[Swprograms] A washingtonpost.com article from: rdcuff@gmail.com

[rdcuff@xxxxxxxxx]

You have been sent this message from rdcuff@xxxxxxxxx as a courtesy of washingtonpost.com 
 
 Personal Message:
 A DC columnist grouses about WETA's format change.

Richard Cuff / Allentown, PA  USA
 
 Hey, It's My Radio. So Why Is It Tuning Me Out?
 
 By Helen Fields
 
     There's something special about radio, something uncommonly intimate. It's not like television, where you're part of the studio audience, applauding wildly or laughing uproariously. When I'm listening in my house or in the car, it's just me and the voice on the air. 
 
 Which means that I feel mighty possessive about my radio stations. And when they abandon me, as a couple have recently done, I take it personally.
 
 The first to go was WHFS, the alternative music station that saw me through much of my adolescence. I remember one night just before I left for college in 1993. I was home alone, and I had WHFS playing on speakers all over the house, as it often did when my rock-averse parents were out. I called in, and Kathryn, the deejay, played our conversation on the air -- it was a sad and exciting moment, my farewell to local radio as I left for the HFS-less wilds of Minnesota.
 
 And look at me now -- more than a decade later, back in my hometown and HFS-less once again. I was stunned when the station abruptly switched to a Latin music format a month ago. Still, I could have lived with that, but then came an even bigger shock: Another longtime favorite, public radio station WETA, decided to drop classical music and go all-news and talk, beginning tomorrow. Suddenly, I find myself adrift in the ether, lost without a radio station of my own.
 
 This pair of losses reminds me of how much the little voices on the air can mean. Kathryn's name may actually have been Katherine or Catherine -- or even Millicent, for that matter -- and other than a vague impression that she was short, I never knew what she looked like, but I listened to her almost every weeknight. At school, my friends and I talked about the deejays' jokes and the new music we'd heard. It helped define us at a time that was all about belonging -- we were alternative music people. Not quite as alternative as the guy at my high school who liked Fugazi, but clearly more interesting than kids who listened to 107.3, that purveyor of ordinary pop (which I must admit I now grudgingly tune into myself). When someone brought a Walkman to school, we huddled in the stairwell at lunchtime and passed around the headphones.
 
  But I have to admit that when WHFS changed format last month, it had been getting worse for years, and I kind of like the spunky new music. Plus I think the slogan, "Siempre de fiesta!" is the best radio slogan ever. I wonder if they make T-shirts.
 
  Losing classical WETA, though, has me feeling truly bereft. In 1990, when veteran morning host Bill Cerri had a stroke on air and died, I was away at summer camp. My mom sent me the clipping from The Post. I opened it at lunch and cried for an hour. His voice had awakened me every morning for school; he played the King's Singers and told me when I could go back to sleep because Montgomery County public schools were opening two hours late. Not long after he died, the station dropped its morning music program and started playing news in that time slot. Informative, yes, but the exact same programming at the exact same time as another station in town.
 
 I realize nostalgia like this is pretty ridiculous coming from a 29-year-old. But in the irritating way of things that keep changing, and even with my relatively short perspective, it seems like radio used to be so much better. I remember listening to the BBC's sci-fi miniseries "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" as a child in Hampton, Va. Where are the bizarre new comedies like that now? I love the programming produced and distributed nationally by NPR -- it has sustained me on stations across the country -- but back when no one but my mom listened to "All Things Considered," Susan Stamberg and Ira Flatow took a microphone into a closet and chomped on wintergreen Life Savers to watch the sparks. Now they would get letters complaining that the time they'd wasted on candy should have been spent on serious news. As if serious news were all there is to life.
 
  Of course, radio has to strike some balance between quirkiness and audience size. While I might enjoy a radio station that played nothing but Italian opera, Japanese pop and NPR news, I realize I'm probably the only person who would. Still, for the companies that own commercial stations like WHFS, the answer has generally been to seek out quirkiness wherever it may hide and kill it in its den. 
 
 One of the delightful surprises on a cross-country drive last summer was passing through the range of an AM station in West Virginia as an old man sang one unintelligible song after another, unaccompanied. Weirdness like that is rare. You can cross the country and hear the same damn music with the same, or close enough to the same, damn voices talking between the songs, wherever you go.
 
  On public radio, at least, things used to be different. It used to be the home for music that didn't get played elsewhere. But now public radio's trying to reach a wider audience, too. A few years ago, I lived in Santa Cruz, Calif., where a local public station had dropped its wacky, locally hosted format to play nothing but talk. I was happy, because I liked the familiar national shows, but loyal listeners were irate. And here at home, there have been loud protests every time WAMU has whittled away at its bluegrass programming, which hangs on only to Sundays now.
 
  I could live a long, happy life without bluegrass. I guess some people, though, can't. As for me, I'm not a particularly rabid classical music person. I own a couple of dozen classical CDs, but I have a lot more R.E.M. than Rossini, and after trying several years ago, I finally decided I just couldn't go to orchestra concerts; even with the student discount, it seemed like a lot to pay for a nap. But I do love vocal music, which WETA played a lot of, and I like having classical music around.
 
  That's why I joined several dozen people, mostly rabid classical music types, at the WETA board meeting two weeks ago, when the station's trustees voted overwhelmingly to drop classical music. I imagined them mentally rolling their eyes at this crowd of irrelevant music weenies who don't understand the serious adult world of business and audience share.
 
  Of course, I do know that even a public radio station like WETA has to stay afloat, and talk programs bring in more pledge money than music programs. (Also, uh, I'm a reporter, and I hope I haven't just ruined my chance for a career in radio.) But that doesn't make me feel any better now. The people who control WETA may think it's their radio station to change as they see fit, and maybe they're right in a way. (As we're about to start hearing, they can definitely change it.)
 
  But I've heard the pitches during the pledge drives, and I believed them: Public radio needs my support, it wants my support, it'll do anything to keep me listening. I know WETA is mine, and I'm sorry to see it go.
 
 Author's e-mail: fieldsh@xxxxxxxxx
 
 Helen Fields, a reporter at U.S. News & World Report, now has WPGC, 99.5, DC101, WRNR and 107.3 programmed into her car radio, but is still looking for a station to call her own.
 
   

 Would you like to send this article to a friend? Go to 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/admin/emailfriend?contentId=A55195-2005Feb26&sent=no&referrer=emailarticle
 
 

Visit washingtonpost.com today for the latest in:

News - http://www.washingtonpost.com/?referrer=emailarticle

Politics - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/politics/?referrer=emailarticle

Sports - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/sports/?referrer=emailarticle

Entertainment - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artsandliving/entertainmentguide/?referrer=emailarticle

Travel - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/travel/?referrer=emailarticle

Technology - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/technology/?referrer=emailarticle




Want the latest news in your inbox? Check out washingtonpost.com's e-mail newsletters:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?node=admin/email&referrer=emailarticle

Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive
c/o E-mail Customer Care
1515 N. Courthouse Road
Arlington, VA 22201 

© 2004 The Washington Post Company


_______________________________________________
Swprograms mailing list
Swprograms@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://dallas.hard-core-dx.com/mailman/listinfo/swprograms

To unsubscribe:  Send an E-mail to  swprograms-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe, or visit the URL shown above.