Greetings from Brazil, all, where I’m sojourning for several weeks in the company of my daughter. It’s my first time here and it’s quite an adventure. I’m in Barra de São Francisco, a town of 40,000 in the state of Espírito Santo. As I write this I’m being ceiling-fanned and mosquito-bitten in my modest hotel room. Which might not sound like much fun, but in general I am having a great time — even without a passing ability to speak Portuguese.
I’ve been told that of the four radio stations here, none play any classical music. Not that I even have a radio for verifying this. But I’ve been trying to keep up on happenings in our beat here at Scanning the Dial, and there’s lots going on. The impending changes at WUFT-FM in Gainesville, Fla., for one.
Readers of the Gainesville Sun are still peppering the paper with reactions to the format change at WUFT, which is dumping classical music Aug. 3. The paper has printed some other articles and op-eds related to this story that I don’t think we’ve linked to, so for the sake of completion:
- Former UF dean Ralph Lowenstein weighs in on the change (7/10);
- Current Dean John Wright’s lays out his rationale (7/15);
- Follow-up by a Sun reporter on the changes coming to UF’s broadcast operations (7/19; much of this was previously covered in Current); and
- David Duff, president of the Association of Music Personnel in Public Radio, criticizes the change.
Lots of food for thought here, which I hope we’ll get deeper into at a later date. But for starters: in one of the articles above, AMPPR’s Duff says, “Public radio was created for a purpose — and that purpose was to serve underserved audiences.” Duff is not alone in holding this view within public radio. And yes, serving underserved audiences is a noble and worthy goal. But any station that consciously adopts this philosophy or a similar one as part of its mission still has to answer some important questions.
Such as: which underserved audience? Some argue that not just classical music lovers but the target audience for public radio’s news programming is an underserved audience. Many fans of NPR News say the network’s news programming is unlike any other radio news product out there: it’s fair, reasoned, balanced, in-depth. This in fact is part of why NPR News has been such a successful format for so many public radio stations — no other radio news compares. So stations that carry NPR News programs own the franchise on that product in their market (just as a station might that airs classical). Most TV news doesn’t stand up to NPR, either, except for PBS offerings such as Frontline, Now and the NewsHour. (Oh, just invoking these names makes me a little nostalgic for American TV.)
So if a market lacks an NPR news outlet, could you say that the market contains a segment of underserved consumers of news? What if the outlet airs the newsmags but not midday news shows? Are Diane Rehm fans then an underserved audience?
If an underserved segment of listeners is more aggrieved because fewer national media outlets serve their needs, are they more deserving of attention? What if they want more polka? Tuvan throat-singing? Or, to be more serious about it — fans of alternative/indie rock are “underserved” by mainstream commercial radio. So should more public stations go Adult Album Alternative?
Some stations take the “underserved” mission to the extreme, such as community stations that air a patchwork quilt of eclectic shows. I love stations like that, but I’m in the minority. Most community stations consign themselves to small audiences, high turnover from show to show and other challenges that make it difficult to grow audience. A community station that shares a market with an NPR station can wind up being the second choice of its own core audience. Some of these stations barely hang on from year to year. Others succeed, but it’s a tough row to hoe.
(I’ve heard some people in the Pacifica Radio community argue that even if just one person listens to a given show, that show is worth airing. Folks elsewhere in public radio scoff at this notion — perhaps with good reason.)
I know, I know — I’m speaking broadly about one quote in a newspaper article. But it’s bigger than that, since the rationale keeps surfacing in debates about the merits of classical music vs. NPR news. And frankly, I think it’s just too nebulous an assertion to hold water. My argument is that nearly every public radio station serves an underserved audience. And because this is such a broadly applied mission, individual formatting decisions ultimately come down to other, more specific factors.
What do you think?
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People often relate “the underserved” to people without a lot of disposable income. They say that the whole thing about PubRadio is that it is bringing its content to people who have no other means of receiving that content.
Somewhere in there is a kernel of truth.
So, let’s say these are accurate positions.
Tnen, we might also observe that if every listener to PubRadio, every beneficiary receiving the content, gave US$10.00, no PubRadio stations would go out of business. Sure, some, WNYC, WGBH, WETA, would not be quite so grand. But from my experience with WNYC, we could do with a but less grandiosity, like a zillion repeats of Morning Edition and All Things Considered. WNYC pays a fortune to NPR. I think more local content in news and music would be much more doable.
