A single, glowing iPad screen meandered across a pitch-black stage at the W. L. Lyons Brown Theatre as the capacity audience roared with applause. “One of the first things you have to understand is that it’s radio and that not seeing has a power unto itself,” said Ira Glass, host of “This American Life,” as he made way to an unseen podium on the dark stage. “I tried to convince the radio station to do the entire show tonight with lights just like this,” said Glass. “Ugh. They weren’t into that.” And the stage lit up.
“[Glass inhabits] the intersection of stories and voice,” said Jonathan Bastian, host of “Morning Edition” on WFPL, describing Glass as a visionary of public radio.
Glass’ nationally syndicated radio show has been on the air since 1995 and has invigorated an entire generation of radio journalists and storytellers.
“If you hear somebody telling a story from the heart, something that really means something to them, it just gets to you,” said Glass. “There’s an intimacy to just hearing somebody’s voice…like you’re on the phone late at night with somebody you care about.”
A couple rows back from the stage sat Gabe Bullard, WFPL director of news and editorial strategy, along with his fellow Louisville Public Media brethren. Bullard had finally met Glass in a reception before the show. Bullard confessed that, like so many others across the world, it was Glass who had inspired him toward radio in the first place.
“It’s still interesting to hear my own voice because it’s not something that would ever happen to you in nature,” said Bullard. “Without technology, you couldn’t hear your own voice. You could see your reflection in something, a body of water or something like that. And you can hear an echo of your own voice. But the process of recording and replaying just a voice is still kind of an odd thing, I think, for the brain to process…It’s occupying one sense and it’s occupying that one sense entirely. And there’s nothing else that can really do that. “
“It’s the power,” said Sharon Scott, general manager of the newly launched ART+FM. “It’s the power of your voice and being able to get out your own message and your own thoughts.”
Glass went on to talk for nearly two hours about the success of his on-air endeavors and the sheer novelty of the idea that a program could at once hold itself to the highest journalistic standards while also conceiving of itself as entertainment.
“Fun would literally be built into its DNA,” said Glass.
“There’s a kind of moment that I just love on the radio that I thought we could just do all the time with this format,” said Glass. “This kind of moment I think of as a happy, pleasurable surprise.”
But whether he knew it or not, Glass wasn’t actually telling his Louisville audience anything new that night. He was reaffirming a faith. Whether you prefer the established, three-in-one institution that is Louisville Public Media or up-and-coming community voices like Crescent Hill Radio and ART+FM, this is a radio town. And it’s the hows and whys of that fact – that the medium is not only thriving but growing here – that are compelling stories unto themselves.
Sonic Institutions
“I don’t know what makes Louisville’s music-loving fan base different than in other cities,” said Stacy Owen, WFPK program director. “But I came from the Cincinnati market…and I noticed right away just how active [Louisville is]…just a really strong arts community overall. And there’s a true passion there to discover new music. And they come out to the events. And they buy the music. And they come out to support the bands when they come to town. Because I’ve worked at a couple of stations where it would be like pulling teeth to get folks to come out.”
“It is [a radio town],” said Bullard. “I came from St. Louis and I had only interned at the public station there. They had two public stations…a news station and a completely separate, what you call a AAA station or a community station…So in St. Louis people like public radio. And I would experience talking to people who enjoyed public radio. And they listened to it and everything. And it was two great stations. But here, it seems like it’s a much bigger part of people’s lives. And I don’t know if that’s because I’m more involved in it now…but I do think that this is a town where people do enjoy listening to the radio.”
“I think one major thing, and something that attracted me to come here, was the partnership with the two other stations,” said Owen.
Having consolidated under one roof in 1993, Louisville Public Media now includes three stations: WFPK, WFPL, and WUOL. It’s a model that remains unprecedented throughout the majority of the country’s radio markets.
Each station has its own program director and core staff, but underwriting and development cross between all three.
“Our president is on the third floor as well,” said Bullard about Louisville Public Media’s all-in-one setup. “Everybody works really closely too, which is nice. We all sort of have this idea of what everyone else is doing. And it helps us work as an organization, rather than three separate stations.”
It may be streamlined, but it’s expanding as well. WFPL has added five new voices to its newsroom in the past two years. Phillip Bailey, Erica Peterson, and Devin Katayama all came on board between March and September of 2011, with Erin Keane and, most recently, Bastian added this year.
“In the newsroom, we really have a good mix of people who like radio and really want to do good things on radio,” said Bullard. “And we also have people who this is their first job in radio. [Bailey] and [Keane] had not worked in radio before. They had been on air before, but they hadn’t actually worked in it. Because we’re also a news organization and we’re a newsroom…we’re building that up. So we have this sort of dual thing of being a very strong news organization on air and online, but also being a radio station. And a lot of people want to do great radio. A lot of people want to do great journalism. And we’re the place for both those things.”
