Posted on 02/21/2005 1:42:21 PM PST by RWR8189
ON THE EVENING OF FEBRUARY 10, the board of directors of WETA-FM, the only commercial-free classical music station in Washington, D.C., voted overwhelmingly to eliminate its music and arts programming. At the end of this month, someone will flick a switch and--thud!--WETA will fall to earth as just another all-news, all-talk station, and the nation's capital will be left without a public radio station devoted to beautiful and intelligent music.
WETA's transformation is a blow to the cultural life of the Washington metropolitan area, of course, which despite its succulent demographics in income and education levels has always struggled to maintain institutions that promote the fine arts. Yet our local station's fate should be of more than local interest. It confirms and will likely accelerate a trend already gaining momentum in public radio nationwide. A few days before WETA cheerfully announced its own death as a music station, WFDD in Winston-Salem, which has broadcast classical music to the North Carolina piedmont for more than 30 years, announced that it too was scrapping music in favor of all talk all the time. Together they join more than 50 public radio stations who in the last several years have given themselves up to news 'n' chat exclusively, leaving their music-loving audiences out of luck.
Something big is happening here, in other words, without fanfare, and with only token public deliberation. Public radio in the United States is remaking itself according to a wholly new sense of its mission. Originally conceived as a service for preserving and encouraging minority tastes ignored by the market--particularly in the arts, not only in classical music but also in jazz, bluegrass, cabaret, folk--public radio is being transformed into the nation's first government-funded news service. We would like to draw the attention of members of Congress to this sly conversion, and to its likely long-term effects. In the coming months congressmen will be sifting through the government's books in search of outlays that have outlived their usefulness. The $80-plus million now being spent to build a federally subsidized news organization, under the auspices of National Public Radio, would be a good place to start.
One comment, from WETA's president, Sharon Percy Rockefeller, struck us as revealing. "We're in the business of trying to create a larger audience," she told the Washington Post, explaining the board's decision. Her line of reasoning is shared by the new generation of station managers who have gained control over public radio in the last 15 years. According to their conventional wisdom--though whether it's wisdom or merely convention has yet to be determined--news and chat inevitably bring in more listeners, and more affluent listeners, than classical music or jazz. And affluent listeners draw higher-class advertisers (called "underwriters" in the painstaking lexicon of public broadcasting) and respond more generously during pledge drives.
Perhaps only students of public broadcasting will see the revolutionary nature of Mrs. Rockefeller's remark. For the point of subsidized radio has never been to maximize its audience, and certainly not to maximize its income. It has always been sustained instead on an odd, but sturdy, rationale: Public broadcasting needed to exist because its programming wasn't terribly popular. The dissemination of certain kinds of music and arts programming was a good in itself, and the government had an interest in roping off a part of the marketplace for its preservation. After all, if arts programming were sufficiently popular, the market would take it up--as the market has, for example, in the cataract of commercial talk and news stations flooding every region of the country, the very stations that public radio has now chosen to compete with. Pursue Mrs. Rockefeller's line of reasoning, on the other hand, and you're led quickly into absurdities: If a public radio station is in the "business" of drawing big audiences, why not fill its airwaves with Green Day or Alicia Keys and really pull 'em in?
Public radio hasn't sunk so low, not yet, and in fairness it probably won't. The present generation of public radio station managers take their market reasoning only so far, just to the point where it coincides (amazingly enough) with their own preferences in programming. As mostly white, affluent baby boomers, proud of their advanced educations and utterly ignorant of the arts, they share the tastes of the audience of doppelgängers they hope to attract: an indifference to forms of non-popular music and an endless appetite for chatter. We're disheartened to admit that the market strategy is working; these programmers may be tasteless but they aren't stupid. Today the public radio system has grown into a colossus of the American media landscape. NPR's two signature news shows, Morning Edition and All Things Considered, are the nation's second and third highest-rated nationally syndicated radio programs, after Rush Limbaugh. Several of its other shows, such as Car Talk and A Prairie Home Companion, routinely win their time slots in markets across the country. NPR has become, as its marketers like to say, a hugely successful brand, aimed straight at the nation's most affluent demographic cohort.
