CLASSICAL MUSIC RADIO RETURNS TO NORTHERN COLORADO

Colorado Public Radio (CPR) has upgraded its Classical music service for listeners in Fort Collins, Greeley, Loveland and the I-25 corridor all they way to Wyoming. 

By putting Classical on KVXQ 88.3 FM, CPR is keeping a promise they made over a decade ago. 

Back then,  KCFR dropped part-time Classical music and adopted a 24/7 NPR News/Talk format that has since proven to be very successful. But Classical fans in Northern Colorado felt left out.

Sean Nethery, CPR’s Senior VP of Programming, told Spark News why the recent move is so important:

“Fort Collins and all of Northern Colorado have active arts and music scenes that we want to serve. Our Classical signal from Denver has spotty reception in some places and now it is on a more robust signal that provides local coverage.”

The move is part of an effort to bring all three of CPR’s program services to more people. As you can see in the map on the right, CPR has an extensive network of stations and translators across Colorado.

CPR is also making considerable investments in CPR’s news capacity. According to Nethery, CPR News currently employs 38 journalists including
new reporters based in Colorado Springs and Grand Junction. Other new News gigs are on the way. Nethery talked about CPR’s News plans:

“We want CPR to be Colorado’s primary news source. Though 85% of the state’s population lives in or near the Denver-Boulder metro area, there are important things happening all over the state that will affect our future.”

Projected new coverage for CPR's OpenAir format

When radio formats change, hard choices must be made. 

Until this week, CPR’s OpenAir Triple A music service had wide distribution on 88.3 FM.

Now OpenAir is on a low-power translator at 91.9 FM. The new overage is shown in the map on the right. It barely covers the city of Fort Collins.

The good news is that OpenAir's streaming audio can be heard online by everyone anywhere [link].

FACT: FORT COLLINS HAS A CROWDED NONCOMMERCIAL RADIO DIAL

Fort Collins has lots of noncom stations for a city of about 150,000. Our chart on the left shows 13 noncom stations with viable local signals.

In addition to CPR’s three program services, KUNC has two very popular stations: 24/7 NPR News/Talk on 91.5 FM and The Colorado Sound a/k/a KJAC, a popular Triple A music source at 105.5FM. Both KUNC and KJAC have many listeners in Denver and Boulder.

KFRC 88.9 FM is a gutsy homegrown station the claims over 200 volunteers. The station has evolved away from “old school” Pacifica-style programming to embrace music and life in Fort Collins. The locals love it and it has healthy member and local business support.

We hope you will forgive a personal indulgence: I was GM of KCSU-FM from early 1986 to July 1987. It was my first public radio management job. I might have stayed longer in “Fort Fun” because it is a wonderful place to live, but KCSU had no future as a NPR News station.

KCSU Today

The license, Colorado State University, never made KCSU a priority and it languished behind KUNC and KCFR. Worst of all, the funding for KCSU was always in limbo. Rather than put university funds into the station, student fees were used to employ the staff required to keep CPB compliance.

The student fees were substantial, around $200,000 as I recall. Virtually every semester, the student government would make KCSU’s fees an issue. The students thought it was unfair to have their money used for an activity they didn’t use. Of course, the students were right.

The situation I faced is nicely summed up this item from KCSU’s history on the station’s website [link]:

The 1980’s: Too Risky to be Student-Run?

The 1980’s presented the debate of whether the station should be student-run or not. Some believed that it was too risky to have a student-run station because of mismanagement, and there was no direction on how a station was supposed to run if it wasn’t by professionals.

Others believed that the station needed to be run by students and allow for failure to happen in order to grow. Everyone had different opinions as to why the station was still not as successful as they had hoped it would be, such as a weak transmitter, not hosting the popular music to students at a good time of day (the alternative music program was every midnight to 3 a.m.), or the fact that student fees were half of the stations’ budget; no student was happy with the programs.

KCSU dropped NPR and became a student-run station in 1990. Today, KCSU is one of the best college radio stations in the nation. Sometimes things work out for best!