Potential Difference Redesigning Public Radio for a Changing Society
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Published online by Current, the newspaper about public TV and radio | Current.org Potential Difference Redesigning Public Radio for a Changing Society A shorter version of thisthis articlearticle was published in Current, May 14, 2007, under the title: “It’s public radio, but with nearly everything diff erent, including the name.” By Torey Malatia President and General Manager, Chicago Public Radio Th is spring, Chicago Public Radio, news and information WBEZ-FM 91.5, will launch a new radio station by splitting off one of its repeaters, WBEW-FM 89.5 in Chesterton, Indiana, which is by Lake Michigan, just to the southeast of Chicago. Th is new radio station will refashion WBEZ’s public radio mission to a target audience formerly unreachable by WBEZ. Th is new station will be built on community radio sensibilities, but without the characteristic schedule of special interest shows. In fact, it will have no shows at all. Like a music station, it will be structured on a continuous, seamless stream. But by no stretch of the imagination would Pictured atop Chicago Public Radio’s lakefront headquarters are :Vocalo’s first seven hires. a listener call it a music station. Th e station’s local talk-based format will be completely devoted to Northwest Indiana and Chicago metropolitan large building. Th e colon before the “V” is intentional—a area culture, issues, and selected music. It is not a news trademarked emoticon. station. Th ere are no newscasts. Th e creation of :Vocalo, and signifi cant changes to our It off ers no branded public radio content. It will not use centerpiece service, WBEZ, was motivated not only by the Chicago Public Radio brand. It will not cross-promote a desire to create something new, but by the recognition WBEZ. Likewise, WBEZ will not cross-promote it. And within Chicago Public Radio that the core assumptions on without exception, it will never refer to itself as a public which our work had been based might no longer be valid. radio station. And since it doesn’t tell the audience it is public radio, it won’t show its cards by doing public radio Admittedly, these parallel initiatives we are developing are business —it will not have pledge drives. as likely to fail as succeed. On the road we are traveling, the pavement ended several miles back. Th is is far more Th ere will be a web site, but it would be wrong to say that it’s exhilarating than it is disconcerting. We feel well grounded the station’s web site. Really, it is the web site’s radio station. as we move forward. Th e site is Vocalo.org. Th is is also how the radio station always identifi es itself. Th e four years of planning, audience and market research that informed these approaches may help to explain our Th e name is an invention, essentially “Vocal” with an “o” determination. We also fi rmly rooted our strategies in a clear at the end. It rhymes with “Zocalo,” a Spanish word which articulation and analysis of our institutional mission. We’ve in Mexico refers to a town plaza, and in Colombia refers tried as much as possible to build plans around our strengths, to the infrastructure that stabilizes the foundation of a and to know the risks and the rewards with specifi city. 5-16 Page 1 Th is is a partial record of the factors, theory, and strategies Questioning Our Necessity that guided us. As you make your way through this, you’ll notice that, seen atomistically, there are no real discoveries Tradition means that the question of the legitimacy of here. Th e social theory that follows is pretty well known, tradition shall not be raised. and has been more thoroughly and expertly detailed by — Cornelius Castoriadis others. Th e broadcast principles are rudimentary. In the main, these are established concepts. Th e favorite question of facilitators conducting strategic planning goes, “Is what we do working?” Th ere is actually What we have done, we hope, is fuse these creatively into an unspoken bigger question underneath, “Is what we do a new molecular structure. And, to invert the old joke, we necessary?” did it for our health. All of this is built to answer particular challenges we recognized in our relationship to our In planning, the normal avenue to answering this audience. latter question is indirect. One studies the competitive environment, the strengths and weaknesses of the We present our account knowing that there are hundreds institution, the immediate and long range opportunities, more stations grappling with issues similar to ours. Our edits the mission statement, and the question is then hope is that there may be something of value for other presumed to be satisfi ed. stations in this story. Ideas here may prove helpful or not. Some may be inapplicable to other markets, other broadcast In 2003, aft er the release of the 2000 census, we at Chicago institutions. But these ideas and the process of generating Public Radio made this second question—the one of our them has given us an exciting direction to pursue, a truly necessity— overt and central. transformative one. If successful, it will provide lasting value to both our core audience and a new generation of Chicago We began with an exhaustive process of looking at our area residents. eff ectiveness by analyzing audience use. We tracked in depth audience growth versus the number of potential If you choose to explore no further, here is the gist of it. listeners in the service area. We also studied the At Chicago Public Radio, we came to the conclusion that demographic and geographic range of those in our audience we are groundless to supply public service radio to new and compared this to the same characteristics for the region audiences until we are willing to question what we do now overall. We then studied a full range of regional planning ruthlessly. We must unwaveringly abandon the notion documents that gave indications of how the service area that the way we have performed to date—producing work population was projected to change over the next decade. that has earned us awards, recognition, achievement, and community support—will be eff ective for new audiences, if Among the issues confronted was this one. We had the third only stylized and promoted better. largest cumulative weekly audience for a single public radio station at that time —about 550,000 listeners. Th is audience Th is is why, for example, we were not interested in installing was nearly 50% core. But these numbers were stubbornly a “young sound” over our content to attract new audiences. static. Listenership had reached a ceiling. It is also why we decided not to develop shows that are aimed at specifi c groups —Asian-Americans, Latinos, Moreover, demographically and geographically, both core African-Americans, and so on. We found our challenges and occasional audience represented only a portion of our required solutions that were primary, from the ground up. service area. Most of the audience, and almost all of the We found that we had to learn broadcasting all over again. membership, resided in the same territory —the north side of the city or north suburban neighborhoods. Th e Questioning the fundamentals is unsettling, and once Chicago Public Radio audience was 91% white, 5% African- entered into, pretty endless. But, sooner or later, all American, and 4% Latino. institutions are compelled to do it. Aft er the process, this questioning points to a direction of collective work and Meanwhile, the 2000 census demonstrated that suburban action that transforms the future from something to which areas had grown at a rate three times that of the City of one must be reconciled, to a new reality in the making. A Chicago proper. It also revealed that the entire metropolitan forward force of our own manufacture. area was more multi-racial and multi-ethnic than ever before, making our station demographics even less representative of community makeup than we had thought. Page 2 Census data show that whites comprise less than 60% of Our blueprints for both WBEZ and :Vocalo were staff the Chicago metro population, African-Americans 19%, generated. Th ey were tested, disputed and enhanced by Latinos 17%, and Asian-Americans, 5%, making 41% of the the business and community leaders on our programming population of our service area non-white. Th e immigrant and planning committee of the board, and our community population since the 1990 census had increased 61% by advisory council. 2000. Th e number of Latinos living in our service area had increased 73% since 1990, and 143% since 1980. And we were aided by an outside group of brilliant and passionate specialists, some of the best friends and analysts Th e disparity between the demographic characteristics of one could work with: Peter Laundy of Chicago-based audience we were attracting and the composition of the Doblin Group, Slover-Linett Strategies Company, Karen service area in general was disturbing, even if one took into King at the National Public Broadcasting Archives, Optaros, account that as a public service broadcaster we were not Chicago-based Faust Associates, the Chicago Technology expecting mass popularity. Cooperative, Benjamen Walker, Kurt Cherry, Edie Rubinowitz, Jake Shapiro of PRX, and the 1,500 volunteers In previous planning, this kind of issue was dismissed as who participated in our SecretRadioProject.com web site a national problem —it legitimately is. But in the context and 13 planning meetings throughout the metro area. of our structured questioning about being an essential institution in Chicago, no such evasion was possible.