The Cornerstone of the Omaha Arts Community 

April 7th, 2024

The Omaha metro has always enjoyed a rich arts scene anchored by legacy arts organizations such as the Omaha Symphony, Opera Omaha, and the Omaha Community Playhouse, to name a few. The number of art organizations has grown in recent years, but the number of mainstream media outlets who provide coverage of these organizations and arts events has dwindled.  

Enter KVNO. 

KVNO went on the air in 1972 as “fine arts radio for Omaha” with the idea of bringing something new to the airwaves in the metro. Even after 51 years, we’re still bringing something fresh to our community – locally curated classical music on the radio (and streaming online, through our smartphone app and through your smart speaker).

KVNO is one of only 55 fully classical radio stations in the country. In fact, many larger cities do not have a full-time classical station, but, Omaha has had one for nearly 52 years, and that says something about the metro. It says that the arts are important to us. 

The arts are important to KVNO as well. As a mainstream media outlet that is still “fine arts radio for Omaha,” we believe we have a mandate to provide an experiential and local connection to arts and culture for our community.

We’ve made a focused and consistent commitment to do this in the past few years. That has involved increasing the amount of air time we give to local arts on a daily basis and finding new ways to bring the stories of our incredible arts community to listeners.

• Our short arts features, called Arts Today, air twice weekdays at 8:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. and live on at KVNO.org. We will soon add web-only features to help highlight even more artists and organizations.
• KVNO hosts live broadcasts and airs concerts from local arts organizations such as the Omaha Symphony, Omaha Chamber Music Society and Opera Omaha. 
• We’ve also launched the KVNO Arts Calendar, which focuses on events in the arts community. Easy to use and easy to add events to, it allows users to see only the events they’re interested in. Nothing against tractor pulls, but you won’t find them on the KVNO Arts Calendar. You can also search the calendar using filters to narrow down the events based on type of arts, such as music, visual arts or performance. 
• KVNO will soon launch a video project called Creative Omaha, which features the people and places of the Omaha arts community. These videos will live on our website (KVNO.org) and bring you stories you can’t find anywhere else.

In the age of social media, it’s wonderful to have those tools available to arts organizations for marketing, but it still doesn’t equal dedicated coverage from a media outlet that reaches thousands of people in our community every day (KVNO is one of the ten most listened to radio stations in the metro).

KVNO truly is the cornerstone of the Omaha arts community – a place we love to be!