Caught in the Carousel

We Need A Public Option Radio Station

By Chris Stroffolino

(Began as a creative writing exercise in a Composition class, in which the Professor asked students to work within the form of the Black Panther Ten Point Platform as an open letter to Barack Obama).

1. A public option radio station would be set up.

In addition to a standard "web-presence," space would be cleared on the AM-Dial for one (1) Public Option radio station in every local market. This "Public Option" radio station should not be confused with "National Public Radio," or even local community-run radio stations like KPOO in San Francisco. The station will need to be "deficit neutral." Programming will be determined exclusively on the local level. The station will primarily be a music station (75% music-related content minimum—may use some re-run loops for weekends during the set up period).

No private donor, or advertiser, will be permitted to restrict the playlist as payment for its support, in either the news/educational or entertainment aspects of this station (opinions of individual radio personalities will not necessarily be the opinions of the radio station itself, as per existing shoddily enforced FCC regulations). Stations are strongly encouraged, if not mandated, to have at least 20 hours a week of "Top 40" heavy-rotation programming (for reasons we will outline below). Other DJs will have more of the "college radio"/podcasting "free" format; the only mandate is that all the musical acts must be based, or have been based, in the locale the station serves.

We need not do away with the commercial circulation of recorded music; in fact, part of the mystery and magic of "pop" music has always been its ability to not preach (even if its lyrics may be didactic), to soothe with a noise-voice, to eat to the beat or dance out the devil as a dietary aid, seduce with the rhythm or is it the blues? Sure, records and radio (after its first decade of existence) have largely been a for-profit endeavor for at least 70 years. While some claim that these twin developments, along with the car and TV, are largely responsible for ripping families, local cultures, asunder, there are also many ways in which it served to bring people together. So we do not call for the abolishment of the for-profit recorded media industry (as we do in health-care).

2. Public Option Vs. Single Payer

While I am for a government-run single-payer system in healthcare, nothing can provide universal access to quality affordable new recorded music for U.S. citizens. Because we must leave room for the concept of "taste," when it comes to the radio, the public option makes more sense than for healthcare. We already have the "Exchange" in place in the form of the radio itself. With the finite number of frequencies available on the still-standard AM/FM radio (though some have a stake in claiming that it's on its last legs), access, by definition, is more limited than it is with the potentially infinite proliferation of decentralized, privatized, podcasts. Such limits tend to confer a legitimacy, and a consequentiality, onto the public airwaves that the "infinite" privatizations of the web lack.

Despite the success we're told that web-only specialty radio-equivalent subscription podcasts are enjoying, radio, as an analogue medium circulating in airwaves more public and affordable, has not yet been replaced by cable the way TV has, and as such holds some hope for a reclamation of the means of cultural production from the corporatists, or at least a green zone alternative to the dictates of the short-term profit motive.

Recent trends in television (especially since the proliferation of cable stations and the mandatory 'digital upgrade'), further along into the 'niche marketing' loss of the commons than radio is, have not increased variety of programming or the access afforded to producers and consumers of non-corporate sponsored or sanctioned entertainment. Radio has always provided more affordable access to entertainment. Its rise to prominence as a medium was predicated on its affordability and convenience, as well as its ability to create new markets by bringing people together. For better or worse, it played a crucial role in the creation of a national American culture that was not necessarily opposed to local cultures (at least at first).

More public, more affordable, and more portable than digitalized cable and internet media (which has essentially swallowed up TV as it was once known), radio remains a little more resistant to the digital revolution. Just as a "public option" government-run health plan may also force more patients, or health-care 'consumers' into the system, so will this public option bring more listeners back to the radio, especially the AM radio.

3. The Difference Between AM and FM Bands (as distinct from the difference between Music and Talk Formats)

Today, the most central site of this cultural struggle for the radio comes not from the FM-band (more dominated by music programming), but from the AM-band (more dominated by talk formats, from religious to sports to political/cultural; although sports radio is making some forays onto the FM Band). One reason for this is that most of the AM-talk programming gains audience loyalty through an interactive call-in format that commercial music programming has largely done away with.

