Change is good. Remember that platitude of the ’90s? In corporate life it meant to put a smiling face on decisions peculiar and debatable.
Nowadays “change is good” at radio station WFMT. A recent firing and two offers of early retirement eliminated some of the last staffers who had made the station a cultural landmark, cutting not only costs for the parent company, Window To The World Communications Inc., but also living reminders of a tradition now more invoked than honored.
From the early 1950s to the early 1990s, no commercial radio operation in North America – and few state-supported ones in Europe – came close to the content, balance and tone of WFMT’s fine arts programming. Today through Sunday, on the annual winter fundraising drive, you again will hear employees trade on that history and promise its continuance. Don’t believe them. Management of WFMT wants to retain the image without what actually made it.
This is not a vague or casual impression. For 38 years I’ve listened to the station, in preference to all others. It had shortcomings even at its height; recognition of them withholds me from nostalgia. But what it offered was strong in content, persuasive in balance and authentic in tone. It educated me when I sought merely entertainment and shaped my cultural outlook by providing experiences of breadth and depth that took me beyond what I knew.
I recall, for example, how on Monday evenings program director Norman Pellegrini would play every available recording of works such as Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra and Mahler’s First Symphony, comparing and in plain language analyzing the piece movement by movement. Here I learned an absolutely essential lesson, namely, that the same composition could sound different with different conductors and ensembles. That was of a far different character than having an announcer play records. It enriched me immeasurably, and the wonder of it was, in fact, one of the reasons I became attracted to criticism as a profession.
A recent rediscovery took me back to such programs. It was a carton of WFMT listings from the ’60s through the ’80s. I had saved them because several were included in handsomely designed magazines. One was called “Perspective on Ideas and the Arts.” The title was a fair description of what the station set out to give.
Direct comparisons with program listings from the last five years revealed a greater number of deficiencies than I had expected. In every area that made the station famous — music, drama, poetry, commentary, news — it has fallen far below its own past standard.
Today’s WFMT offers:
– An emphasis on basic and “upbeat” repertory.
– Few pieces in the morning and afternoon that exceed 20 minutes in length.
– Less opera and song per week than folk music and jazz.
– No full-length plays or prose readings.
– No poems longer than two minutes.
– No cultural commentary or analysis.
– No newscasts more than five minutes.
Occasional listeners may not have noticed the changes. They happened gradually, in part so no one would notice. The station’s emphasis at the time was on retaining announcer-read commercials. If listeners made up lost revenue, management promised no jingles or canned advertisements. But as it turned out, preservation of a civil tone came at greater expense — the devastation of content.
In 1994, Dan Schmidt, WFMT’s senior vice president and de facto general manager, told the Tribune: “When I came to this job I was given two mandates. One was to live within our financial means. Two was to serve the community with the best radio service we can produce with those means. We are in better shape financially than we were five years ago.
“Since this station began, in 1951, the objective was not to generate ratings, not to follow the emerging formulas for classical radio. The objective was to put together a service [that is] pleasing and intelligent and unique. We seek to operate the station on a break-even basis. We have no individual proprietor, no corporation that is requiring a dividend or a return on an investment.”
Last week I asked Schmidt, now president and CEO of the station’s parent company, and Anders Yocom, senior vice president for broadcasting, if those mandates and objectives are still in place. Both said they were. But in 2 1/2 hours of assurance, I also heard enough about listener mail, focus groups, strategic initiatives and “business viability for the future” to confirm the quality of mind and spirit that formed the station is no longer behind it.
Admittedly, radio is a competitive medium, and whatever WFMT management says, competition long has been fierce with Chicago’s other classical music station, WNIB. But given that listeners already have ‘NIB, why should ‘FMT strive to be more like it? Each is what it is, being most authentic when acting in character. I cannot believe that WFMT, which has had its superiority confirmed by so many Armstrong and Peabody awards, would wither by continuing to adhere to the best in fine arts broadcasting. That kind of honesty has to be preserved in the landscape of contemporary radio.
There is scant cheer in hearing WFMT still is better than the competition in North America. How much better does it have to be to rise above stations programmed by computer? Efforts in Europe, however, are something else. Less than a decade ago they could — and sometimes did — learn from WFMT. Not anymore. The president of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra asserts during every fundraising period that WFMT is broader, deeper and more daring than any other fine arts broadcaster in the world today. Those who are more than passingly acquainted with, say, Radio France or the BBC know the assertion is false.
A recent ad to get corporate sponsorship also is untrue. Recalling the old days, management claimed its programming is not background music. But Yocom said, “We recognize that people listen to radio for different reasons, and behaviors vary at different times of day. Radio is a foreground and a background medium. We accommodate listeners for both.” Which helps explain why mornings and afternoons the station has predominantly short, light selections played by recitalists or chamber ensembles. Brevity combined with a narrow emotional and dynamic range keeps the music pleasing for listeners who have the radio on but are not, in fact, listening. It is certainly a new WFMT that caters to them.
Anyone who does listen — and has reasonably good memory — would know how often on the Monday-through-Friday morning program the same pieces in the same performances turn up in the same order with the same anecdotes. Schmidt and Yocom give the impression that the rest of the station’s programming should be as successful, but tune in regularly and before long the effort shows itself as formula. How does management keep from noticing?
Years ago WFMT had three weekly half-hour installments of criticism; this spring it will introduce periodic two-minute arts reviews. There is a difference. We once heard programs of historic material that equalized, transferred, annotated and presented unavailable recordings; the replacement precedes new CD releases with unconsidered commentary. A difference is there, as well. Surely I am not alone in seeing it.
Secure in its knowledge of the arts and their value, the old WFMT led, whereas the new follows. Management tells us that listeners sustain the enterprise because they get what they want, but in truth this will not benefit either side for long. Giving listeners what they want does not give them what they need to keep a relationship with the arts growing. And only plans that foster growth in an audience will ensure “business viability for the future.”
Later this year WFMT will get a new program director. Under a new rubric, Network Chicago, changes involving links to the Internet and WTTW television also are on the way. But in relation to programming, those sorts of changes are just so much window dressing.
Serious listeners now have to let management know what level of programming they will support. Chicago has a one-of-kind station that needs to be restored as much as any endangered architectural landmark. Don’t give a single dollar this week without insisting that WFMT return to a higher standard.
