|
|
FM radio station WFMT, once one of the crown jewels of the Chicago cultural scene, is one step above an abandoned building. Need proof? Consider last night, Sunday, July 31st.
At 8:00 P.M , Henry Fogel's taped Collectors Corner program, which runs until 10:00, began. Last evening's edition was devoted to the work of the late conductor Klaus Tennstedt, and after a performance of the Smetena's Bartered Bride Overture, Fogel urged listeners to stay tuned for the final work, Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Except that, when he returned from break, Fogel was bidding his listeners farewell and offering a preview of the next week's show. Beethoven's 9th had disappeared, but WFMT's feed plunged on, blissfully unaware that over an hour of programmming had suddenly disappeared. The announcer-in-a-can told us it was and time for 10:00 P.M's Vocal Scene. It was 8:48.
It appears less that someone was asleep at the switch, than there's no one at the switch. About a year ago, what is now the city's only classical music station issued a press release announcing with great fanfare that it had decided to create a more undisturbed sabbath for its listeners by dropping all Sunday newscasts, a risibly and transparently self-serving rationalization for still more staff cutbacks.
In its glory days under former Program Director Norm Pellegrini, WFMT was all about the getting great stuff on the air. Today, it seems more like a welfare program for administrators. Even as an average weekday's on-air staff has been cut back to five or six announcers, WFMT's front office, which also supports WTTW, boasts a President, three Executive Vice Presidents, and five "Senior" Vice Presidents.
Conservatives continue to labor to destroy public and fine arts broadcasting, but the greatest damage may actually be self-inflicted. Like bad money driving out good, a culture of constant beggery has engulfed the original mission of providing cultural programming. WFMT is an ad-supported station, but it also assaults listeners with regular, unending interruptions for hour after hour of fund-raising. WTTW is theoretically a public station, yet it runs both ads and marathon pledge drives in which regular programs are often hidden away in a closet like some crazy relative and substituted with endless repeats of golden oldies shows that are becoming increasingly indistinguishable from a vintage K-Tel records ad.
Long ago, the WFMT Program Guide created by former station manager Ray Nordstrand morphed into Chicago Magazine, a major cash cow that subsidized operations. When the Tribune bought FMT, and then turned it over to WTTW in response to public outcry, WTTW sold off the magazine, and the proceeds, which should have went to an endowment to support WFMT, simply disappeared into the parent company's maws. To give you an idea of just how much was lost here, consider that in 2002, when the Tribune bought back Chicago magazine, the purchase price was $35,000,000.
Although it no longer has Studs Terkel, or broadcasts the Chicago Symphony or Lyric Opera, WFMT still carries the Metropolitan Opera, and a large number of tapings of local concerts at Grant Park, Ravinia and other venues. The station has just won a Peabody for its series on conductor Leonard Bernstein. To long-time listeners, its announcers still seem almost a part of family. The managers who now control the station no doubt have the best of intentions, but their mindless drive for an efficiency that eliminates talent or clones it onto tape, that leaves the station on unmonitored autopilot, subverts the very reasons for WFMT's existence. It's a signpost of creative bankruptcy. An hour of programming disappears, and no one notices it or fixes it. Does anyone in management even listen to the station on a Sunday night?
One day Leyenda is going to start playing on WFMT, and it will just go on forever.
Comment on this post
lynnbecker@lynnbecker.com
© Copyright
2005 Lynn Becker All rights
reserved.
|
