KDFC Listener Appreciation Day
Today (Wednesday) is Listener Appreciation Day at San Francisco Bay Area classical music public radio station KDFC. “After the great response to our June Fund Drive, we wanted to do something to say thanks to all our new members so we’ll play your requests all day,” notes an announcement that I received on Tuesday. “We’ve already received thousands but we can always fit in a few more! Make a request at KDFC.com.”
As we’ve noted, earlier this month KDFC won Federal Communications Commission approval for its acquisition of KUSF’s radio license, but the FCC also hit both the University of San Francisco and KDFC’s boss, the Classical Public Radio Network, with a $50,000 “voluntary” fine—basically for making false claims to the government in the course of the license transfer process.
Following that expensive victory, now listener supported KDFC held its second fund drive, and with very conflicted feelings, I subscribed and became what KDFC calls a “founding member.” I was appalled at the way KUSF-FM was shoved aside. But I’m also desperate for a decent classical public radio station in the San Francisco Bay Area, and wanted to put my money where my mouth is if I’m going to criticize.
KDFC has improved somewhat. It plays longer selections during the day, its deejays speak more freely, and the station no longer airs commercials as it did back when it was a commercial outlet. But it’s still a conservative service that hones to its easy listening format during most of the daylight hours. Rarely does anything that I would regard as adventurous surface during the drive time segments. Rarely does a selection featuring the human voice show up on the programme.
But I’m sure that among those thousands of requests, there will be some that stray far from the beaten track to which KDFC mostly adheres. Will the station play a representative sample of them? Or will it just cherry pick the ones that reflect its current format?
It would be great if KDFC published the whole list of requests. In any event, I’ll be listening.
