October 11, 2000
All that jazz on WNMC
Station changes daytime format to tune in new listeners
By JUSTIN CARINCI
Herald staff writer
Tune in to 90.7 FM these days and you're more likely to hear Benny Goodman than Bob Marley.
WNMC, Northwestern Michigan College's radio station, has switched to a daytime jazz format. General manager Eric Hines said the change comes in an effort to reach new listeners and raise more money.
"The whole point of what I want to do is I want more," Hines said. "Who our current listeners are is important to me but perhaps not as important as you might think.
"What I want to do is get a whole lot more people to listen," he added. "People will contribute and support jazz."
Jazz has always had a home at WNMC. With Hines programming, however, its amount has skyrocketed to 80 percent of the daytime music. Disc jockeys may now choose just one selection each from the folk, blues and world music categories.
This format change affects the station most during the afternoon shift, which had featured a diverse selection of musical styles. West African pop and underground electronic music - to name just two forms - shared the airwaves on the Alternating Currents Program.
The problem, as Hines saw it, came with these afternoon programs following the mellower morning shows. "Yeah, it was creative and yeah, it might have been good, but it was such an abrupt change from what was happening earlier in the day," Hines said.
"We basically turned our audience over at 2 o'clock and that, from a program standpoint, is insane." Hines favors a less varied program to improve the station's continuity.
Realizing no other stations played jazz in the daytime, Hines sought to attract fans of the music who had nowhere else to turn. He points to the successes of classical music stations.
"If people support classical music to the extent that they have in this area," Hines said, "Jazz, being also a great musical tradition, would be the perfect opportunity ... to improve our chances of getting financial support."
Hines hopes to get more money from new listeners and less from NMC. Currently, WNMC receives 50 percent of its funding from the college.
Even though NMC has not withheld money from the station, Hines wants to lessen the college's burden. "The days when colleges set back and let a bunch of kids pursue their rather expensive hobbies are over," he said. "Colleges don't have that much money anymore and they know that it's possible for public radio stations to support themselves."
Hines expects to find this new support outside the Traverse City area. "We expanded to 600 watts a few years back and our listenership didn't seem to expand with it. A lot of people in the outlying areas aren't even aware we exist," he noted.
In changing the station to meet a broader audience, however, WNMC risks losing support at home.
Some DJs were surprised by the abrupt nature of the change and disappointed at not being included in the decision-making process. The station is more structured and less diverse, they claim, with the new 80 percent jazz requirement.
WNMC listener Tate Cole of Traverse City agrees.
"I like to see kids come in and play music they like," Cole said. "It's kind of monotonous to have jazz music all day."
Cole prefers the eclectic music the Alternating Currents program used to feature. "What's cool about college radio stations is that you hear stuff that you would never hear anywhere else," she said.
Hines had expected his changes would rock the boat. "Some of the people who had this afternoon slot naturally were not into jazz at all," Hines said, "and the change was not good news." Others, though, "embraced the opportunity" to switch to jazz.
"Some people are really happy with the precise changes I made, other people are not," Hines noted. "Everybody here constitutes a constituency and some of the constituencies won and some of them lost."
"By and large I think people are glad to see that things can change," Hines added.