MASSAGING THE MEDIUM

posted by James Reel

    This week, Douglas McLennan’s Artsjournal.com hosted a debate among several arts reviewers: Critical Edge: Critics in an Online Age. It looked promising, given the themes McLennan outlined on the first day:

    With a growing flood of opinions available to all, some suggest that the influence of the traditional critic is waning, that the opinions of the many will drown out the power of the few. But in a time when access to information and entertainment and art seems to be growing exponentially, more than ever we need ways to to sort through the mass and get at the "good" stuff. The question is how? Where is the critical authority to come from?
    Some suggest that new social networking software that ranks community preferences and elevates some opinions over others will supplant the formerly powerful traditional critics. So what is to be the new critical currency? Stripped of traditional legitimacies, how will the most interesting critical voices be heard and have influence?

    But almost immediately, the discussion bogged down in an argument about Blogging: Good or Bad? McLennan tried to get things back on track with some good questions:

    Many of the functions that have traditionally been the domain of the critic are now being done in other, more efficient ways. Whether or not you-the-consumer still want to have a relationship with an actual critic person depends more and more on the specific person. With the rising glut of culture that now engulfs us, there is more need than ever for critics/curators to help us wade through it all. But what is the essential thing that an arts journalist needs to bring to the table? How does an arts journalist accumulate the critical capital to make an impact?

    These are important issues, but most of the participants took the easy way out and resorted to posturing about blogging, which is already a stale subject. It’s here, and there’s nothing new to say about it. Every time you put bloggers and print journalists in the same room (or the same corner of cyberspace), you know what will happen: An anti-blog defender of Old Media will come off like a geezer a century ago scandalized by the development of engine-powered carriages, shaking his fist and shouting “Get a horse!” Then a blogger will counter with Kruschevian shoe-pounding on the podium and cry, “We will bury you!” Finally, a conciliatory bipartisan group will try to gather everyone ’round the campfire for a kumbaya moment of unity.
    Well, contrary to Marshall McLuhan, the medium is not the message, unless the message is devoid of content, like a blank e-mail. Who cares whether critics are employed by newspapers or run their own blogs? All that matters is the criticism itself: Is it supported by knowledge, untainted by hidden agendas, expressed clearly and artfully, and truly relevant to the artistic experience?
    Don’t worry about bloggers; it’s hard enough to find criticism that meets those criteria in the daily paper.

CLEAR CONSCIENCE

posted by James Reel

    Listener Gail Warren writes:
    "I have decided that once one becomes a regular contributor, listening to the pledge drives actually becomes fun (?). As a music major and basically a "musician" since the age of 9 (piano), classical is the music of my life. But, like so many others, financial considerations made things like contributing to non-profits take back seats. I was able to send a little here and there now and then, but now that I am able to do so more regularly, I can let the broadcasts stay on in between the music!
    "Does that mean I have a clear conscious now? Whatever the reason, I listen to KUAT pretty much all the time--while working on the computer (streaming), in the car, when I can't stand what's on 3000 channels on
TV...--even through pledge drives!
    "Thanks for all the music (even the stuff I don't enjoy!)"

PLAZA SUITE ENSUITE

posted by James Reel

    Burt Schneider, KUAZ’s local host for All Things Considered, has this to say about my post concerning how the non-interactivity of broadcasting will defeat our dreams of making KUAT a community “plaza”:

I agree with you about the plaza concept. It's a catchy idea, but realistically doesn't apply to "linear radio" or whatever the current term is. It probably makes sense as far as new media goes especially if the listener can build his/her own station as in pandora.com. But then what do they need us for? I remember when the KBAQ license was up for grabs and there was discussion about whether it would go to ASU or the community college district. ASU argued that they could program the station using resources at their music school. Eventually, both entities were given a hand in running and programming the station. I've always wondered why KUAT-FM didn't have more offerings from the UA's School of Music. It seems with the advent of satellite and internet radio, a case could be made for eliminating stations like KUAT-FM unless they truly offered a service that couldn't be duplicated by a national service.

    Exactly. Next week I’ll have something to say about KUAT’s connections, past and future, with the UA school of music.
    By the way, if you're wondering what Pandora is, Terry Teachout explains it all for you quite well, but Alex Ross points out that lovers of classical music may just as well keep the lid on the box.

