Music stations in New York City area explore potential collaboration

Four New York City–area public music stations are looking into ways they can work together. 

The recently announced “Tri-State Public Radio Music Collaborative” consists of WBGO in Newark, N.J.; New York Public Radio’s WQXR; Fordham University’s WFUV in the Bronx; and Sacred Heart University’s WSHU in Fairfield, Conn.

Research by Public Media Co. and Paragon will help guide the collaboration’s course of action, according to Steven A. Williams, CEO of WBGO.

Once the research is completed in the late summer, the stations will come up with one or two viable routes to pursue, Williams said. They will develop a five-year business plan, according to a news release. 

“Is it events?” Williams said. “Is it a sharing of staff? Is it content creation that can be distributed across the four stations? Is it technical support? At this point, we really don’t know. We’re going to be exploring all of those possibilities.”

Assisting the effort is a $100,000 CPB grant for facilitation, analysis and research under the Collaborative Operations and Services Grant program. Williams said once the stations have submitted the results of the research, they will likely apply for a larger implementation grant under the program. 

“Regardless of whether or not we get another dime for our efforts to work together, the genie is out of the bottle,” Williams said. “We will find other ways for the stations to work together, if for no other reason [than] we now know that we all exist and we all have some of the same advantages and disadvantages and concerns and aspirations.”

Developing audience

PMC is working on the logistical side and focusing the ideas behind the collaboration, Williams said. 

Paragon, meanwhile, will analyze membership data and conduct digital audits of each station to assess their digital marketing presences and find areas to improve content distribution while expanding digital reach, a news release said. 

“It’s likely to be something along the lines of either content creation that can be shared amongst the stations or … the possibility of us working together to produce events or initiatives to grow membership,” Williams said. “That’s really super preliminary. … We get down to the end of this thing, and it might be something completely different once we finish studying the market.”

Williams said the stations hope “we’ll land on one or two things that will develop either audience or revenue or a combination of the two.”

The stations already share some overlap in listenership, said Williams, despite their different genres. WBGO airs jazz, WQXR classical, WFUV adult album alternative, and WSHU offers news and classical. 

“The audiences are different … on the surface, but as I have found after years of working in public radio, the one extraordinary aspect of all of our audiences is that they truly do travel together,” Williams said. 

NYPR CEO LaFontaine Oliver said he sees an opportunity to expand the audience of the four stations. 

“What can we do collectively that maybe on our own would be difficult or impossible?” Oliver said. “How do we get people who don’t know who we are to give us a try?”

WFUV GM Chuck Singleton told Current that there’s much to gain and nothing to lose. 

“We all know that we have a ways to go in terms of expanding awareness of the work that we do in our communities. How can we partake of that together?” Singleton said. “How can we work to expand our footprint as a whole with benefits to all our stations and develop public radio music as a brand in itself in the New York market?”

‘The speed of trust’

Williams said he was participating in a Community Service Grant panel for CPB in fall 2023 when he got the idea about the Collaborative Operatives and Services Grant program after hearing Kathy Merritt, CPB’s chief of station and system strategies, describe the grant.

“Immediately, sitting in the meeting, I thought, ‘Wow, wouldn’t it be cool if we could figure out a way in New York City for all of the music-oriented radio stations to collaborate and enhance our individual stations as well as the collection of stations in the market?’” Williams said. 

Williams had already been talking to Singleton about the possibility of their two stations working together and told him about the grant. 

Singleton said he had discussed a collaboration with former WBGO CEO Cephas Bowles in 2011 but couldn’t get it off the ground.

“I said, ‘Let’s try again,’” Williams told Current.

The two then reached out to Oliver and Rima Dael, then GM of WSHU, and got the other two stations on board. 

“We found out a few months ago that the grant proposal had, in fact, been accepted, and then … the real work of doing this began,” Williams said. 

Williams said he met Oliver in late 2009 when Oliver hired him to produce a public radio program. Oliver also said he’s known Singleton probably about as long.

“You can only move at the speed of trust,” Oliver said. 

The collaborators share a rapport that’s noticeable to its newcomer, Brad Dancer, the new GM of WSHU. 

“I did feel like I was walking into a room of best friends,” Dancer said. “They’re all very welcoming.”

Dancer’s previous roles include jobs outside of public media such as SVP, global strategy & data analytics, for WWE and EVP, global data, insights & brand standards for National Geographic. He sees the value in collaboration, noting WSHU’s participation in the New England News Collaborative. 

“I think there’s so much more stations can do when they’re thinking together,” Dancer said. “That’s how this business will sustain itself.”

Williams hopes the unique collaboration between public radio music stations can serve as an example for other markets across the country. 

“We’re really hoping that once we develop the idea or ideas out of this feasibility study that we can then share our findings and our approaches with other public radio stations, certainly public radio music stations, across the country,” Williams said. “It’s a unique set of circumstances to have so many public radio music stations in one market, but it’s not unprecedented.”

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly said that WSHU is in Westport, Conn. It is in Fairfield.