Radio Survivor

One night last week I was tuning around the AM dial here in Chicago before going to sleep when I happened upon a station playing a nice, but unusual mix of vocal jazz standards. The music set was long, interrupted only by an ID for “950 the Avenue.”

The next morning I googled the station and learned that it’s a relatively new one, debuting August 2009 in Chicago after starting on the FM dial in Osh Kosh, WI in January 2009. Since then I’ve tuned in a number of times intrigued both by the introduction of a new radio format and the fact that it’s a new music station on the AM, rather than FM dial. In particular my interest in piqued since this discovery came just a week after Jennifer’s post on the Aesthetics of AM.

When I initially encountered the station it was playing an Ella Fitzgerald number that I can’t recall. So at first I assumed it was an adult standards / nostalgia format station that I’d somehow never heard before or that was coming in from a more distant market due to the luck of nighttime AM propagation. But a couple of songs in they played Steely Dan, which might qualify as classic rock, but is way too recent and rocking for an adult standards playlist.

The Avenue bills itself as “timeless cool,” drawing on artists who seem to have classic jazz elements as a point of commonality, but otherwise might fall more solidly into rock or adult contemporary camps. The website’s masthead features pictures of Norah Jones Diana Krall, Ray Charles, John Mayer, Nina Simone and Harry Connick, Jr–a somewhat more eclectic array than I would normally expect from a commercial station. Even if all these artists have each sold millions of albums none of them are big radio mainstays.

At the same time, many of the artists heard on the Avenue, like Ray Charles, were once radio mainstays, especially during the heyday of AM popular music radio in the 1960s and 70s. So their music sounds quite at home in the restricted audio bandwidth of AM. Many of these other artists, however, came to prominence in the FM and CD era of high fidelity and low noise. I haven’t heard any John Mayer on the Avenue yet, but music from Norah Jones and Harry Connick sounds pretty well at home on this AM station.
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I’ve only lived in Chicago for two years, but I’ve been listening to WXRT in brief spurts for the last sixteen years when visiting the city. Living in the Central Illinois college towns of Champaign-Urbana, I’d often heard about WXRT from friends and acquaintances from the Chicago area. Inevitably it was the one station that ex-Chicagoans most commonly said they missed. While Chicago has a lot of great noncommercial college stations, all of them only cover a portion of the city and metro area. By comparison WXRT has great signal strength, covering the better part of Chicagoland.

Like a lot of FM rock stations, WXRT’s roots lie in that brief heyday of freeform radio in the late 60s and early 70s. The station’s rock programming began in 1972 as the nighttime portion of a programming schedule that primarily consisted of ethnic and foreign language programs during the day. It went all-rock in 1976 at the same time as most progressive rock stations started to be come more formatted and less freeform, birthing what would become known as the Album Oriented Rock (AOR) format.

XRT remained locally owned until 1995– a year before the Telecom Act triggered the onslaught of consolidation–when it was sold to Westinghouse, which would become Infinity broadcasting, now known as CBS Radio. Yet, somehow WXRT has managed to survive the era of consolidation and avoid becoming a homogenized, voice-tracked, syndication-saturated station. Instead, it remains a Chicago fixture and example of the Chicago approach to rock.
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He may not have been able to successfully inherit the leadership of the Republican party this year, but at least good ol’ Rushbo gets a consolation prize: a whole musical performed in his honor.

Last night Chicago’s famed Second City comedy company premiered their newest production, Rush Limbaugh! The Musical! The play follows Rush through his rise to prominence as aided and abetted by comrades like Anne Coulter and opponents like Rep. Barney Frank. Second City says,

The score for the show will feature a pastiche of Broadway musicals such as Spring Awakening, Wicked, and Rent. You can call it “Dispirit of the Radio.”

I have to admit that I am both intrigued by the concept, and a little disappointed. Limbaugh is such an over-the-top personality on-air that he verges on self-parody. Not only does he seem sometimes to know this, but he even seems to revel in it. So aiming a parody musical at him is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel.

Reading today’s reviews of opening night, it looks like the critics agree. The Chicago Tribune’s Chris Jones writes,

this uncertain show can’t compete with the outsize personality of the object of its satire….

In last year’s “Rod Blagojevich Superstar!,” the disgraced former governor of Illinois went down like a nine pin… . But Limbaugh is a tougher customer than the truly weird Blago, not least because (like a lot of successfully outrageous radio personalities) you never quite know with Limbaugh where the revelations end and the act begins.

