Radio

As media consolidates, the diseased theories and practices it harbors spread. It's a process of degeneration and homogenization that has real effects on the citizens of our country, in terms of narrowing what they are exposed to in the media, and eliminating any sense of locality and place in programming. Furthermore, the emphasis on the almighty dollar that has Paris Hilton as the lead story in the news has spread in a sinister manner to the way public radio positions itself in serving the population.

Chicago has had an interesting turn events with our local public radio station, WBEZ. First they announced that they were eliminating music programming entirely. After some backlash from the local community, organized town hall meetings (one of which I was directly involved in putting together), and petitions, they backpedaled a bit, but not much. They announced they were launching a new station, a secondary public radio channel that would be dedicated to the local community, including its diverse arts scene. It came across as half baked and showed little promise. They were also extremely secretive about what the format and nature of the station was going to be, apparently in some odd attempt to build 'hype.'

The secondary station was recently launched. It's called Vocalo.

So far the station is only available online and if you live in Northwest Indiana - the station they put it on is so weak signal wise, it doesn't even reach Chicago.

I've listened in a few times and have been unimpressed with the format and the likelihood that it's going to achieve their goals. It feels like the arts community that protested the change in format of WBEZ so fervently are being thrown a bone and told to go gnaw on it in the corner.

And it's not even a particularly tasty bone.

In the Tribune article about the launch, it says "CPR expects to be able to boost the WBEW signal to 50,000 watts, which would extend its reach into Chicago" (emphasis mine). In other words, if everything works out, it should reach Chicago. Otherwise, the only way to listen would be streaming online. Which directly contradicts their stated goal, which was:

"One of the station's primary aims is to garner the non-white audience that Chicago Public Radio's flagship WBEZ-FM 91.5 does not.

According to the 2000 census data, Asians make up 4.30% of our population,  Blacks make up 36.40%, Hispanics or Latinos make up 26.00%, Whites make up 31.30%, and the miscellaneous Others make up 2.00%. The fact that WBEZ calls itself a public radio station and yet serves such a narrow band of the population is absurd. 

The whole idea of a spin off, second station, wreaks of a racist creation of a ghettoized radio station for the 'other' folks who don't listen to WBEZ, hardly a civilized answer to the problem. . Apparently white folks like to listen to people talk and will give money for the privilege.

Another interesting thing to note is that some of the theories behind the changes seen at WBEZ, as well as in public radio formats across the country, have a scapegoat. That's right, there is a man behind this madness, and his name is David Giovannoni.

The NYTimes wrote an article about him back in 2001. He's responsible for the buzz words you hear on public radio, such as "listener-supported." He's essentially a numbers cruncher, or as the article refers to him a "numbers nazi," who figured out how to get the biggest audience of the people most likely to donate money.

This is part of a larger problem that I see as endemic in our society today, a reliance on the quantitative over the qualitative, the concrete over the abstract, and in a more definitive biological sense, a privileging of the left brain over the right brain.

To generalize and stereotype: we're being ruled by MBAs, CPAs and lawyers, individuals who believe that creativity can best be defined (and managed) if it can be endlessly replicated without resorting to creative types.  These individuals believe that paint by numbers and karaoke are examples of creativity,  that playing air guitar is one step away from having actual talent.

What's the problem with numbers in this case? To quote Paul Simon: "When times are mysterious/Serious numbers are easy to please."  To quote a friend of mine who has written on this same subject:

As Tom McCourt, author of Conflicting Communication Interests in America: The Case of National Public Radio (Praeger 1999), observed in a letter to the NYT editor following Freedman’s article, "Audience research is hardly neutral; it is designed to mold audiences as well as reflect them. In its embrace of audience research, public radio, rather than providing a ground for a public culture, isolates its audience into demographically honed segments. The ‘public’ it purports to serve is a public in name only."

So, if public radio is really public, it defines public in an incredibly restricted, narrow manner: the people who are most likely to donate money.

When the backlash from the arts community happened, many large donors to WBEZ and Chicago Public Radio stepped up and said they would no longer be donating to the station. So their market research couldn't have been entirely correct, and it was nice to see some people with some monetary clout sticking it to them for their decision.

The worst part of the whole situation was that when feedback was given to WBEZ, the answer that came back to us was a paternalistic "father knows best," that we should wait and see what good ol' Chicago Public Radio had in store for us. There was no sense of exchange, of engendering community, that our voice had any value. This was particularly entertaining considering the fact that they were pitching the new format station as 'giving voice to the community.'

HA!

There's a radio station here in Chicago called Jack FM, 104.3, that boasts as its motto: "We play anything." Note that they don't play "everything" - this isn't a statement of mobility between genres, or lack of format. Any sense of freedom that they may be trying to claim comes across as a lack of cohesion, vision, and unity in their programming. They almost appear to be saying they're not even responsible for what goes on the air.

Yesterday I read this article from the New York Times entitled "Saving Radio in the Satellite Era." The author argues that the failures of terrestrial radio's consolidations should not give us much hope for the proposed XM-Sirius merger, and furthermore, that the only answer to our consolidation problem is more legislation - the very thing that got us into the mess to begin with. His proposal is:

"Fortunately, there is a solution: Require every station that wants to add to its holdings to broadcast a minimum level of original, live and local material. This proposal is based on one of the most successful broadcast policies in American history. In the 1960s, when the F.C.C. opened the FM dial, AM stations rushed to acquire licenses — but then simulcast the same shows they were already playing. This was not what regulators had in mind, so they ruled that FM stations had to play original content on at least half of their programming hours. Because radio companies didn’t want to invest much in FM, they ceded control of their studios to young people and amateur broadcasters. The result was the advent of free-form music radio, with programs so fresh and compelling that listeners flocked to FM and stayed there — at least until corporate broadcasters standardized it, too."

Unless I'm mistaken, and maybe Mr. Ryshpan can chime in here, Canada has a similar law regarding percentage of Canadian music played over the airways. Due to the volume of American music the local region would have to be defined more closely than the entire country to have the desired effect, but I do think it could happen. That is, if I had an inkling of faith left in our legislative bodies to do something for the benefit of the general and artistic public rather than for the mega corporations.

Tangentially, I've been involved in some discussions regarding the marketing of this music we like to call jazz in the United States. For the purposes of this discussion we'll define that genre as broadly as possible, not taking into consideration the various genres, subgenres, and splintered factions that exist, at least in some peoples' minds.

The basic questions are: 1) How do we effectively market this music? 2) Specifically, how do we market this music to a younger generation so that it continues to enjoy support as the baby boomers and older generations make their transitions? 3) Is it really a question of marketing?

I'd be really interested to hear from the blogosphere what they think about these questions, either in the form of your own entries or in the comments here. I think it's a discussion worth having, and your ideas might actually make an impact in the way jazz marketing happens in Chicago, a city that boasts a vibrant scene with intermittent support from the general public.