Talk radio

By CAITLIN SULLIVAN/Staff

WETS turns 36 this month. It’s the same month the Johnson City, Tenn.,-based public radio station will fill its weekday mornings and afternoons with news instead of music. It’s a sign station director Wayne Winkler says signifies the changing face of radio. It, including his FM station – 89.5, is becoming less local.
“Radio is not what it used to be,” Winkler said. “Now you can listen to the same radio station coast to coast. You’re not having to listen to things you don’t’ want to listen to in this age of convenience. Radio now is a background. It’s changing and we’re trying to just keep the station on the air. It’s not something we really wanted to do.”
Winkler said people use radio a lot less for music nowadays.
“When I was a kid, we listened to the radio to know what albums to buy,” Winkler said. Kids today find new music online, not on the radio.
“You see a generation of people who aren’t using the radio in that way,” he said. “Younger people have new methods of finding out about new music.”
WETS’ program change removes classical music in the mornings and kills Americana music in the afternoons. It will be replaced with National Public Radio and British Broadcasting Co. news shows. Friday night and weekend programming will include music.
The radio station switched from all classical music to a sprinkling of Americana around 1985. Roots and Branches, the Americana radio show on the air up until last week, was originally called the Acoustic Review.
Winkler said that the music heritage in this area, specifically the Carter Family and Jimmy Rogers session in Bristol, were what made modern American music like blues, rock, country.
“We wanted to reflect the musical heritage of this area,” Winkler said.
Now the station is reflecting a changing use for radio.
“People can hear whatever they want on their CD or MP3 player and people want to hear exactly what they want to hear,” Winkler said. “People are a lot less generous about listening to my choices or Mike’s choices or any other DJ’s on the radio.”
In the room beside Winkler, 16-year WETS veteran Mike Strickland switches CDs during one of the last Roots and Branches shows last week.
“This was my favorite show,” he said. “To be able to come in here everyday and play the music I like.”
Unfortunately, it wasn’t a favorite of contributing listeners. According to the numbers, the news programming outnumbered music programming 2 to 1 in contributions during fund drives. Winkler said the downward trend in collection has taken place in the past four years.
“It behooves us to position ourselves to become more self-sufficient in the future, to maximize our listeners support,” Winkler said.
In addition to its $1 million budget, this next year of additional NPR and BBC programming will cost the station an extra $10,000.
The station receives about 7 percent of its funding from the federal government and the rest is split about evenly between money from East Tennessee State University and listeners, Winkler said.
When Strickland first joined WETS the federal contribution was 27 percent, he said.
Of the 50,000 potential listeners a day Strickland said the station gets about 2,000 contributions every fund drive.
“It’s amazing we’re even here,” Strickland said. “People don’t contribute anymore. This is not discretionary spending. It’s a public service.”
And it seems it’s a service the public wants. Since the announced change, an online petition bearing more than 500 signatures hoping to “bring back the music” has surfaced online.
“I’m really mixed about how we got here,” Strickland said. “I’m disappointed we didn’t have more support for the music. I’m getting a lot of phone calls and e-mails now but, boy, why didn’t we hear from them during the fund drive?”
As for local musicians, “they won’t have the exposure they had on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday like they have in the past,” Strickland said.
Winkler did add that WETS still has more airtime dedicated to local musicians than all the other radio stations in the Tri-Cities, specifically through Studio One.
“That was something we didn’t want to give up,” Winkler said.
And they still have a recording room.
“I’ve 16 years worth of music I’ve recorded in that room right there,” Strickland said.
“People don’t listen to the radio for music anymore and I think that’s bad, personally, but it’s become the norm,” he said. “Technology has brought in a lot more ways for people to get their entertainment.”
To contact Caitlin Sullivan e-mail csullivan@wythenews.com or call (276) 628-7101.