More to the point, Hedy Weiss at the Chicago Sun-Times simply concludes,

Sadly, the whole exercise… turns out to be largely predictable, unfunny and surprisingly dated.

Even so, I’m not entirely dissuaded from checking out the show. In this day and age, when’s the next time I’ll have the opportunity to see a musical (even a parody) about a radio star?

I first heard about the Chicago Independent Radio Project (CHIRP) when I moved to Chicago in the spring of 2008. For all intents and purposes the project grew out of the former incarnation of Loyola University’s WLUW-FM which operated as a community radio station from 1997 to June 2008. In 2001 Loyola announced that it would no longer fund the station and called in Chicago Public Radio (CPR) to operate it. During this time it featured eclectic indie-rock focused programming, supplemented by local specialty shows of type familiar to community radio listeners. But at the end of that run the university took back full control of the station with plans to make it more student-run and student-focus as part of Loyola’s revitalized School of Communication.

Chicago radio veteran Shawn Campbell was WLUW’s program director during the CPR days, and after the hand-over became a prime mover behind the effort to create CHIRP as a true community radio station serving the city. I interviewed Shawn on my former radio program back in Oct., 2008 just as the organization was getting off the ground.

After more than eighteen months of organizing and fund raising CHIRP finally went online this past Sunday, Jan. 17. Although it’s online-only right now, CHIRP plans to operate like a regular broadcast stations with live DJs spinning indie-rock oriented programming focused on the particular taste and music scene in Chicago. The approach is not unlike a Chicago version of Seattle indie-rock powerhouse KEXP, especially since public affairs programming is not currently in the plan.

But in many ways an online station is a stopgap measure for CHIRP while its volunteer staff waits for the Senate to get to work on the Local Community Radio Act, which passed the House in December. You see, there are no open spots for new FM stations of any kind in the greater Chicago dial. But there’s hope that if LPFM is restored to its original specifications there will be an opportunity for some new low-power community stations in and around the city. When and if that happens, CHIRP will be poised to apply for its own space on the FM dial.

While the station’s volunteers worked hard to build its studios in Chicago’s North Center neighborhood, they also helped lobby on behalf of LPFM expansion alongside groups like Free Press and the Prometheus Radio Project. As a result the project received attention from the New York Times back in December.

With a real studio, a staff of volunteer DJs and an online presence it looks like CHIRP will be in a good position to hit the air running if it’s able to get a LPFM license. In the meantime it will be interesting to see if an online station can be regarded as a community station even without a broadcast signal. CHIRP has made a very good start of it, maintaining a strong public presence at cultural events across the city over the past year. The station is starting off with an unusual amount of momentum for an online station, so it will be interesting to see how it grows and develops during its first year.

I’m not aware of any other online-only stations operating as a fully human-staffed community stations elsewhere in the US. If any of our readers know of any, please tell us about them in a comment to this post.

DJs at Glenbrook South High School Radio station WGBK

Last month I had the pleasure of visiting WGBK-FM, a high school radio station in suburban Chicago. This was my very first trip to see a station run by teens and I was thrilled to witness young people doing radio.

Not only were they working as DJs on standard music shows, but they were also producing documentaries, PSAs, restaurant reviews, and covering sports events. In the future they will also be hosting live bands in their studios. During my visit to the station, I was amazed and excited to see that kids as young as 13 were getting the opportunity to experience the magic of radio.

WGBK, which airs programming from two different radio stations run by students at Glenbrook South High School and Glenbrook North High School, is one of the handful of high school radio stations in the United States that is regularly recognized with accolades at the John Drury High School Radio Awards.

Both schools that air programming over WGBK offer broadcasting classes, so the experience for these radio students is much like one might get from working at a college radio station.

[Similarly, the U.K. has their Sony Radio Award for Schools competition highlighting excellence in student radio. Recent winners include Radio Roseland and ISCA College Radio.]

For a refreshingly different take on radio, it might be worth your while to seek out a high school radio station in your town. If you can’t find one, then perhaps take a listen to some of these John Drury award-winning stations:

WLTL 88.1 FM – Lyons Township High School, La Grange, Illinois (Won “Best High School Station” 2009)

WBFH 88.1 FM- Bloomfield Hills High School, Michigan (Won 2nd Place for “Best High School Station” 2009)

WGBK 88.1 FM- Glenbrook South High School, Glenview, Illinois (Won 3rd Place for “Best High School Station” 2009)

WGBK 88.1 FM- Glenbrook North High School, Northbrook, Illinois

KDPS 88.1 FM- Central Campus, Des Moines, Iowa (frequency is also shared with a college station)

WWPT 90.3 FM- Staples High School, Westport, Connecticut

WRHS – Reavis High School, Burbank, Illinois

KASB 89.9 FM- Bellevue, Bellevue, Washington

WXBA 88.1 FM- Brentwood High School, Brentwood, New York

Far outside the view of the general public, the virtual cratediggers of the FCC’s electronic recesses like Matthew and myself are sometimes privy to the little slap-fights that go on between broadcasters. In this case things are getting a little heated over the far left end of the FM dial, with a prominent public radio station calling out LPTV broadcasters exploiting the channel 6 backdoor to the FM dial.