LOCALS 'BOYS' MAKE GOOD

posted by James Reel

    This past week, I had the most pleasant kind of surprise you can experience in the theater. I went to a show put on by a community troupe, ready to make allowances for the usual weaknesses, but witnessed work on a much higher level than I would ever expect from this group:

    In a small hall in a retirement facility tucked a couple of blocks behind St. Joseph's Hospital, a little community-theater troupe has mounted a production that's about as good as any you'd get from the city's more professional companies.
    Finely balanced performances lend both grace and exuberance to Tom Griffin's The Boys Next Door, a comedy-drama about four mentally challenged men coping with the world under the supervision of a kind but burned-out social worker. It's a challenging project for the Catalina Players, not because of the subject matter, but because the script forces the actors to throw themselves into totally alien roles, rather than merely play variations on themselves.

    You’ll find the rest of my review in the Tucson Weekly.

COME BACK!

posted by James Reel

    The membership drive has ended, two days early. It's safe to tune in again. We're just airing music and news now.
    This campaign seemed awfully grueling from the staff perspective. I'll let others theorize why. All I can say is that during some pledge periods, I was thinking that had I wanted to pull teeth I would've gone into dentistry, and made a lot  more money.
    It isn't that KUAT-FM isn't popular. Rumor has it that we're the eighth most listened-to radio station in Tucson. But as I said, I'll leave the analysis to the managers and other interested parties. It's much less stressful just to sit here and spin the discs.

PLAZA SUITE

posted by James Reel

    Last week, I attended a KUAT staff meeting in which we brainstormed ideas for our new mission and vision statements. (Whatever one thinks of such exercises, there’s no denying that an organization—or an individual—needs to have a clearly articulated reason for being.) An especially popular concept was KUAT as a “plaza,” a place where members of the community can meet and exchange ideas.
    That’s a lovely thought, but I don’t see how it can be true. Broadcasting is a one-way activity. Now, of course, listeners can call me for information on something they’ve heard, they can badger the music director to play some favorite piece, they can complain to the station manager about this or that, and in public broadcasting they can phone in pledges. On rare occasions, a few people can participate in some broadcast as part of a studio audience. And a few people get interviewed for news and public affairs program. But for KUAT to be a “plaza,” for it to be a center of “community” (the big buzzword since the popularization of the Internet a decade ago), it must be truly interactive, and radio and television aren’t equipped for meaningful, large-scale interactivity. (Conducting an audience survey solicits information, but it isn’t really an example of free interactivity.)
    There’s always the Internet, and KUAT is gradually bolstering its online presence. Even in cyberspace, though, we encounter limits to the benefits of interactivity. From the beginning, my own blog has disabled the “comments” feature, not because I don’t want to hear from readers, but because I’m protecting readers and myself from the spammers and off-topic ranters who monopolized online forums. (Does anybody read Usenet newsgroups anymore? Spammers and wackos drove me away from Uselessnet by the late 1990s.) If you want to engage me in dialog, great. Click the “send me an e-mail” link in the panel on the right. I post comments that go beyond the nice “attaboy” level, even if commenters object to what I’ve written. But new-media freaks will object that this isn’t fully interactive, because I filter the responses. Well, I’m an old-media guy, and I believe in editing and sorting.
    One of my former employers, the Arizona Daily Star, was only the third American newspaper to have a meaningful Web presence when it launched StarNet on May 5, 1995. I was there, and it was exciting, but a lot of it didn’t pan out. Film and art critic turned Web guru Bob Cauthorn had a grand vision; not only did StarNet put newspaper articles online, but the Star became a full-fledged Internet Service Provider to compete locally with AOL, and, among other things, it established a big bunch of local-interest newsgroups. Most of those newsgroups went unused, though, and the comparatively popular ones were ruined by flamers and bullies. So much for building community.
    How could a radio station truly become a center of community conversation? By nature and design, radio is a conduit of carefully structured entertainment and information that flows from us to you. Listener-request shows don’t work in a classical format, because the popular pieces are so long that not many people would have a chance to participate. If somebody requests Carmina Burana, that shoots a whole hour. We could air call-in talk shows about the arts, but wouldn’t you really be far more interested in hearing music?
    Do you have any ideas about how KUAT could become a real community plaza? I’m stumped.