WTJU is like a box of chocolates. Can it stay that way?
"It’s not enough to expose people to new music when it’s just a smattering of all kinds of music," reads an e-mail from new General Manager Burr Beard. The overhaul is a response to a downturn in fundraising and low station listenership—"7,500 weekly, the smallest of any noncomm station serving Charlottesville," the e-mail says.
An anonymous WTJU DJ forwarded some of the station’s internal communication that referred to new programming plans as "The All New Consistent and Reliable WTJU." The e-mail suggests that songs will be placed in rotation—four songs in a 12-song block would be pulled from a list intended to foster familiarity between DJs and the audience—and programming will be organized into more coherent blocks.
Beard writes in a separate e-mail to C-VILLE that changes will be "announced and specified internally at a meeting Thursday." Though they won’t be effected early next month, they have already spurred at least one walkout from a longtime DJ at the station, which, if you’ve ever tuned in to 91.1, can be a delightful and frustrating mess (until you pick your favorite shows). Another DJ, Tyler Magill, launched a blog called WTJU in Crisis, at savewtju.blogspot.com, where you can read more of the community’s thoughts and specifics on the station’s plans.
The station’s recently departed manager, Chuck Taylor, helped ease WTJU’s transition from Student Affairs to UVA’s Department of Public Affairs in 2008. Marian Anderfuren, media relations director in the Department of Public Affairs, says that the idea behind "day-parting"—making sure that similar programs happen at the same time daily—is that "you can’t make listeners work too hard to find the music they’re interested in.” Consistency in programming makes it easier to communicate with underwriters and sponsors, Anderfuren says. This is aimed toward the goal of improving the station’s financial situation, she wrote in an e-mail to the volunteers, which, "to be frank, is not good."
"I think the fallout of what we’re seeing now," says Anderfuren, "is that it’s a big community, and we probably didn’t do a great job of communicating what that search process showed us in terms of the direction we needed to go in. When you take people by surprise, it’s difficult."
An anonymous e-mail from someone who claims to be a WTJU DJ reads, "WTJU is losing listeners and something needs to be done. However, the changes are so broad and so against long-rooted WTJU principles that it may also threaten WTJU’s very existence. Can our dedicated listenership accept the changes that will remove a lot of what makes WTJU a special and unique alternative to mainstream radio?"
Sounds like a question for you, readers.
Updated at 3pm.
