my email exchange with WPLN

[Andy C. Fellows]

Just wanted to share this with those who care.  I've been a contributing member of WPLN since I moved to Nashville in 2007.  More recently I have been supporting them monthly with an automatic bank withdrawal.  I contacted WPLN via the website and said I'd like to change the amount I was giving.  I received a very quick response saying to just let them know how much I'd like to change it to, and they would make that change.  I've left those messages out of this email but am including my response about why I am no longer going to contribute to Nashville Public Radio and the response I received about 24 hours later from Mack Starks Linebaugh, the director of New Media and Member Support.

Thank you for the quick response.  It's pretty awesome that Nashville has its own all Classical station.  As a music educator, supporter of the Nashville symphony, and general lover of music, I am terribly excited to be able to turn to 91.1 any time to hear great music.  Because of this exciting news, I am going to be changing my monthly contribution to $0.00!  I should mention that in the recent acquisition of 91.1 FM from the VSC, WPLN has taken one of Nashville's oldest radio stations off the airwaves.  I have spent the past two years being one of the lucky few who could call himself a "community member DJ" on WRVU.  I never could have imagined feeling betrayed by a radio station (especially WPLN, a station which I cared so much about and contributed [albeit a small amount] monthly to) until the moment I found out that I would not be able to play the set I had long before picked out for what would be my final show.  With all the clamor about the call letter change, I was planning on playing that set at 4 PM on June 7th...  only ninety minutes after WRVU went off the airwaves without warning.  So Nashville Public Radio is now bringing middle Tennessee classical music 24/7... but at what cost?  Again, I must say that I love the idea of always being able to listen to classical music on my FM dial, and of the viable options, this is by far, the least of all the evils that could be calling 91.1 FM home.  Unfortunately, you've taken one of the most important things about Nashville from my life and probably won't be willing to give it back.  So I must insist that you stop my monthly bank withdrawals and please remove me from the WPLN snail mail list.

Sincerely,

Andy C. Fellows

DJ of the Backchannel Broadcast on WRVU 2009-2011

1906 Linden Ave
Nashville, TN  37212
(618) 638-3393

Hi Andy, 

Thanks for letting us know how you feel about this, and we appreciate the support you have given to Nashville Public Radio in the past. I have discontinued your monthly contributions and have removed you from our mailing list, per your request.

I'm not sure if you should take this as an "official" response. In my role on the staff here, I didn't personally have a say in the decision to seek WRVU's broadcast license. Ultimately, I do support that decision, but it was a difficult one for me to grasp at fist. I grew up in Nashville and WRVU was pretty much the center of my cultural universe in high school. I had the 91 Rock sticker on my car, listened to the station constantly, first heard most of my favorite bands there. I continued to listen to it until it went off the air and my wife feels adamantly that Nashville's best radio station has just disappeared. If I believed this was caused by Nashville Public Radio, that would be difficult for me. I just don't see it that way.   

I knew this was probably going to happen for some time before it did, but we were all bound to confidentiality until an agreement was reached, which didn't happen until Tuesday, 6-7...just a few hours before your show. I reacted emotionally when I first heard that WRVU's FM license was up for sale and that my employer was a prospective buyer. But my understanding is that the VSC board had decided to put the license on the market after it's period of public comment last fall. Nashville Public Radio expressed interest and began negotiations only after that decision had been made. Certainly, that decision was made by the only people who had that authority to make it: the students and faculty of the VSC board. Given that they were going to sell the license, I knew that the buyer had to be a non-commercial entity. 

There's no question that this is a loss for Nashville. I felt that Freddie O'Connell's piece in the New York Times was good. I agree with him that college radio has very real value in a community, even if it isn't easy to quantify. It's perhaps unfortunate that sometime over the years, VSC didn't rewrite it's charter to include service to the community in it's mission. Maybe they could have implemented a membership model to help pay for the service, etc. I imagine this probably would have had some effect on programming because a member-supported station would have needed more listeners, but it might have kept the FM signal on the air. But these are only my personal thoughts, and none of us can speak to VSC's decision.

What I do believe is that Nashville Public Radio acted consistently with its mission and its history. We have a classical music and NPR news audience, and we have always looked for ways to better serve it. We added 1430 WPLN-AM when we heard demands for more NPR news programming. That trajectory eventually led us to begin playing music only in the evenings, a change that prompted many complaints. We had hoped that HD radio would become more widespread and that listeners would turn to our HD2 service for classical music. But this organization has long wanted to be able to serve Nashville with separate classical music and news services, in response to what we've heard our listeners want from us. 

Thanks for indulging my long-winded response and again, for the support you have given in the past.

Respectfully, 
Mack


Mack Starks Linebaugh
Director of New Media and Member Support
Nashville Public Radio
630 Mainstream Drive
Nashville, TN  37228
615/760-2020 - direct line
615/760-2904 - fax