Another reason is that many of these talk-hosts have strong personalities, much more developed than the music-oriented shock jocks. The commercial music stations largely did away with personality DJs as their format and playlists went more "national" and niche-oriented; less localized, autonomous and eclectic. Personality DJs in music were largely banished to community non-profit stations (NPR did not take up this slack, because of its pseudo-centrist policies). The result; a narrower definition of the commercially viable: you are free to be a free-format DJ if you give your labor for free (this allegedly had nothing to do with the contemporaneous union busting in other industries).

Some claim that this depersonalizing trend has helped place the emphasis back on the music (of course commercials also have a lot of talk, and often, alas, more personality than most of the contemporary commercial music DJs). While music radio may be losing listeners to Sirius or XM radio, etc—subscription channels with even less talk (and no commercials), we maintain that this trend is not because there's less talk, but only because the quality of music talk, as well as the quality of the narrow-focus group demographic targeting model imposed in the playlists, is lesser from an expressive point of view/aesthetic. The deeper issue is the loss of DJ-autonomy; the DJ, once allowed to be a thermostat, has been reduced to a thermometer, passing the buck of taste to a nebulous and dubious notion of "what the market wants" (or perhaps what the new technocracy wants?).

I suspect that it's not just a coincidence that the loss of the verbal-personality DJ on music stations parallels the lack of playlisted songs with lyrics of social commentary (whether "left wing" or "right-wing"), compared to the golden age of music radio (say 39 years ago).

In this narrative, the rise of AM-talk radio in the 1980's largely grew out of consumer dissatisfaction with the loss of dialogue (or franchisement) they felt with music radio, as it began to move from AM to FM in the 1970's (a development that paralleled "white flight" to the suburbs, and the loss of factories, downtowns and locally-based-economies, accelerated after Reagan).

Even today, with the dangerous hate-mongering of many corporate-supported nationally syndicated AM Talk Hosts, AM radio remains more populist and accessible to poorer folks (in old beat-up F-150s); it's more down to earth and it has a stronger signal than many FM stations. Part of the attraction of AM-Talk has as much to do with the mere fact of the AM-Band as it did with the content. Whatever one thinks of Rush Limbaugh's agenda, he understood that the medium is the message and he gained support for his ideologies by speaking to an audience in several codes. His target audience felt left behind by the so-called technological progress that caused an exodus to FM-radio "upgrades" (and beyond to the world wide web), and he applied this basic dissatisfaction to the political world--those big city Democrats think they're better than you; their notions of "progress" are ripping apart the "family," the local communities; they're even trying to shut-down AM radio by invoking something called "The Fairness Doctrine" (whose repeal, under Reagan, was also a factor in Limbaugh's success). Limbaugh and others gave a political "local habitation and a name" to the feeling of discontent his listeners felt, even if they couldn't or wouldn't express it themselves. A lot of Limbaugh or Mike Malloy fans may have initially been looking for something more like Wolfman Jack.

Limbaugh channeled a deep, and justified, feeling of distrust with so-called "technological progress" into an activist polemic against social progress. He took a more apolitical conservatism ("if the AM radio's not broken, why fix it?") and applied it to the realm of social and electoral politics (of course, despite masquerading as a 'conservative," in one sense Limbaugh was pulling a fast one on his conservative listeners by himself being a product of the national syndication that cut into the local conservative talk show hosts, as the HMOs curtailed the autonomy of individual doctors, and as Starbuck's, for instance, could muscle locally owned coffee-shops out of business; to say nothing of Wal-Mart). Limbaugh did at least as much to fragment the conservative movement that he ostensibly spoke to, and/or for, as any Clinton Democrat.

Did something analogous to what happened in talk radio occur in music radio?

These days, music radio is much less self-reflexive than political talk-radio is, and political talk radio doesn't focus blatantly on whether the fairness doctrine will force people into listening to mediocre music. But that's the implication; "if it sells, it's good; if it serves our purposes, we can make it sell. If it's good, but doesn't serve our purposes (or actively prevents them), we will make sure it doesn't sell, or even that you get to hear it unless you really go out of your way. We'll call it mediocre. And, if it sells it's good." As Ed Schultz loves to say, "I know I can compete in the open marketplace; but it's an ownership issue." No owner of a talk-radio (or talk/music) station in Philadelphia will put him on, for ideological reasons. Such monopoly-driven censorship exists just as much with music radio as with talk, and with parallel consequences.

