Guest Post on Programming – Must Read

One of our own, General Manager Jeff Skibbe from KXMS in southern Missouri has written this guest post on programming.  Mille grazie, Jeff!

“Qube Connections” by Jeff Skibbe

I have always been a fan of British TV’s James Burke, the science historian whose episodes of the series “Connections” famously began with a thread of an idea upon which Burke would weave a rich tapestry of cause and effect in the worlds of science and technology.  If you haven’t seen the 1978 original or any of its sequels, you should investigate getting a subscription to Netflix soon.

With Mr. Burke in mind, let me say that I am energized when I hear a radio host welcome listeners with the phrase, “This hour we bring you music having to do with….”  Oh, boy, I think:  maybe I’ll hear something interesting, perhaps unfamiliar music that is connected by some intriguing underlying motif.  Maybe a totally out-of-left-field thread that I never knew existed.  Either way, I will stay long enough to see where these strands take me.

But aside from ho-hum, run-of-the-mill observances of musical anniversaries and holidays, where can a programmer look to find threads that can weave a musical tapestry worthy of the James Burke model? Let me propose a model, one that I call “Qube Connections,” with apologies to Mr. Burke who inspired this programming concept.

First off, my strange spelling, “Qube,” derives from the mnemonic for Alt-Q, the key-stroke combination that launches the search for threads related to any particular classical title in our record library system. The underlying analog is indeed a cube shape: a six-sided block that, when turned around and around, shows different faces with different strands of ideas.  Why not a larger polyhedron?  I limit the potential threads to six, based on a sort of hierarchical modeling; more threads would just needlessly slow down the decision-making process.

In the “Qube Connections” programming model, program hours can be built on threads suggested by any of seven formal criteria: theme, nationality, dates, form, subtitle, relatives, and pupils/teachers.

The real challenge in using these seven criteria lays not so much in scheduling an hour based on any one of them, but weaving multiple criteria together in a stream-of –consciousness or cause/effect tapestry that turns an hour of classical programming into an adventure or journey.  This is what James Burke did with his TV shows thirty years ago.

Let me describe each of these seven criteria:

Theme can be programmatic or literary.  Programmatic naturally includes religious and national holidays.  I have some 57 standard programmatic theme categories.  Add to this a delightful hour of train music suggested by WFMT’s Peter Van De Graaff, and my “off menu” hour of elephant music. Literary themes, 32 of them, also include lengthy lists related to Shakespeare and the Holy Bible.  The other 30 standard literary themes are decidedly short, but can produce satisfying musical connections for a musical audience that is predisposed to reading the classics when they aren’t listening to them.  Your record library database should, by now, have properly notated music for religious holidays, too.   After all, how authoritative can your holiday program sound if you schedule music meant only for some other Judeo-Christian observance?  You may not be steeped in the religious particulars, but your choice of selections should suggest you are on top of the subject.  With speedy computer databases, there is no excuse for not observing even the more obscure holidays in the Jewish and Christian calendars.

My only real caution in the use of themes would be that the hour should be viscerally satisfying regardless of the underlying theme framework.  The test: would you stay tuned even if you were not repeatedly reminded that a theme was employed in the construction?  Intellectual relevance ultimately does not trump emotional response.  The real art lies in weaving both together in one package.

Nationality is the second “thread” criterion.  You could have up to about 242 different countries represented in your record library, perhaps 243, if you wanted to include the musically-rich territory of Flanders.  Most classical radio programmers construct hours of American music based on American composers, but what about American soloists for an hour?  Why not African-American performers as the basis of an hour?  And perhaps a search for the word “American” (and foreign derivations) in non-American titles for the Fourth of July.

While opus numbers are virtually useless in conveying anything of significance to the majority of the radio audience (other than an arcane barrier to inclusion), I like actual dates because they can provide a framework for comparison.   Same-date selections as a thread can be made even more interesting if the works underscore the stylistic differences between a late-classical and an early-romantic, or a romantic and a late-romantic/early modern.

A single form for an hour is easily programmed, but a formal list should be consulted because you would be surprised how many viable hour-long or partial-hour options you have to pick from in this category.  I count minimally 251 forms in my “Qube” list!

Subtitle is simply theme made explicit.  Be sure to include subtitles as a standard part of the syntax of titles when cataloging.  You could catalogue Mahler’s First Symphony without its “Titan” subtitle, but that subtitle provides another potential thread (related to Theme #19 in the Qube Connections).

In the past I have labeled some music program hours as “It’s All Relative.”  The Bach family is the richest vein to mine in this category, of course.  Lately, however, I have gone looking for other familial connections and there are surprisingly many in classical music.  Some of the more intriguing are the less obvious, like the Slatkin/Zlotkin family, or the Schumann/Bargiel connection.

The seventh and final criterion of the Qube Connections is pupils/teachers. This category took many weeks of research, but one of the richer threads is that of music content or style inspired/informed by a particular teacher.  The offshoots of Antonio Salieri alone can span a few hours in your schedule.  

Some of my seven criteria in the “Qube Connections” framework require ongoing investigation for additional threads, something I find personally satisfying.  The goal is to use the tools I’ve described to produce music programming that takes its listeners on a satisfying hour journey.  And if you do it right, they should have no clue how much preparation and thought went into weaving those musical tapestries.

Jeff’s Bio

In public radio management since 1980, Jeff Skibbe has been general manager of 88.7KXMS/Fine Arts Radio International since 1990.  88.7KXMS is a service of Missouri Southern State University.

Jeff earned a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s degree in European Studies at The University of Evansville (Indiana), as well as a second master’s degree in Public Visual Communication at Southern Illinois University where he taught radio/TV production.  Jeff also attended Harlaxton College located near Grantham, England.