LESS PLATTER, MORE CHATTER

posted by James Reel

    An article in the Chicago Tribune describes outrage among Chicago’s jazz-establishment personalities over news that the city’s three bundled public radio stations will switch from music programming to talk in early 2007. People seem especially upset over the loss of the jazz and world music format of WBEZ-FM. Details so far are nonexistent, but the article has this from WBEZ/WBEW president and general manager Torey Malatia (who worked in Phoenix in the 1980s, when that city had a commercial classical station): “WBEW will be focused ‘heavily [on] culture and music and arts’ … while WBEZ will offer ‘mostly public affairs [with] arts and culture certainly mixed in as relief.’” All talk, but it won’t all be about the events of the day.
    So first, the good news is that the two stations won’t be duplicating the same network news/talk programming, as is happening in Washington, DC. There are legitimate questions about whether the stations can serve culture better by playing it less and talking about it more, but the more serious question is how will this serve Chicago listeners? According to the article, WBEZ “draws 600,000 listeners,” although it’s not clear exactly what that means in terms of individual sets of ears over a particular period. Still, the number sounds pretty impressive: Imagine everyone who lives within the Tucson city limits tuning to the same station. But it doesn’t seem like all that much for a city as big as Chicago, particularly with its long jazz heritage. Is jazz simply too much of a niche genre? Has the station been playing the wrong kind of jazz? Does the presence of world music turn off hard-core jazz fans, or attract more listeners who aren’t that committed to jazz?
    These are issues that Malatia has presumably been thinking hard about. Let’s just hope that whatever changes come to pass are being made to serve Chicago’s underserved listeners better, and not merely to trade the current audience for new listeners who will give more money during pledge drives.