These trends suggest that bringing talk (personality hosts) back to music programming (as well as bringing more music back to the talk shows), will create a more fluid continuum that could provide a greater service to the consumer (as well as producer) of music and other forms of audio (art) that the national and local markets are not meeting.

This is part of the mission of this station. This station shall be part of any reasonable stimulus package. It will stimulate the economy through enfranchising individuals looking for community and purpose (whether as consumer or producer), but not at the expense of glamour and fun (and, uh, ecstasy).

4. "RADIO'S LAST CHANCE...?"

This public option will be as for-profit as every other commercial station, and will secure an operating budget, after the initial set-up period, using all the legitimate methods every other commercial station does. Yet it will keep operating costs lower. It will keep advertising costs lower, and be more accessible to local start-ups, or offer 'work-study' WPA jobs to non-for-profits, who currently have no access to higher advertising costs. THOSE WHO ARE HAPPY WITH THEIR CURRENT MEDIA OUTLETS WILL NOT BE FORCED TO CHANGE THEM. If you don't want to take advantage of your TUNING DIAL, you don't have to. It provides a guaranteed salary for a doctor (artist, culture worker), added incentives to a primary health care physician (or low-fi, small-club musicians who value the importance of intimacy as a crucial aspect to the live-music experience...), pays for training (at, say, Expressions College) in return for two years of service.

Once upon a time, in a land of plenty, farmers were given money to burn their crops. More recently, in the healthcare professions, doctors are often not allowed to make their services available, to act on the wisdom of their training. A single payer national health-care plan would free the doctor from the insurance company's for-profit criteria in deciding whether a patient is indeed 'covered.'

This form of corporate policing in the healthcare industry parallels the 'market censorship' in the recorded music industry. Just as HMO's have all but done away with old-fashioned private practices for the masses (reallocating many of those resources to multi-million dollar advertising campaigns remind you to thrive), so has the national consolidation of the music and entertainment industries increasingly put freelance musicians out of business.

A primary care doctor and musician (say, a folk-punk piano bar dude who makes house-calls) will not be forced to deny their services because of the public option. Public (or public/private) facilities will be made available to enable acoustic musicians (like acupuncturists) to have, at the very least, the same rights as Walgreens Radio, karaoke machines (death panels), etc. The Local Public Option radio station will give so-called "out of fashion" musical styles a fighting chance at access; and give an audience permission to realize they're having more fun in what they thought was a side-show than they were in the so-called big-top.

Patients, like music listeners (and consumers), will thus be able to make a more informed choice as to their "music care." If they've heard Silver Jews, The Coup, or Gris Gris and still prefer Coldplay, no one is forcing them not to. If they've used their weekly music stimulus voucher for the $50 concert at the 20,000 seat arena rather than for 10 (ten) $5 concerts at 300-500 SRO capacity venues, and still prefer that (to us, dehumanizing) way of experiencing music socially, well, no one is forcing them.

If they truly feel, in their heart of hearts, that the local entertainment industry is not able to produce enough quality entertainment to, on its own merits, compete with what comes out of Los Angeles or Nashville or London, again, no one is forcing them to boycott all music not produced in one's local area for a one or two year period. We can't ban the iPod of memory; but we can ask you to at least try—so that recreation be also creation. If this sounds like "special pleading" or "affirmative action," well, tell us how we can better seduce you?

Such a boycott of any culture not created locally is unrealistic, but it could, at the very least, serve as a temporary experimental installation piece (like Walden Pond, or Lysistrata, or The World Turned Upside Down). Constructive criticism is welcome, but we have no time for categorical naysayers. Perhaps, the most urgent need right now is to find somebody to borrow heavily from these proposals and render them in legalese sufficient enough to present to one of Barbara Lee's legislative aids...