No Drama

The Democratic primary has been a terrific display of Performance Art — improv theater at its best. Journalists reveling in their juicy onstage parts have created their own political fringe festival, at the expense of more important stories, like wars and natural disasters.

Everybody loves the drama of two powerful onstage protagonists, with their rival gangs. It’s a real life West Side Story.

In the biz, we’ve always said that controversy is great for radio. It’s what makes talk radio more popular than music radio. And the lack of conflict – “drama,” if you will — actually hurts classical music radio. We need some drama to spice things up and generate a little interest in our amazing product.

Of course there’s drama in the music itself. Conflict and resolution are the building blocks of classical music. But we aren’t newsworthy unless a station dumps a popular host or threatens to change formats. The recent changes at the CBC and their dismantling of North America’s last radio orchestra got a little ink, but the planned protests didn’t draw big crowds like Clinton’s and Obama’s campaigns do.

Classical announcers are almost never shock jocks. They don’t say outrageous things; they don’t call people names or act partisan.

Is that a good thing? Do we want to lay low so people won’t notice that our classical stations aren’t making much money? Do we want to play it safe? We play soothing music during work hours so we don’t bother people while they’re working, and soothing music in the evenings when people want to relax. Oh yes, and we play soothing music during drive time to calm the road rage of commuters. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Ok. I’m relaxed. I’m so relaxed I don’t even care if the radio is on or not.

Is it true that if you snooze, you lose? Or are we happy to be the quiet music in the background. Not needing a lot of attention. Not needing a lot of money. We’re the static landscape, not the riot of color. We’re the gently flowing river, not the wild, whitewater ride.

My co-blogger, Mike Janssen and I were laughing because we really don’t have much to blog about lately. He’s got a little news about the CBC, some hints of another station biting the dust, and he’ll tell you about an adventurous multi-media experiment from WGBH in Boston. Other than that, all is quiet on the classical front. Time for someone in the classical radio biz to do something outrageous.