Robert Conrad, President of commercial Classical outlet WCLV-FM in Cleveland, dropped RBR a line to note that despite the non-profit status of the Lutheran Missouri Synod, the Synod’s recently sold KFUO-FM was in fact operated as a commercial station. Just to make sure we double-checked the contract, and that is indeed how the transaction was filed with the FCC, although we never really doubted Mr. Conrad’s word.
Conrad also remarked that he did not hold out much hope for the station’s re-emergence on an HD2 station. In fact, he said he believed chances were “nil…HD is, after all, Radio Siberia.”
Conrad mourned the loss of three more commercial Classical stations this year, in New York and Boston as well as St. Louis, and remarked, ‘We are becoming a very small band of brothers. We can hold a conference in a MacDonalds.”
RBR-TVBR observation: We share Conrad’s sense of loss. You’d think a format that gathers together a highly intelligent and generally well-to-do audience would have no trouble surviving. However, we hear that the sale or recorded Classical music is also in the pits, so it may be that the culture has finally moved away to the point that it is no longer sustainable without an infusion of public funds. But will a new format emerge that will gather together the same group of people? If there is, we haven’t heard of it.
