Mavs find a home on KVNO

Oboist Darci Griffith made a startling announcement during a recent chamber music concert.

She told the audience that KVNO, for years the city's only full-time classical music radio station, soon would broadcast sports.

“There were audible gasps in the hall,” said Griffith, a former KVNO announcer. “Those people were KVNO fans, and no one had bothered to tell them.”

Mozart will indeed have to move over on occasion for Maverick sports.

Starting Aug. 27, the University of Nebraska at Omaha's radio station will begin live broadcasts of Maverick football games. The station also will broadcast hockey and most men's and women's basketball games. Some public affairs shows are likewise planned.

The program changes will provide KVNO, which broadcasts at 90.7 FM, with a new and steady income source. The UNO athletic department will pay the station to carry its games.

For the UNO athletic department, broadcasting on KVNO will be beneficial for a couple of reasons.

Previously, the university had been airing its football, hockey and basketball games on three commercial AM stations — KKAR 1290, KOZN 1620 and KOIL 1180. Athletic department spokesman Dave Ahlers said that was sometimes confusing.

“Maverick fans will now have one-stop shopping,” he said.

The athletic department also estimates that it will save about $8,000 a year by broadcasting on the university's in-house public radio station. It had been paying commercial stations $350 per broadcast to air 11 football and 40 hockey games. It was paying $200 per basketball game.

Robert Franklin, KVNO's general manager, found the funding offer attractive.

Michael Hilt, who oversees KVNO as assistant dean of UNO's College of Communication, Fine Arts and Media, favored the change because it would benefit students.

In addition to its broadcasts on 90.7, the station will operate two high-definition channels. One of those channels — called “Mav Radio” — will carry spillover sports coverage as well as some student broadcasting.

Hilt, who was interim general manager of KVNO prior to Franklin's appointment last year, said the station wouldn't lose classical music because of the move.

In fact, Hilt estimated that classical music would still make up 85 percent of KVNO's programming. Franklin said that the impact of sports and public affairs broadcasting would likely be even more negligible, with classical music filling perhaps 95 percent of the station's airtime. KVNO had been a 24/7, 100 percent classical station.

“If there's a conflict between our Metropolitan Opera broadcast and a game, we'll move the game to the HD channel,” said Franklin. “The Met Opera broadcasts will trump all.”

All the same, many of KVNO's supporters and classical music fans are upset, in large part because they felt blindsided.

Changes at the station have been rolled out with little fanfare, which led to a veritable wildfire of false rumors.

Anne Hellbusch, KVNO's marketing manager, said many KVNO fans were calling to ask why the station was eliminating all classical music.

“That was simply not true,” she said.

An e-mail from a listener began circulating with estimates that classical music would make up just over 50 percent of the station's programming.

The recent departure of longtime news director Cheril Lee also found its way into the rumor mill. Lee declined to comment on her departure, indicating only that she would pursue a master's degree in communications at UNO in the fall.

The backlash reached a crescendo late last month, when one longtime member of the station's community advisory board, John Williamson, resigned his volunteer post in protest.

Under Corporation for Public Broadcasting rules, stations such as KVNO are supposed to have community advisory boards that provide them with comments about programming. Management usually briefs such boards monthly about operations and seeks informal advice about direction.

Williamson and other board members said they learned about Maverick broadcasting, however, not from management but from a brief newspaper story.

“That's why I left the board,” Williamson said.

Asked about Williamson, Franklin said only that “advisory members do leave from time to time. Sometimes they are just more supportive of previous management.”

That said, Franklin is concerned about negative reaction from the community. That's because nearly 45 percent — or $346,497 — of his public radio station's $762,000 budget was raised from community donations in 2008.

Those donations have given many classical fans a sense of ownership — or at least a passionate stake — in KVNO's programming.

Barbara Taxman of the Tuesday Musical Concert Series, for instance, was shocked when she first heard that KVNO would broadcast sports.

“What, you mean they're going to make changes to our radio station?” she said.

A longtime fundraiser for Tuesday Musical, Omaha's oldest classical recital series, Taxman said she also understood and sympathized with KVNO.

“I know how hard it is to raise money for the arts,” she said.

Many classical fans also take any changes in programming hard because, for them, it's part of a disappointing trend.

In recent years, the number of classical stations has been dwindling. Just last Tuesday, for instance, the New York Times announced that it was selling its classical station, WQXR-FM, a move that calls into question the future of classical radio in the country's largest media market.

Dana Sloan, who heads the classical Organ Vesper Series at Presbyterian Church of the Cross, has been watching a similar decline in Omaha.

“We had three stations broadcasting classical music when I first moved to Omaha,” Sloan said. “Now we'll be down to less than one full time.”

Contact the writer:

444-1076, john.pitcher@owh.com

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