Much Like the Leatherback Sea Turtle, Jazz and Local Radio are on the Endangered Species List
Not everyone is turned on by Jazz and improvised music. Fine. But when opportunities to excite people with the sound of surprise is squashed, it’s infuriating to me. Much like throwing out the baby with the bathwater, public radio stations are erasing a part of American history by replacing Jazz programs with news because, apparently, listeners are clamoring for more of it. How many times a day can anyone stand to hear the latest horrible story? The economy is bad, your drinking water is bad, LOTR: The Rings of Power is bad…ugh! The trend has become a bowling ball in motion, aimed at the pin marked “music – EXCEPT CLASSICAL!” I bring this OMFG topic into focus with WUSF 89.7 FM Public Media at the University of South Florida’s decision to jettison their 56-year-old “All Night Jazz” program and add a dash more local and national news and public affairs programming. According to the station’s GM, reported in Creative Loafing Tampa Bay, listeners have asked for this. Let’s see those stats and surveys that tell you so! Well, the Jazz faithful have acted and reacted: protests outside the station; a support website was created. Alack and alas, by the time you read this, the dagger may already be sticking out of the corpse. How apropos – Halloween Day! The shortsightedness of public radio is just striking. It was not created to become yet another platform for regurgitated headline stories. That’s HLN’s Robin Meade’s job (and she’s so good at it!) And this bit about providing more local news to areas where there’s a serious journalism drought; a New York Daily News (based in Jersey City, NJ) reporter reporting on a Columbia County, New York farmer’s bumper crop of plum tomatoes compares to my family dentist removing a broken tooth from a beaver’s mouth – rather far afield from what they usually do. Local journalism has become unworthy of attention by local readers, and startling headlines and “breaking news” status of a story are what bring eyeballs to publications’ print and websites.
This, my friends, is jive. In the case of radio, when our neighbors and us no longer have control of our own narrative, we’re vulnerable to misinformation from a distant source. Where and when you can, push for accountability of the news funneled to you. Demand better of the who-what-where-why-how-when of stories. Criminy, shout for more Jazz and improvised music!! We need not a substantial story on local politics swapped for yet another apple crumb cake recipe.
The struggle is real and the struggle never ends…
Almost twelve years later, I’m still at a community radio station in upstate New York, surrounded by corporate media entities. They don’t bother us, and we don’t bother them. But the listening audience here has become prime real estate since the pandemic, so we both are casting our nets wide to capture their attention and imagination. Local media does a better job because we folks are embedded here – we know where the best coffee is, the best used vinyl, the most rockin’ Saturday night hangs, the most placid walkways for a late morning stroll. Local is good. Local is where we live and play and buy groceries.
Accept no other.