Congress has tried before to tamper with the subsidy to federally funded radio. The attempt stands as one of the signature failures of the fabled Republican-revolution-that-wasn't, away back there in the dreamy days following the election of 1994. "If the Corporation for Public Broadcasting still exists in two years," Newt Gingrich said then, referring to the government agency that funds public radio, "then we will have failed." Ten years later, Gingrich is gone but NPR survives, as one further indication of who really wears the pants in the great big family that is the federal government. A chief reason for the failure was the bureaucratic flow chart of public radio--a system of funding that would have puzzled Rube Goldberg. National Public Radio itself receives no direct subsidy from CPB; the money is instead laundered through local stations, who return the money to NPR in payment for the programs it produces. The intricacies and indirections of the system might lead a skeptic to think they were designed precisely to frustrate any congressional attempt at privatization.
But as our friends in the White House constantly remind us, we live in a transformational era--a time for trying the impossible. And public radio's continued success, measured in purely commercial terms, provides an excellent justification for removing the subsidy. Already the country is awash in news and talk and "informational programming." Is it fair to those commercial broadcast companies--who really are forced by the market to draw large audiences--to compete with government-subsidized stations aiming to fill the same market demand? Most public radio programmers are happy to boast of their success. Indeed, if you pump them with enough Chablis, they will even acknowledge that their strategy of eliminating arts programming has been so successful, and revenues to NPR's member stations have risen so high, that the $80 million in federal money is probably no longer essential to the system's survival.
Let's see if they're right.
--Andrew Ferguson, for the Editors
Classical music is one of my weaknesses. I will miss it.
Then play a CD...or listen to a station that has paid ads.
it's not a great loss, really. NPR's classical shows are by and large superficial wastes of time. Classical music for people who don't like classical music.
Thank god I live in in a place with a station like KUSC, a station with hosts who actually know something about he music they play. I gave up long ago on NPR and their smug hosts (both music and news).
KUSC is fantastic.
I have my bedroom radio tuned to the all-music classical SDPR station here. Removing classical music would be the last nail in the coffin of Public Radio in my house. If the left wants to build a network of leftist talk radio, they should do it on their own dime.
Such as: Does the constitution even suggest that government should fund propaganda? How about the lack of balance? Public Radio does accept advertising that they disingenuously label "underwriting". Finally Federal tax funds aren't the only tax dollars in play as the states contribute a bunch to NPR.
Plainly I'll have to write the next editorial for 'em:-)
The Danish stations play a great variety of classics and I've heard a ton of stuff you'd never get on an American station.
'Course, they could always plant some rhubarb in the lot out back,
pick up a few hundred K in federal farm subsidies, and Bach around the clock...
Also XM and Sirius probably have classical music too.
buncho links...
http://www.classical.net/music/links/musradio.html
WETA was an excellent station for classical music. I for one will miss it -- instead of music, we'll get the liberal verbal barrage now, I suppose.
There goes My only reason for tuning in.
"Succulent demographics"? DC's median household income is lower than the US median, it has ca. 20% below the poverty line (vs. ca. 12% for the US a whole), and the population is skewed far more toward African-Americans than most of the rest of the US. How are these demos "succulent" for a station playing music created by "dead white Europeans"?
Oh the horrors! God forbid someone should actually have to load up a classical music CD into their sound system. Puh-leeze.
It's a hell of a lot easier for classical music afficianados (afficianadi, for you snobs) to hear classical music today than it EVER was when it was actually being created -- back when you either had to play an instrument yourself, have an invite to the Emperor's parties, or take a one-to-five days ride on a horsecart to get somewhere where you might be in earshot of a performance.
We live in the most arts-rich society in the history of civilization -- znd still we have people complaining because government isn't funding the arts enough.
So far as PBS goes, I don't believe those middlebrows ever quite comprehended the difference between classical and folk music... they both use violins, don't they?
Besides, when they did play classical music it was always the three 'B's: Bloch, Bruckner and Brubeck.
QXR is still on the air. I just turned it on.
"...public radio is being transformed into the nation's first government-funded news service.:
ACHTUNG! ACHTUNG!
You vill listen UND you vill belief vat chu hear. Zat iss all.
Very interesting and informative article. The author is quite correct about the direction of public radio. The questions conservatives need to ask is: why do we need to spend tax dollars to duplicate programming that already exists in the private sector? The generation of station managers mentioned are so typical of liberals - using tax dollars to fund their propaganda objectives. (NPR is wall-to-wall leftism, for anyone who hasn't had the experience of listening.)
Also, accepting that classical music and other forms of less-known music are a public good - why should it be directly funded with taxpayer money? After all, ins't that what non-profits are for? The thing that a lot of folks forget about tax money is that it is money that is essentially extracted from the public by the threat of force. Think not? Try not paying your taxes and see what happens. At least with a non-profit, those who believe in promoting the arts can voluntarily contribute money for this purpose, and deduct the donations form their taxable income.
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