Minnesota Public Radio
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Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) is a regional public radio network based in the U.S. state of Minnesota that has been broadcasting since 1967. The network includes more than 50 FM transmitters ranging from low-power translators in small and hard-to-reach areas up to full-power stations serving large markets. The organization broadcasts three different services in the state: "news and information," classical music, and another "eclectic" music service known as "The Current" that plays selections from a broad range of musical genres. The main studios for MPR are located in St. Paul, Minnesota.
MPR is affiliated with and a member of the National Public Radio network, but also uses content from Public Radio International (PRI). Through its production and distribution arm of American Public Media, MPR produces a host of programs for national distribution. Included is the signature show A Prairie Home Companion, hosted by Garrison Keillor. Following a 2004 decision to distribute programming itself, Minnesota Public Radio is now the second-largest public radio organization in the United States behind NPR, though the network is still in close contention with PRI, also based in Minnesota, for the spot (PRI produces a higher number of programs, but American Public Media shows have higher listenership).
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[edit] Services
Minnesota Public Radio began by broadcasting a mix of talk and music programming. Two dozen years later, a split was made where listeners had a choice between talk programs and classical programming (although one station in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan carries a mixture of those two services). A recent acquisition of a third powerful station covering the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area provided the opportunity to launch another musical service, The Current.
The network has claimed varying levels of membership between 2000 and 2004, ranging between 83,000 and 87,000 active contributors. It is reported that the ratio of listeners to members is very high—a fact sometimes attributed to "Minnesota nice" but is more reflective of Minnesota's overall culture of philanthropy—though the overall listenership is still much higher. The network claims that about 15% of Minnesota residents over the age of 12 tune in each week, which results in 780,000 regular (unique) listeners.
[edit] News and information
Shows carried on MPR's news & information stations are a mix of programs produced locally and national/international shows. Mornings start out with the National Public Radio show, Morning Edition, to which MPR adds local material. Following Morning Edition are two talk shows intended for a local audience, Midmorning and Midday. MPR also adds two hours of local material to the National Public Radio show All Things Considered each day. Talk of the Nation from NPR is also played in the afternoon, followed Monday-Thursday by NPR's Day to Day leading in to NPR's All Things Considered. MPR carries The World (co-produced by the BBC and Public Radio International), As It Happens (from the CBC), and the BBC World Service in the evening and nighttime hours.
Weekend programming on MPR has shifted around with moderate frequency, though it includes national favorites such as Car Talk and This American Life. Weekends also bring some music to MPR's talk listeners, as it seeps into A Prairie Home Companion, and is the main subject of shows like American Routes and The Jazz Image.
Twenty-three MPR transmitters carry the news and information service exclusively as of 2006. The Twin Cities flagship station for news & information is KNOW 91.1 FM.
[edit] Classical music
On the classical music stations of MPR, most of the day is devoted to orchestral tracks, though The Morning Show during morning drive time reaches outside the classical music genre to play a broader variety of music. This is carried on most classical stations, although two transmitters covering the Twin Cities and Rochester continue to carry classical music at this time. Another break from classical music comes when A Prairie Home Companion airs on the weekend. MPR's Eileen R. Bigelow Music Library has 60,000 compact discs available to the classical network.
At night, transmitters switch over to using MPR's Classical 24 service, which is also distributed nationally. Classical 24 is produced in St. Paul and serves audiences throughout the United States in markets that would not otherwise be able to support a full-time classical music service.
Regionally, MPR's classical music service offers programming such as Favorites on Friday with Melissa Ousley, a three-hour all-request program; broadcasts of performances by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and Minnesota Orchestra; broadcasts of local performers on Steve Staruch's 3:00 broadcast on Thursday afternoons; the daily Composers Datebook with John Zech; and many special broadcasts of temporary programs.
Nationally, American Public Media distributes programming such as the immensely popular Pipedreams with Michael Barone and Saint Paul Sunday with Bill McLaughlin.
There are 27 transmitters broadcasting the classical music service, including one station in Sun Valley, Idaho. This network's flagship station is KSJN 99.5 FM in the Twin Cities.
[edit] The Current
MPR's third service, The Current, went on the air on at 9 AM on January 24, 2005, and is very free-form in the music that is played. On-air hosts program an eclectic mix of local bands and music from rock, alternative, punk, jazz, hip-hop, rap and oldies. The Current also provides a venue for local musicians and bands through recordings and live in-studio performances.
