Harter's 'Town' is a singular sensation in syndication

It took George Harter nearly 16 years to realize that his homespun Saturday-night radio show could be more than just a hobby. In 1980 Harter began doing his three-hour program of show tunes and film scores on classical station KXTR-FM (96.5), then owned by local businessman and philanthropist Robert P. Ingram. Because Ingram didn't subscribe to the Arbitron ratings service, Harter was never quite sure if he was entertaining more than his friends and the listeners who called his request line. After Ingram sold KXTR to Heritage Media in 1997, Harter finally got to peek at a ratings book - and was astounded to find his "Night on the Town" was one of the station's most-listened-to shows. Harter also began announcing his e-mail address on the air and was no less surprised to find his mailbox filled with messages from a new group of mostly younger listeners. That's when the wheels began to turn. "I researched and saw that no one else in the country was doing Broadway music on the radio," Harter said. "There are very few outlets for theater music on the radio anywhere." Harter thought "Night on the Town" could go national. But the idea took four years to come to fruition, and in that time Harter quit his well-paying job in industrial sales to work full time on the project. Last month a new one-hour syndicated version of "Night on the Town" began airing on 30 stations through the WFMT Fine Arts Radio Network of Chicago. (The network, Harter said, had been expecting only about half that number to take the program.) The number is now up to 34 stations, mostly noncommercial but also KXTR, where it airs at 9 p.m. Saturdays, followed, as usual, by Harter's local program. "Night on the Town" may even go international. Harter just got a call from one of WFMT's highest-brow clients: the BBC Arts Channel 2. To see playlists of upcoming broadcasts, go to www.voiceofbroadway.org. >>> KCABJ honors three The Kansas City Association of Black Journalists gave its annual Media Awards to representatives of three local TV stations at a ceremony Nov. 6. Dolores Quinn and Marci Pickard of KCPT, Channel 19, won for "A Kansas City Dialogue on Race," with anchor Kris Ketz of KMBC, Channel 9. KMBC's Natalie Moultrie won for news features, and Michelle Casas and Eric Schultz of KSHB, Channel 41 won for hard news. Ex-Q104 boss moves up Kathy Stinehour, who as general manager of KBEQ-FM (104.3) oversaw the station's switch to its successful "young country" format, has been tapped to head a new cluster of radio stations in Chicago. Stinehour, most recently general manager of KTJM-FM in New York, will manage six stations for AMFM Inc., including Chicago's top-rated music station, WGCI-FM. The cluster's future is somewhat uncertain as AMFM will need to sell off more than 100 stations to complete a $ 23.5 billion merger with Clear Channel Communications. KCPT's digital first A five-part KCPT series on the history of the arts in Kansas City will be the first station production done in a digital high-definition format. "Uniquely Kansas City" will air in May 2000. It will appear in conventional analog format on Channel 19 and in high-definition on Channel 18, the digital signal KCPT put on the air last year. Only a few hundred digital receivers have been sold in the Kansas City area, and if they tune to Channel 18 most nights, they see a standard loop of digital programs emanating from PBS headquarters in Virginia. That's because KCPT lacks the capacity at present to originate digital programs from its studios. As a result, "Uniquely Kansas City" will actually be fed to Channel 18 from Virginia. To reach Aaron Barnhart, phone (816) 234-4790 or visit the TV Barn Web site at www.tvbarn.com