>>RSM
I’d started writing an impassioned defense of classical music on radio, when I got sidetracked looking into the source of the idea of serving the underserved. Maybe the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 and President Johnson’s related remarks already very familiar to everyone else, but I found them to be an informative and inspiring bit of reading: http://www.cpb.org/aboutpb/act/
“6. it is in the public interest to encourage the development of programming that involves creative risks and that addresses the needs of unserved and underserved audiences, particularly children and minorities;”
So it’s not the genre (nor its fans) that are labeled as underserved – whether that genre is Tuvan throat-singing, alternative rock, in-depth news reporting, or classical music – but demographic or other factors, it seems (I’m still trying to think of other groups that are considered underserved and not defined by listening-taste).
Are those without regular access to the Internet the main underserved audience now?
Or has commercial media left us all un- or under- served?
There’s a slippery question of who decides what our serving plates are lacking – do individuals as citizens/consumers identify this lack is and then fill it, or does the government or some cultural authority decide for us? The latter has some creepy implications — by funding certain programs, is the government deciding that I’d be better off listening to Diane Rehm and Beethoven, than, say Jon Stewart and David Bowie?
Maybe I’m getting off track.
—
Rather than looking solely to the sixth point on the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, we could also consider the first one:
“1. it is in the public interest to encourage the growth and development of public radio and television broadcasting, including the use of such media for instructional, educational, and cultural purposes;”
Even as we aim not to be dry or uninviting, I don’t think we should abandon or forget the educational and enlightening aspects of presenting music. If our only goal is only to soothe or entertain, and if we present ourselves this way, we lose some of our value (and the reasons that governments and individuals send money to radio stations rather than getting themselves a few recordings). Do we exist for more than “fans”? We want/need people to listen, but can we exist to serve more than just those who already know what they are coming to us for?
What I fear: classical music will disappear for people who don’t seek it out and that centuries of history and culture and inspiration, as well as a connection to diverse forms of expression taking place now around the world, will be farther from the hearts, minds, and ears of all people,.
(The variety of music that is lumped together as “classical” is not the *only* type of music that informs and inspires beyond simply entertaining, but it is certainly one of them, and it’s an important part of our cultural heritage)
I’m also sure that I’m not the only person who first heard classical music, not by consciously seeking it out, but by hearing it on the radio as a kid. Without broadcasting, we lose some of that serendipity, even as we gain the flexibility and variety of online services.
Society would survive without classical radio, but I believe it is still “in the public interest” to keep classical music accessible and available through broadcasting.
For now, I play classical music on the radio, and I believe in what I do. I’m still also working to express my reasons, beyond the fact that my life has been enriched by classical music, and I (with some of mix of selfishness and altruism) enjoy sharing it with other people.
Mona-
Superb. Bravo Bravissimo!!
>>RSM
Richard: Based on the mission-related conversations I’ve sat in on in public radio, I think it’s safe to say that few programmers focus much on creating or providing programming for people in lower economic brackets. There is, however, a lot of talk about providing programming for people of color (esp. Latinos and African Americans) and people under 40 (since most public radio listeners are not).
Folks who don’t make a lot of money aren’t given much thought. My guess is this is partly because folks who make less money also tend to have less education (I admit this is totally a hunch). And people who have at least a college education are way more likely to listen to public radio than those who didn’t graduate from college (this is not a hunch — it’s borne out by research).
I think by default the “underserved” audiences that public radio stations have come to care most about are the underserved audiences in their markets who will give them the most money and be most attractive to underwriters as a target audience. And that public radio stations can pursue while pleasing or at least not looking too out of line to their other funders — i.e., universities, foundations, and state and federal governments.
Hey Mike,
Regarding your observation that “Folks who don’t make a lot of money aren’t given much thought”, I agree entirely.
Few things are more frustrating during fund-drives for egalitarian and populist programmers than to have breezy, yuppie development types chatter on about European Trip Packages or “$5 a day is no more than an average cup of coffee (!)” when a sizable percentage of our audience–students, elders, the un- and underemployed–decide whether food, meds or rent will get short shrift in a given month.
Let the music be free for those who need it the most.
-Robert Ready