Vocalo relaunch dials up new direction

Chicago Public Media is “relaunching” its Vocalo radio station and website with more emphasis on local music and less on user-generated content for the young, culturally diverse Chicago audience it has targeted for the past three years.

Vocalo is seeking to build an audience of listeners and users mainly between the ages of 25 and 34 and attract sponsors that will directly fund the WBEW-FM/89.5 radio station and Vocalo.org site. For now, it’s funded by foundation grants and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. “We now have a product that we feel really good about that will attract sponsors, audiences and a variety of different stakeholders and investors,” said Silvia Rivera, the managing director who was hired last year to lead Vocalo. When the broadcaster -- which also runs Chicago public radio station WBEZ-FM/91.5 -- first launched Vocalo, it sought to spur user-generated content from its listeners and web visitors, but that response never materialized. And Chicago Public Media courted controversy when it diverted listener contributions from its other WBEZ programming for the effort.