From the Top has championed young classical musicians for 25 years. And soon the nonprofit public radio program will move to North Texas.
The show is heard on nearly 200 stations across the country. Locally, it airs Saturday at noon on WRR101.1 FM. From the Top will join KERA this May and continue to be distributed by NPR.
WRR 101.1 FM is owned by the City of Dallas and has been managed by KERA since 2023.
Arts and education is core to KERA’s mission, said KERA President and CEO Nico Leone. The acquisition will help the organization take its current music and education programming to the next level, he said.
“We always thought that our best path to growing WRR and reaching young audiences would be to start doing more work in the music education space with partners,” he said. “And when this opportunity came about, we just thought it was such a beautiful way of bringing so many different things that we do together to take a great national brand and a program that has an incredible impact to move it to North Texas.”
KERA’s operations also include KERA News, KERA-TV, the nationally syndicated podcast and radio program Think with Krys Boyd, the music station KXT 91.7, and the Denton Record-Chronicle.
KERA’s new relationship with From the Top comes after federal funding cuts and the dissolution of the Corporation of Public Broadcasting. Leone said two factors made that growth possible.
The first is the generous outpouring of support from the community.
“That's really given us a couple of years to figure out what things are going to look like moving forward,” he said. “We're still going to need help from the community, but we feel really good about where we are and all the ways that people have stepped up.”
Second, the deal made financial sense, he said.
“We're not spending a dollar on this acquisition. They're essentially folding into KERA,” he said. “We're not using any donor money, any campaign money for this. We feel really good about our ability to run it both as a stand-alone business, so it can succeed on its own, and integrate it into our work with WRR, with KERA” and with other partners in the arts community.
Gretchen Nielsen, executive director of From the Top, said as the organization turned 25, she and the board discussed the best way to prepare for a vibrant future in an uncertain world.
“The more we learned about [KERA] and the ways in which it aligns from mission to programming and then the opportunities that exist within the arts community in Dallas and the new building that's underway, all of that coalesced into view and felt like it could be a really beautiful step,” she said.
North Texas has a robust classical music scene that boasts two major symphonies, two operas, the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition and several strong education programs.
“There's a lot of opportunity for collaboration,” Nielsen said. “Our imaginations were kind of running wild around that.”
The acquisition comes as KERA prepares for two major projects. The company will break ground on its new building in March and plans to launch a local daily news program in the spring.
Got a tip? Email Marcheta Fornoff at mfornoff@kera.org.
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