Lou Pickney's Online Commentary
Grantland and WRVU's Demise
Wednesday
June 8, 2011
Congrats to Bill Simmons and the crew of the new Grantland.com website for a strong launch today. Bill's column provides some interesting history about the early days of Jimmy Kimmel Live and illustrates Bill's ability to operate with more creative freedom, particularly with language, compared with what he has been allowed to write for ESPN's Page 2. I wish him luck with the new venture.
Interestingly, the color scheme used by Grantland is similar to what I use here: white background, black text, dark red hyperlink (I use #CC0000) and light red as your mouse moves over it (I use #FF0000 for that). I've maintained that layout for this site for 8+ years for a reason; it's a good look, and I made sure that even my recent addition of a Facebook widget to the front page here matched the color scheme. Unlike Grantland, I use homemade code for this site, though even if I had the funding to hire coders I'd likely fight that tooth-and-nail. Some guys would rather fix things around the house than pay someone to do it; I feel the same way about my websites.
Nashville's radio landscape changed forever earlier this week, with Vanderbilt University selling the license for 91.1 WRVU to Nashville Public Radio for a cool $3.35 million. As part of the deal, the intellectual property for WRVU will remain with Vandy, broadcast as an online-only venture this summer, and then return to the airwaves on 90.3 WPLN-FM-HD3 at the end of the summer. It's strange that they would wait 2-3 months to bring back the WRVU format to the airwaves, though the fact that they've gone 100% automated for the duration of the online-only time might reveal an inclination by management to clear the queue of any broadcasters who might be less than happy about the move.
A similar fate nearly happened at my alma mater, the University of Evansville, where their radio station WUEV (where I got my start in radio) was almost sold a few years ago. Luckily word about the plans leaked out, despite the only notice from UE about the plan being buried in an alumni email (or something to that effect), and fortunately the sale was thwarted... this time. But, to be sure, college radio is a dying breed.
Earlier this year, both Rice (in Houston) and Duquesne (in Pittsburgh) sold off their respective radio stations; Rice worked out a deal similar to Vanderbilt where their student radio lives on via an HD sidechannel station. Granted, the penetration percentage of HD Radio in the United States is horribly low, but it's better than being stuck in an online-only world. What I suspect was the saving grace for WUEV was that the asking price for a non-comm band FM signal in Evansville was low enough to turn down. For Houston and Nashville and Pittsburgh, the audience was large enough to create enough of a demand that, even in this financial quagmire we now face, buyers were able to come up with multi-million dollar purchase offers.
If the banter from the final hours of the DJs on WRVU was any indication, the students were kept in the dark until the station abruptly went silent yesterday. They changed the call letters to WFCL on 6/1/2011, yet the station kept IDing as WRVU/Nashville until the very end. On-air I did hear one DJ mention reading the article in the Nashville Scene which revealed the call letter change, with him saying something to the effect of "I guess we're WFCL now."
At 3 p.m. CT yesterday, 91.1 FM abruptly went off the air. "Waiting For The Siren's Call" by New Order was almost done when someone manually turned down the volume. A moment later the signal cut out, leaving nothing but static. At midnight this morning, Nashville Public Radio signed on the new format for 91.1 WFCL: Classical 91-1.
An independent radio voice is gone, though the upside is that Nashville now has a 24/7 FM classical station. I'm not particularly a big fan of classical music myself, but people who like it tend to REALLY like it and also tend to be toward the upper-end of the income bracket. It solves a problem for Nashville Public Radio, which tried to please people wanting NPR talk programming and also people wanting classical music. There's an overlap there, but obviously demand was perceived as being great enough for Nashville Public Radio to make the leap to invest $3.35 million in a city-grade signal covering Nashville.
Humorously, the Vandy radio side is working on a counter-argument that the new broadcast home for what was WRVU (which eventually will need a new identity since those call letters are now free for anyone to snatch up, perhaps by the next station east of the Mississippi River to change names to "The River") will cover more square miles than the old 91.1 FM signal did. That's a bit silly considering how ubiquitous FM radio is compared with HD radio, but at least they have that to fall back onto along with their internet presence.
It would have been nice to allow Vanderbilt's students a chance to say goodbye on 91.1, much like Rice's students were allowed to do. Alas, it wasn't in the cards in this case, though the end result trumps what I had originally feared: that Moody Broadcasting would buy it, simulcast its WFCM-FM from Murfreesboro on it, and entirely kill off Vanderbilt radio on the terrestrial dial. The new WFCL call letters seemed too close for coincidence, but it makes sense that the "CL" would be in there with the station being classical. It's always possible to overthink such things.
I've been thoroughly enjoying both the NBA and NHL finals, both of which have been exciting. Dallas tied their series with Miami last night, and I'm torn there: my girlfriend Stacy loves LeBron James and wants the Heat to win, but I also received a nice email from Mavericks owner Mark Cuban last week and I wish him and his organization the very best. At least we know that series will go six games, providing a finish in Miami thanks to the NBA's 2-3-2 hosting format.
As for the NHL, Vancouver leads Boston 2-1, though the Bruins blew out the Canucks in a game three on Monday night that was marred by a dirty hit on Boston LW Nathan Horton (who at 6'2" 230 is about my size) by Vancouver defenseman Aaron Rome. Horton suffered what was described as a "severe concussion", which is nothing to mess with, particularly not with what has been learned about the seriousness of concussions and the reality of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) and what that can do to people who suffer multiple concussions.
Dirty play aside, both finals have been thrilling, and there's plenty more to enjoy from both leagues before their respective seasons come to an end.
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