As I’ve been already reported, the FCC recently ended restrictions on the use of FM frequencies adjacent to TV channel 6– 87.9 to 88.5 FM–in markets where former analog channel 6 stations went digital and changed channels.  Now, National Public Radio has petitioned the FCC to open up these frequencies everywhere, even in markets where digital TV stations decided to stay on channel 6 or where there are grandfathered analog low-power TV stations.

NPR’s argument rests on a technical analysis concluding that digital TV signals are far more interference-resistant than analog, and that modern TV tuners are selective enough to make interference from FM negligible for even analog LPTV signals.

Predictably, fellow noncommercial FM broadcasters are lining up in support of NPR’s proposal, while the ABC network and the National Association of Broadcasters have filed comments in opposition, calling into question NPR’s engineering data. There’s a few sparks coming from these opposing comments, but the real fun is buried in comments from Chicago Public Radio.

Without naming names, CPR  pointedly complains,

LPTV stations have begun to invade FM radio, broadcasting audio signals that were licensed for TV broadcast as if they were commercial radio stations on 87. 7 MHz. Not only are these signals inappropriately being broadcast as radio, they are also bleeding 24·hour dance music, with commercial advertising, over into the noncommercial stations that are on the lower NCE FM channels. Like squatters moving into recently-vacated homes, these LPTV stations are, in effect, intentionally broadcasting commercial radio which spills over onto the reserved portion of the FM band, trespassing on the limited territory of their noncommercial neighbors. Before this phenomenon becomes entrenched, the Commission owes the public, as well as public radio stations, a reasoned consideration of this problem.

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WBEZ's Pledge Drive BINGO

Fundraiser season continues at non-profit radio stations all over the country. Princeton’s station WPRB (apparently the oldest FM college radio station in the country, founded in 1940) ends their week-long fundraiser tomorrow. My own station KFJC (turning 50 next week) is pitching for cash until the station reaches its goal. And, Chicago Public Radio station WBEZ is also pimping for dollars.

One of my favorite things to do during fundraiser time is to listen to public radio and make fun of the horrificly long and boring breaks, in which hosts rattle off lists of thank you gifts and sponsors. So, I’m actually pretty impressed that WBEZ realizes the degree to which these breaks have become predictably mundane and has decided to make fun of itself.

The WBEZ blog has a bunch of fundraiser-specific content, including DJ trading cards and a pledge drive bingo. You can follow along at home and yell “BINGO” when an announcer utters words and phrases like “tote,” and “join the WBEZ family.” Those who score BINGO are invited to comment on the blog. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem like their listeners actually have a sense of humor about the fundraiser, as the only comments thus far are complaints about the “incessant prattle” and the programming decision to drop “Talk of the Nation.”

Have you heard anything on the radio that makes you want to listen to an on-air fundraiser? What makes you turn the dial?

The commercial radio industry’s reaction to last week’s Boston Globe article reporting on the relative dearth of young listeners can be fairly summed up, as “Nuh uhhhh! Not true!” Despite radio’s collective denial, I had this reality reaffirmed for me this past Friday.

I had the opportunity to speak with a group of high school and college age interns at an independent music promotion agency here in Chicago on the topic of the music radio. More so than any random grouping of teenagers and young adults, this was a group that is passionate about music and the artists that create it.

Chicago

Yet, when I asked the group of about twelve interns if they listen to radio, only five rose their hands. Of that group a few of the older ones said they listen to public radio, primarily for the news. A couple said they listen to Chicago’s most well-known and widely respected commercial AOR station, WXRT, and one said she listens to a couple of the pop stations on occasion.

When I asked why they listen to little or no radio the answer was pretty similar to what we’ve been hearing in the press. They said there’s too much repetition, not enough music that they care about and way too many commercials. A few also said that none of the stations they’ve heard are diverse enough for their tastes. They don’t want to pick a station that only plays hip-hop, rock or dance music; they like their genres blended.
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