Speculation over the future of ABC Classic FM continues

ABC Classic FM station manager Richard Buckham has this morning spoken to radioinfo, trying once again to allay fears over the station disappearing from the airwaves. Staff and listeners became concerned in August when announcers were removed from overnight programming and since then, speculation about the station and it’s future under Abbott Government budget cuts has continued.

This morning, Buckham responded to the speculation, telling radioinfo, “Like all ABC Radio programs Overnights will be reviewed before we commission next year’s line-up.” 

People say things move slowly on stations like Classic FM but it seems their listeners do too. Many have just taken to social media to protest changes made in August.

Classic FM made the decision to remove what was just pre-recorded announcer intros to songs, instead just rolling out songs overnight with no introduction whatsoever. The fear from insiders at the station is that the changes are the first of many budget cuts that may lead to less announcers at the station. But seriously, how much can it cost to use pre-recorded announcer tracks to intro songs and reuse them, which is all Classic FM had been doing?

Here are the most recent social media complaints about the changes:

And this:

Website ABC Friends has also weighed in on the controversy, questioning just how far changed will go. The site reports, “Classic FM apparently is in danger if the ABC management makes it a digital radio or online service and reassigns its FM transmitters. ABC Classic 2 online began in June and has taken over ABC Classic FM’s midnight to dawn program.  They can do this without presenters.”

The source on the site then says there are ‘big concerns’ at Classic FM about the future of the network and that more changes are expected after they still unspecified ‘final’ payment to be extracted from the ABC before Christmas 2014 by the Abbott Government.

However ABC Classic FM station manager Richard Buckham continues to deny there are plans to remove ABC Classic FM from the airwaves, telling Limestone Magazine that the claims are ‘baseless’.
 

“I wrote to the Classic FM staff on Friday, firstly to reassure them that the rumours were baseless, that they were without foundation and not sourced within the ABC, and secondly to say that ABC Radio has no plans to do what was described: to take Classic FM off FM transmission,” he said.

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