WQXR - SOS

And no, I don't mean "Save Our Ship." New York City's all-classical commercial radio station, WQXR has been bought by WNYC. Initially, there was rejoicing. The venerable station, formerly owned by the New York Times, had become a cultural institution over its 70 years of existence.

So what do I mean by "SOS?" Same Old Sh*t, of course.

According to a New York Times article by Daniel Walkin, the new WQXR will have more classical music aired (because they won't be running commercial breaks), but the selection is about to get much less interesting.

In the article, Laura S. Walker, president and CEO of WNYC said new WQXR will combine "the longstanding tradition of being a 24/7 classical music station with WNYC’s curatorial point of view and passion and commitment to discovery,” she said.

Cool. So that means that WQXR -- broadcasting to the city that is the center of American classical music -- the city that gave Steve Reich, Philip Glass, John Corigliano and many, many others their start -- is going to continue interviewing composers and presenting the best in current classical music, right?

Not so fast.

According to the new mission statement: “There may indeed be times when the more radical and unfamiliar pieces work, but we will not favor them over the work that speaks directly to the needs of uplift, beauty, and contemplation.... Greatness matters. Bach trumps Telemann.”

OK, so that "passion for discovery" doesn't extend to the third best composer (behind Bach and Handel) of the late baroque. Surprising to hear that Telemann's music doesn't uplift, nor inspire beauty and contemplation. So what else doesn't make the cut?

Well, according to the article, the usual. No vocal music, no choral music, no contemporary music, nothing from the renaissance, or the middle ages. No chamber music (except for some solo piano, perhaps), no American composers (save Gershwin and Copland -- but no singing!).

None of this is surprising if you look at the circumstances and decipher the code words. WNYC spent some serious money to purchase the station, and with the frequency move, WQXR is going to broadcast to a smaller potential audience. So what WNYC really wants to do is get as many people listening as possible to justify the investment. The best way to do that? The tried and true radio method is to be as innocuous as you can.

"Greatness matters. Bach trumps Telemann." - Translation: We're not really talking about the relative merits of the pieces here because there is NFW we're going to air a Bach oratorio or the Art of the Fugue. Bach is a household name, Telemann is not. Familiar is comfortable, so we're going with that.

"work that speaks directly to the needs of uplift, beauty, and contemplation." - Translation: we want to get as close to Muzak as we possibly can. "Speaks directly" means familiar tunes. "Uplift" means light and pleasant music. "Beauty" means great for background listening. "Contemplation" means music that's not too loud (see: Beauty).

So explain to me this: where's the "passion and commitment to discovery" Ms. Walker was talking about? Based on what I've read so far, it seems to be more passionless familiarity.

- Ralph

Day 170 of the WJMA Podwatch.

Now This -- WJMA Past and Present

Last night I attended a viewing of "Now This." a documentary that chronicled the first 35 years of WJMA, a small-market radio station in central Virginia.



Long-time readers know I've written extensively about my local station, but watching the documentary and reuniting with former employees (yes, I was one, also) brought some things home.

Orange was a rural community with not much business to support advertising. WJMA, then known as Radio Orange, could also be heard in neighboring counties that also were basically rural with modest businesses: Culpeper, Louisa, Madison, and Fluvanna.

But then-owner Arch Harrison saw real opportunity. These communities all had a weekly newspaper, but (in the 1960's) no other source of information. So WJMA became that daily source.

At its peak, the station had two full-time reporters and stringers in each of the four outlying counties to phone in stories. There was a full-time sports director and some sports stringers. The high school coaches for each of the five counties were interviewed in a "Coaches Corner" segment.

As Tom Graves (no relation) the former sports director pointed out, WJMA not only broadcast local high school football and basketball. They sometimes used the AM for one game, and the FM for another -- covering two local sporting events. And in addition to an announcer and color commentator in the booth, there would be reporters on both sides of the field, and sometimes the referees were even miked.

How on earth could a dinky little station provide such coverage (and win broadcasting awards with predictable regularity)?

All of the former employees in "Now This" cited Harrison's hands-off management style, and -- most importantly -- the freedom to fail. It was OK to experiment. If it didn't work, you didn't lose your job. You just tried something different. And if it worked, well, then you tried to improve upon it.

It's all well and good to wax nostalgic about Radio Orange, but what does that have to do with modern broadcasting?

Everything.

How can radio compete with all of the other media that draws away audience?

1) Local
2) Live

That means investing in people, not automation. It means staffing newsrooms, not subscribing to wire services. It means becoming an integral part of the community, not just handing out balloons at a car dealership sale.

Could Radio Orange work today? Absolutely.

They had a talented staff creating a ton of great local content every single day. Content that would work online. Content for videos. Content for podcasts. Content for web updates. Content for Twitterfeeds. Content to be shared with the local papers of each county, content to be shared with the local television stations, content to be shared with the public access cable channel.

Content the audience couldn't get anywhere else because no other organization would be gathering it.

Radio Orange was equally creative in their advertising structure as they were with their news and sports reporting. Everything was an opportunity for sponsorship, and at rates in line with what local businesses could afford. Ditto in the present day.