Several people on the initial staff are well known in the area for previous work at stations that highlight music from Minnesota and the Upper Midwest. The music and program directors as well as some DJs spent time at REV-105 before it was bought out in 1997, and at 770 Radio K, the University of Minnesota's Twin Cities station. At least one had also worked for community station KFAI.
The service is carried on two transmitters. The main one is KCMP 89.3 FM, located near Rosemount, Minnesota on the southeastern periphery of the Twin Cities, though the signal covers most of the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area. A translator serves Rochester, Minnesota. The two are receivable by roughly one-half of the state's population, which is mostly concentrated in the Twin Cities. In the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, this station carries The Morning Show, allowing KSJN to carry classical music for the entire day. Internet radio streams are available for Greater Minnesota residents and others outside of Minnesota to listen to The Current. In addition, the station is broadcast on a HD Radio sideband to listeners of KPCC in Los Angeles.
[edit] Sideband services
Radio sidebands are used to transmit a Minnesota version of the Radio Talking Book Network to disabled listeners around the state. Plans are in place to add the digital HD Radio system across all of MPR's transmitters, with rollout likely to happen in 2005. Special receivers are required to decode these broadcasts.
[edit] History
Minnesota Public Radio first began operating the station KSJR 90.1 FM in January 1967 after being spun off from Saint John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota. That station still operates on the Saint John's campus. That first station was headed by Bill Kling, who still heads the network today.
In 1969 and 1970, MPR assisted in the formation of National Public Radio and was a founding member of the organization. Four years later, in 1974, the network began live broadcasting of Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion, perhaps the best-known program on public radio.
In 1983, MPR got into the network-building business again and assisted in the formation of American Public Radio (now known as Public Radio International), partly because NPR had declined to distribute Prairie Home nationally. Current MPR CEO Bill Kling formed the consortium with public radio stations throughout the country.
MPR began offering a full-time classical music service in 1991 after the purchase of WLOL 99.5 FM in the Twin Cities. In the following years, Minnesota Public Radio acquired enough stations across the state to offer both a news and classical music service to most of the state. A classical service is also provided to subscribing stations around the country as Classical 24.
In 2000, the network acquired Marketplace Productions, which produces Marketplace and The Savvy Traveler, from Pasadena in association with the University of Southern California. Also around that time, MPR put together Southern California Public Radio by purchasing KPCC from Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California.
2004 was a year of major transitions for the network. In mid-year, MPR severed ties with Minneapolis-based PRI as a distributor, citing [1] a desire to eliminate the middleman and distribute its programs nationally under the banner of American Public Media.
Another major controversy erupted when it was announced that MPR would buy a classical music station operated by St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. WCAL 89.3 FM (and a repeater station, KMSE near Rochester), were sold in a deal valued at $10.5 million, which was approved by the Federal Communications Commission in 2004. WCAL had about 80,000 regular listeners.
St. Olaf, a Lutheran liberal arts college, reportedly turned down a significantly larger offer from a Christian radio company, preferring to keep the station in the hands of a public radio organization. Some public opposition appeared, and there were several attempts to stop the sale.
[edit] Funding
As a public radio network, MPR obtains much of the money it needs to operate by asking for donations from the listening public. The network claims that a greater percentage of its audience donates money than any other public radio audience in the country. In addition, other for-profit and non-profit organizations sponsor or underwrite MPR programming in exchange for small mentions of their contributions. Many of the stations in the radio network are also funded by colleges in the areas they cover. Listener contributions and underwriting account for about 60% of funding. Government funding, mostly through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, amounts to 8% of the network's budget.
Minnesota Public Radio also receives funding from its parent company, the American Public Media Group, another non-profit entity. APM Group partially funds two subsidiary companies with the profits taken from a third. MPR and Southern California Public Radio (SCPR) are both non-profit organizations, but the Greenspring Company is a taxable for-profit company. Greenspring gets its income from operating Minnesota Monthly Publications, which publishes the magazine Minnesota Monthly among others. Greenspring formerly had several other operations, but they have now been sold off.
