Chicago Public Media seeks to revamp Vocalo after nearly ending broadcasts

Two years after announcing it would take its Vocalo service off the airwaves, Chicago Public Media is instead aiming to revitalize the music-focused station with a new live call-in show and a revamp of its digital offerings.

Launched in 2007, Vocalo inspired the CPB-backed Urban Alternative music format with its mix of hip-hop and R&B. But the station, which airs on a 50-watt translator in Chicago and a stronger signal in Northwest Indiana, struggled to build an on-air audience.

In April 2024, CPM announced that it would end Vocalo’s radio broadcast, citing its weekly audience of 11,000 listeners and that it had been “running at a significant financial loss for many years.” It cut some of Vocalo’s hosted music shows and reduced its staff from five to two employees, according to Nudia Hernandez, Vocalo’s music director.

Those plans changed, however, after the arrival of former Vox Media publisher Melissa Bell as CPM CEO later that year. The new leader began “really taking stock” of CPM’s brands and their prospects and saw potential in Vocalo, says Ariel Van Cleave, managing director for audio. 

“It was clear to her that there was still an opportunity for Vocalo and perhaps we should slow down and see where the next opportunity could actually be,” she said. 

Last year, CPM received a $750,000 grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for a three-year pilot to revitalize Vocalo by preserving its Chicago signal and “expanding innovative digital strategies and community engagement efforts,” according to MacArthur’s website. The station now reaches an average of 15,200 weekly listeners with a format of primarily automated music and some hosted shows. 

With the pilot, CPM will bolster Vocalo’s support for local artists by creating more avenues to showcase their music and creating a more reciprocal relationship between the station and its community, Cleave said. 

The changes will make clear “that we are a place where people can come and say, like, ‘I want to support Vocalo, and I hope that Vocalo will support me,’” she said. “That is always going to be a core component of what Vocalo is. We are very connected to the city and to what the city’s music scene is.”

Hernandez, who hosts the new call-in show Vocalo Hotline, said the station’s emphasis that real people are behind its programming and content is vital to its representation of the city. 

“I want to make everyone feel included, not just the local artists or not just artists that we love, that get their songs played, but the people that listen in — they get to be a part of Vocalo and they get to have their voice heard as well,” Hernandez said. “… That’s been the evolution of Vocalo — making everyone feel like a part because this is a Chicago station. This is what Chicago sounds like, and that means everyone in Chicago.”

New audience connections

Plans to revitalize Vocalo began in earnest last summer, Van Cleave said. In addition to a renewed commitment to keep the broadcast going and “the lights on,” the team began envisioning Vocalo’s next iteration and the services it could offer, she said. 

But CPM needed funding to get the ball rolling. It found support from the MacArthur Foundation, where former Vocalo Managing Director Silvia Rivera works as director of the philanthropy’s local news portfolio, Van Cleave said. 

Rivera was really “interested in keeping Vocalo not even just alive but flourishing and growing it, back to the dream that we initially had for it of really being this community space, really being a music discovery moment,” Van Cleave said. 

With Rivera’s help, the organization had accomplished the “heavy lifting” required for a grant from the foundation by the fall and could concentrate on “what the future Vocalo was going to be,” Van Cleave said. 

Hernandez said she had aspired to add a live call-in show to Vocalo’s lineup for years and had even produced pilots for a show two years ago. Refreshing the station offered an opportunity to make the program a reality. 

The show, which debuted May 29, airs Fridays at 8 p.m. simultaneously on Vocalo and CPM’s WBEZ. Listeners can call in to dedicate songs “like an old-school radio hotline show” that takes form like a “living mixtape of Chicago,” Hernandez said. 

“The first episode that we did, someone called in and asked this girl she had been seeing to be her girlfriend live on the radio, and then dedicated a song to her. And then on Instagram, they were able to tell us that she said yes,” she said. “It’s really connecting with our audience in a way we haven’t really been able to.”

The emphasis on personality became integral to another aspect of revamping Vocalo: its newsletter. Hernandez said the team wanted to boost the humanity of the weekly email, so it transitioned from an automated format to including handcrafted weekly playlists, writing and event lists from digital producer Morgan Ciocca. 

“There’s been a lot of work to let people know that, like, ‘This is Morgan from Vocalo, and here are things that I know that are happening, and I’m going to tell you exactly what they are. If you want to go to them, here’s what you could expect,’” Hernandez said. “Sometimes, when we get things in our inbox, we’re like, ‘Okay, this is just an email push,’ but with the newsletter, there’s also been formatting changes and things, and it looks great now.”

The newsletter has over 34,000 subscribers and has seen an uptick in signups since the relaunch, a CPM spokesperson said.  

CPM has also hired a new producer for Vocalo and redesigned its website, Van Cleave said. 

To ensure locals know that Vocalo is not just still broadcasting but offering revamped services, the station has begun an extensive marketing campaign. At its core is the slogan “Our Playlist Is Human,” which the station has pushed in advertisements on social media, on air and wheatpasted across the city, said Hernandez. 

“With algorithms nowadays, it’s very easy to know that someone else is inputting music or just seeing what’s charting,” Hernandez said. “The marketing push was really that our playlist has a heartbeat, there are real people at Vocalo, putting in music, curating playlists and things like that. That’s done by real people, which is becoming a little bit more rare nowadays with AI and with the huge syndication that has taken over the radio world.”

‘Our door is always open’

The station’s revamp will hopefully serve as a springboard for Vocalo to function as a more robust community engagement hub, said Van Cleave. Success two years from now would mean the station would become the go-to place for music discovery and could host more frequent community events, such as concerts and listening parties, she said.

The team has already booked a free summer concert for next month featuring local artists Adamn Killa and Taylor Bennett. The event will hopefully get “people excited about the station” and its new services while reinforcing its commitment to celebrating local artists, Hernandez said. 

“It’s been another way that we’ve been able to include local artists, because that’s a scene that we will always care about first and that would be brand first when it comes to us, like the hyperlocal music scene,” she said. “Our door is always open to local artists and that music discovery within Chicago.”

For Van Cleave, Vocalo’s efforts to rebuild itself represent a departure from the mindset that a station’s services must provide “everything to everybody” and the realization that “people are going to interact with you because they love you, and it’s okay if it’s not everything all the time,” she said. 

“Take the big swing, and then see if people are into it, or talk to people first and say, “What do you want from us? What would you like to have for a music station?’” Van Cleave said. “It’s a lot of listening and a lot of prioritizing and being OK with saying no.”