Radio listening

Maine Public Radio’s new slogan, “The radio you listen to,” raises two questions. One, of course, is about grammar and the placement of prepositions. The other is about meaning and whether this radio listens back.

Following the Maine Public Broadcasting board of trustees meeting here Tuesday, the answer to the second remains unclear. The public, which rarely attends such meetings, was there in impressive number for a stormy winter day. People spoke vigorously in opposition to recent programming changes – specifically, the replacement of classical music with talk shows. They raised many good points about public radio’s obligation to serve the public with varied programs. They left without any real assurances that it was worth the trip.

In fact, they have reason to feel it was not. These changes have had listeners upset since November, yet station management offered no new information. The vague assertions that classical music – opera in particular – is responsible for low afternoon ratings remain just as vague, unsubstantiated and intellectually insulting as ever. The issue of whether public radio should serve something besides ratings is unsettled. The inequitable impact of the programming changes on northern Maine, which has no commercial classical option, remains. The station’s duty to the taxpayers, not just to paying members, is murky and an explanation of why the station did not mention these long-planned changes in its fall fund-raising campaign is still lacking.

What the protesting public came away with was the sense that station management figures they’ll eventually just go away. There is no other reasonable interpretation of the statement by Charles Beck, director of radio services, that it takes a year or so for programming changes “to settle out” or for the assurances that the station will shortly recover from the decline in contributions. The trustees’ decision not to get involved in what it described as mere programming changes ignores the reality that the public sees this as far more than tinkering with the schedule.

The proposal that the station’s community advisory committee handle future complaints and report back to the trustees would be less empty if the committee hadn’t been left out of the decision to make the programming changes in the first place and if it had any authority to direct station policy. The grammar and meaning problems of the new slogan would be corrected if it were rewritten to “The radio that listens to you.”