There's no reason every online and on-air element can't be sponsored. Not always with :30 spots, but creatively. Maybe just a single line and a link on a web page. A brief mention for the weather. A sponsor name and slogan for the sports scores.

It worked before -- and incorporating new media, I think it can work again.

- Ralph

Day 167 of the WJMA Podwatch. (OK, they finally added the news director's name to the metadata, but we still have no image, web address, etc.)

Citizen Journalism - Charlottesville and Beyond!

The New York Times recently published an article of interest to new media types and should be of especial interest to readers of this blog.

The Tehran Bureau, an Iranian news website that sprang up in the wake of the Iranian elections, is now working with (and receiving financing from) the PBS series "Frontline." So a website by citizen/journalists is now providing news to a respected old media news organization.

In the course of the article, writer Brian Stelter says:

Tehran Bureau is not the only nontraditional news source to find an old-media partner. Mr. Benton cited PlanPhilly, a Web site about urban development in the city affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania, which is collaborating with The Philadelphia Daily News to produce a series about growth; and Charlottesville Tomorrow, a nonprofit Web site about issues in Virginia, which is sharing articles with a local newspaper, The Charlottesville Daily Progress.

That's right: Charlottesville Tomorrow, our own local example of citizen journalism at its best, is cited in the New York Times as an example of successful old/new media collaboration. No surprise here: I've talked about this unique service at length.

But it's nice to know that the New York Times agrees!

- Ralph

Scorchy Smith and the Art of Noel Sickles

I've spent three posts taking a close look at the comic strip art of Noel Sickles. But the three years he spent drawing "Scorchy Smith" only represents a small part of his career.

Sickles was first and foremost an illustrator, and he could readily adapt his style to the assignment at hand -- yet approach the subject in an original manner that raised the artwork beyond the conventional.

The best source for finding out more -- and appreciating the work of -- this extraordinary artist, is the Fantagraphics book "Scorchy Smith and the Art of Noel Sickles," by Bruce Canwell and Dean Mullaney. In addition to containing Sickles' complete run of "Scorchy Smith," the book also has excellent examples of his later work.

One such is his work for the United States Postal Service. In 1962, Sickles did the art for the Battle of Shiloh commemorative stamp. Notice the economy of line (click on the image to enlarge). It's really a simple stamp -- just one soldier in combat. We can't see his face, and it's not clear which side he's on. This one soldier represents the over 109,000 men who were involved in the struggle.

Sickles wanted to emulate combat sketches of the period. While he captures the essence of a hastily drawn image by an eyewitness, it still has a contemporary look. The stamp successfully combines the styles of two centuries -- appropriate for such a commemorative.

Scorchy Smith wasn't a fluke -- almost everything Sickles drew professionally worked on multiple levels. If you're interested in illustrative art at all, "Scorchy Smith and the Art of Noel Sickles" is a worthy investment. - Ralph

The CE Classical Challange

I've written a lot about classical music programming on public radio stations.

Recently, one of my Twitter colleagues challenged some of my assumptions. He gently pointed out that not every station only plays European orchestral music written 350-100 years ago (and also provided some examples).

Fair enough.

So I've decided to do a somewhat scientific survey of what stations are playing. Ideally, I'd like to look at playlists for an entire month from each station airing classical music, cross reference each work, and do some serious number-crunching.

The reality is, though, that I'll be doing this survey in my spare time, so the scope will be much more limited. So the results won't be definitive, but I think they'll be representative.

Each week I'll take a different station's posted classical playlist for the day. I'll be looking at several factors: style periods, composer demographic, musical forces. Here's the breakdown:

Style Period (dates are approximate)
- Medieval (up to 1300)
- Renaissance (1300 to 1600)
[I may end up lumping these together as "Early Music"]

- Baroque (1600 to 1750)
- Classical (1750 - 1820)
- Romantic (1820 - 1910)
- 20th Century (1910 - 2000)
- 21st Century (or Modern) (2000 - )
- Crossover (this would include show tunes, movie scores, Beatles songs for brass choir, etc.; the 20th and 21st century categories are reserved for mainstream classical works. John Corigliano's symphony would go under "20th Century"; his music for the movie "Coma" would go under "Crossover")

Musical Forces
- Orchestral (includes concertos)
- Chamber (generally nine instruments or less - chamber orchestra would be "orchestral")
- Solo Instrument (includes works which has one solo instrument and one accompanying instrument, such as a violin sonata w/piano accompaniment)
- Choral (either a cappella, or choir plus instruments where the choir has the lead role, such as an oratorio)
- Solo Voice (either voice and piano (lieder), or solo voice with orchestra, such as an opera aria)

Composer Demographic
- Male/Female
- Living/Dead
- European/American/Other (this would include Latin and South America, Asia and Africa)

So every week I'll look at a different radio station's playlist, tabulate and post the results. And I'll also provide an updated PDF report with all the stations and their playlists, so you can check my work.

Should be an interesting experiment. If there's a station you'd like me to look at, just leave a suggestion in the comment field. Otherwise, next week we'll start close to home (well, my home anyway) with a survey of WVTF, Roanoke, VA.

- Ralph