[edit] Broadcast coverage
In 2000, the company claimed to have radio coverage of 98% of Minnesota as well as some penetration into the states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Michigan as well as the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Ontario. Other public radio and television networks use this same model, such as Wisconsin Public Radio and Prairie Public Broadcasting in North Dakota). In most markets across the state, two services, the Classical music network and the news and information network, can be received. Their newest service, The Current, has been rumored to be the next service to be replicated statewide, but MPR has not announced plans to do so at this time.
| Market | Frequency/Call sign | Power (Class) | Service |
|---|---|---|---|
| Albert Lea | 103.9 K280EB (KGAC) | 10W (D) | Classical |
| Alexandria | 90.9 K215BL (KSJR) | 18 (D) | Classical |
| Appleton | 88.5 KNCM | 34,000 (C2) | News |
| 91.3 KRSU | 75,000 (C) | Classical | |
| Austin | 90.1 KNSE | 6,000 (A) | News |
| 103.3 K277AD (KLSE) | 100 (D) | Classical | |
| Bemidji | 91.3 KNBJ | 65,000 (C1) | News |
| 88.5 KCRB | 83,000 (C1) | Classical | |
| Brainerd | 88.3 KBPN | 5,000 (C3) | News |
| 90.7 KBPR | 34,000 (C1) | Classical | |
| Decorah, IA | 88.7 KLNI | 100 (A) | News |
| 89.5 KLCD | 100 (A) | Classical | |
| Duluth-Superior | 100.5 WSCN | 97,000 (C1) | News |
| 92.9 WSCD | 70,000 (C1) | Classical | |
| Ely | 101.7 W269AC (WSCN) | 31 (D) | News |
| 89.5 K208CR (WIRR) | 23 (D) | Classical | |
| Fergus Falls | 91.5 KNWF | 2,700 (A) | News |
| 89.7 KCMF | 2,700 (A) | Classical | |
| Grand Marais | 89.7 WLSN | 6,000 (C3) | News |
| 88.7 WMLS | 6,000 (C3) | Classical | |
| Grand Rapids | 107.3 K297AD (WSCN) | 250 (D) | News |
| 104.1 K281AB (KCRB) | 250 (D) | Classical | |
| Hibbing-Virginia | 92.5 WIRN | 26,000 (C2) | News |
| 90.9 WIRR | 21,000 (C2) | Classical | |
| Houghton, MI | 91.1 WGGL | 100,000 (C1) | Mixed news/classical |
| 92.7 W224AO (WGGL) | 20 (D) | Mixed news/classical | |
| International Falls | 88.1 K201CN (KNBJ) | 7 (D) | News |
| 97.7 K249BK (KCRB) | 8 (D) | Classical | |
| La Crosse-La Crescent | 91.1 KXLC | 230 (A) | News |
| 88.1 K201BW (KLSE) | 18 (D) | Classical | |
| Minneapolis-St. Paul | 91.1 KNOW | 100,000 (C) | News |
| 99.5 KSJN | 100,000 (C) | Classical | |
| 89.3 KCMP | 100,000 (C1) | The Current | |
| Moorhead-Fargo | 90.3 KCCD | 100,000 (C1) | News |
| 91.1 KCCM | 67,000 (C1) | Classical | |
| Owatonna | 103.9 K280EC (KNGA) | 205 (D) | News |
| 105.7 K289AE (KGAC) | 170 (D) | Classical | |
| Rochester | 90.7 KZSE | 1,100 (C3) | News |
| 91.7 KLSE | 94,000 (C1) | Classical | |
| 88.7 KMSE | 250 (A) | The Current | |
| Roseau | 100.7 K264AR (KNTN) | 250 (D) | News |
| 90.9 W215AI (KQMN) | 37 (D) | Classical | |
| Collegeville/St. Cloud | 88.9 KNSR | 100,000 (C1) | News |
| 90.1 KSJR | 100,000 (C1) | Classical | |
| St. Peter-Mankato | 91.5 KNGA | 8,500 (C2) | News |
| 90.5 KGAC | 75,000 (C1) | Classical | |
| Sioux Falls, SD | 88.1 KRSD | 2,000 (A) | Classical |
| Sun Valley, ID | 91.9 KWRV | 100 (A) | Classical |
| Thief River Falls/Grand Forks | 102.7 KNTN | 100,000 (C1) | News |
| 91.5 KQMN | 84,000 (C1) | Classical | |
| Winona | 107.3 K297AH (KZSE) | 95 (D) | News |
| 101.9 K270AB (KLSE) | 8 (D) | Classical | |
| Worthington-Marshall | 91.7 KNSW | 99,000 (C1) | News |
| 89.3 KRSW | 100,000 (C1) | Classical |
[edit] See also
- American Public Media
- Independent Public Radio (another public radio network in Minnesota, also known as AMPERS)
[edit] External links
- Minnesota Public Radio Web site, including history and list of stations
- Minnewiki: The Minnesota Music Encyclopedia – Wiki operated by Minnesota Public Radio
- American Public Media website
[edit] References
- Terry Fiedler and Deborah Caulfield Rybak (October 24, 2004). MPR chief 'sings his own song' in creating a national powerhouse. Star Tribune. Accessed November 18, 2004.
