about $50,000 in the most recent fund drive, he believes the station is moving to capture a new generation of listeners, taking aim at the young people who are forsaking traditional radio to explore music through Internet radio and music-sharing sites.
Hill had moonlighted as a volunteer, late-night jazz DJ at the station since 1983 before taking on program director duties last year, when he retired from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. after 28 years there. Now he's put into place WPFW's first new schedule since 1994, adding two hours a night of avant-garde jazz (11 p.m. to 1 a.m.), slipping in a short comedy bit every afternoon at 2:30 and shifting the station's Latin and world music shows from weeknights to Saturday and Sunday nights.
But how much of an impact can a schedule of sounds not heard elsewhere on the FM band have in a media environment in which every possible manner of music is available somewhere online?
But Hill has managed to do the impossible, adding seven programs and 15 new hosts while eliminating only two shows from the listener-supported station's schedule, which premieres this month.
The demise of smooth jazz WJZW (105.9 FM), which switched to an oldies format in February, left WPFW as the only on-air source of jazz in the Washington area, and the 31-year-old station has had a decade-long internal dispute about just how much of its airtime should be devoted to that music.
The other four stations in the Pacifica Radio group of noncommercial stations -- located in New York, Berkeley, Calif., Houston and Los Angeles -- focus much more heavily on public affairs and news from a left-wing perspective, but WPFW was created with the intention of being primarily a jazz station, and Hill is now nudging the station back in that direction.
By cutting a reggae show and a world music show -- while adding two more hours of jazz a day to boost the total to 15 hours on weekdays -- Hill has put down his marker. “Jazz is our mission," he says. Even as WPFW's audience has slipped from 240,000 listeners in 2000 to 186,000 this year, and even as listener donations missed the $500,000 goal by about $50,000 in the most recent fund drive, he believes the station is moving to capture a new generation of listeners, taking aim at the young people who are forsaking traditional radio to explore music through Internet radio and music-sharing sites.
Hill had moonlighted as a volunteer, late-night jazz DJ at the station since 1983 before taking on program director duties last year, when he retired from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. after 28 years there. Now he's put into place WPFW's first new schedule since 1994, adding two hours a night of avant-garde jazz (11 p.m. to 1 a.m.), slipping in a short comedy bit every afternoon at 2:30 and shifting the station's Latin and world music shows from weeknights to Saturday and Sunday nights.
But how much of an impact can a schedule of sounds not heard elsewhere on the FM band have in a media environment in which every possible manner of music is available somewhere online?
For more information contact All About Jazz.
