Big Picture

Jack Allen on the future of classical public radio: part 2

July 11, 2008 by Mike Janssen

This is the second part of an essay by Jack Allen, who just became president of KBPS-FM in Portland, Ore., in which he considers the future of classical public radio. Part one ran on Wednesday. Let us know what you think, and enjoy.

The Future of Classical Public Radio

Copyright 2008 — Jack Allen

Challenges

Will Rogers said it a long time ago: “Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”

We have a sense that just because Mozart’s music is coming out of speakers every day, like it has for 40 years, we must be doing it right.

The business organization consultant Michael Hummer once remarked, “One thing that tells me a company is in trouble is when they tell me how good they were in the past. When memories exceed dreams, the end is near. The hallmark of a truly successful organization is the willingness to abandon what made it successful and start fresh.”

Our history in public radio pretty much included a guarantee of financial support from our government and license holders (as opposed to listener-sensitive revenue such as underwriting and donations), which in turn created a sense of entitlement and bred a kind of complacency. Our history also includes legacy ideas about programming. There’s usually a legacy sound as well. This is quite a bit to overcome. If we sound stuck, we probably are. Over the past 40 years, if a classical music station did rely primarily on listener support, without true regard for the listener, life at these stations was usually a half-step up from bare subsistence.

Jack Allen on the future of classical public radio

July 9, 2008 by Mike Janssen

Today’s post is the first part of a guest commentary by Jack Allen, who started work this week as president of KBPS-FM in Portland, Ore. Allen previously served as general manager of KMFA-FM in Austin, Texas, for five years, and before that was director of news and music at Minnesota Public Radio. We hope his commentary prompts some reflection about classical radio’s future. The second part is here. Enjoy!

The Future of Classical Public Radio

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up.

It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed.

Every morning a lion wakes up.

It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death.

It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle.

When the sun comes up, you better start running.

—African proverb

This illuminates a pretty basic principle not only of the African savannah but of the business world. It is a perfectly salient point for public radio as well. For we find ourselves not in some kind of benign parallel universe of business and media, one which is safe, protected and warm, but rather one that is competitive, evolving and unforgiving.

CBC hires new classical host; the plight of jazz radio

July 7, 2008 by Mike Janssen

There’s been little news to report as of late regarding the uproar over programming changes on CBC Radio, but the Vancouver Sun today features a profile of Julie Nesrallah, a mezzo-soprano from Ottawa who has been named the host of CBC Radio Two’s new flagship classical show to debut in September. Nesrallah has no previous experience with radio, but CBC execs say she bowled them over with her innate grasp of the medium. The article highlights how the new host plans to approach her job:

[Nesrallah] says she hopes to help de-mystify classical music for those who think it’s difficult, and she says her own story serves as an example.

Nesrallah’s family did not listen to classical music or opera when she was growing up. She discovered it through school choirs and the encouragement of music teachers like Sylvia Darwood at Alta Vista Public School, who recognized a promising singing voice.

“You don’t have to grow up with Haydn at teatime to appreciate classical music,” says Nesrallah.

“You can be a middle-class Lebanese kid from Ottawa who waitressed and put themselves through school, and you can dig classical music. I hope I’ll be able to deliver it in a way that’s interesting.”

Here’s the full article.

Horner: Midday research as “a house of cards on a foundation of quicksand”

July 2, 2008 by Mike Janssen

To wrap up my series of posts about the midday classical music research undertaken by the Public Radio Program Directors Association, I conducted a Q&A by e-mail with Wes Horner. Horner has a long track record in arts and documentary programming for public radio. He started in the business as a producer at Boston’s WGBH, then went on to serve as executive producer of NPR’s Performance Today. He also worked in the same role for Smithsonian Productions, helped develop From the Top and is now involved with Five Farms, a series of radio documentaries about farming families in the U.S.

Horner wrote a commentary for Current newspaper last year in which he questioned the findings and implications of the Midday Classical Music Testing Project. I asked him to explain his views and to lay out the priorities classical public radio should be pursuing. Here’s our interview.

Scanning the Dial: What do you see as the shortcomings of the PRPD Midday Classical Music Testing Project?

Horner: Two issues:

(1) The conceit that you can make meaningful decisions about programming pre-recorded music on CD based on testing artificially excised samples, tested in an artificial environment, I believe is building a house of cards on a foundation of quicksand. Music is more complex than the study recognizes, as is real-life listening. The data aren’t very useful.

(2) Tinkering with the process of making the “right” selection of CD tracks in the hopes that we can energize music on radio is a deflection from where our energy and resources ought to be focused. Namely, how can public radio create music programming that shares the values of our successful news programs? We need to come to grips with the dissonance we’ve created between our music programming and our news/talk programming. And we ought to ask ourselves what the landscape would look like in music on public radio nationally if we invested money, developed production infrastructures, and cultivated talent on both sides of the microphone on a scale similar to that of news. Imagine — please — that the community of music makers and music lovers considered public radio their meeting place of engagement, as do newsmakers and news consumers.

Challenges

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