WFPL made yet another new hire in October, with Joseph Lord, formerly of The Courier-Journal, coming on as the online managing editor. This is the first full-time online position for the station and Bullard said it was a must.
“Because that’s where the audience is going to be,” said Bullard. “They might be reading our news stories, but listening to our station. And if that’s the audience of the future, I think we’re going to be well positioned to have them.”
As Bullard elaborated, the future of content consumption is both already here and incredibly convenient by necessity.
“I think the technology is really favoring [public radio] right now,” said Bullard. “I can remember, when I was in college, going to work at my work-study job. And at that point I had just discovered podcasts. It was before iTunes supported them, so you had to download a separate program…But I listened to them as I was working. And someone asked me what I was listening to and I explained and they said, ‘That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. You could just listen to the radio.’ But I loved it. I loved the idea that I was able to download things and listen to them. Because I was on a college schedule, I didn’t have time to have the radio on. And so then public radio started moving into podcasts, Apple-supported and all that. But it’s really encouraging, I think, that now everybody is walking around with a smartphone, that, for the most part, I think came out of an audio player. Yeah, it can play video, but you have to be engaged in it. You can play a game, but you have to be doing things. Whereas you can walk down the street and you can have your earbuds in. And every time I see someone with their earbuds in, that gives me a little hope. Because the studies are showing that fewer and fewer people are even owning radios. They’re streaming or they’re not listening…And I think that’s going to be, that’s the key to our survival even. You always see the old movies where people have the boom box on the beach and everything. And now we can be in every phone.”
WFPK’s own addition of Kyle Meredith as music director has had a twofold effect. It has furthered a concerted effort to skew the station’s programming toward a slightly younger niche. But it has also freed up Owen to plan and develop on a higher level, and with a specific emphasis on reaching out to the community through even more WFPK-sponsored events.
“Waterfront Wednesday has become less of a concert and more of a gathering, an event to meet friends and socialize,” said Owen. “Early on, I had to really worry about which bands I booked because it had to be a draw. And I still try to bring great bands, but I just know the crowd will come. Because it’s just become this destination.”
This summer’s Trampled by Turtles, The Walkmen, and These United States show broke all records, with a crowd of 15,000.
Because of this enhanced connection with the community, individual programming decisions can be inferred by the relative success of such events. Direct communication over social media is also vital. According to Owen, WFPK attempts to use social media with useful two-way interactions, as opposed to setting up glorified digital billboards.
“Just the other day, [Meredith] shot up on there, just a simple question: ‘Hey, what’s your favorite song on FPK right now?’” said Owen. “We got like – I don’t know how many – 50 responses of people chiming in. And he and I were both surprised that the new David Byrne album got mentioned a lot in the responses.”
Unsure of this album’s reception, the pair had previously been considering dropping the album from rotation.
“So we decided to hang on to it, keep playing it, and maybe add another track,” said Owen.
Owen, Meredith, and company are eager to introduce even more opportunities for listener connection over the coming months. One of these opportunities will be a free winter counterpart to Waterfront Wednesdays, to be held at the Clifton Center. The first of four shows will be November 28 and will feature Cory Chisel and The Wandering Sons, along with von Grey. The winter series will be primarily focused on lesser-known, up-and-coming artists.
“[It will be] bands we really want to turn people onto,” said Owen.
Another initiative will be to go from an Album of the Week to an Album of the Month. Owen admitted the distinction seems small at first glance, but that it will allow WFPK to organize an entire month around an individual album, with listening parties and other activities.
New Frequencies
In 2010, Congress passed the Local Community Radio Act, opening up a wave of possibility for community stations like Crescent Hill Radio and ART+FM. Crescent Hill Radio, which streams online and broadcasts on AM 1650 to the area along Frankfort Avenue between Clifton Avenue and Stilz Avenue via a 1/10 watt AM transmitter, and ART+FM, currently online-only, might both have an FM signal with near citywide capacity by as early as next year.
“The idea is opening up more frequencies by going after the translators, which [are redundant signals] these big corporate companies use…to relay their signal [across the country],” said Kathy Weisbach, founder and president of Crescent Hill Radio. “That’s what’s taking up most of the frequencies on the dial. It’s not even what you can tap into on your car dial, but it’s sending the signal through different areas.”
The Local Community Radio Act requires the Federal Communications Commission to issue brand new noncommercial FM radio licenses nationwide.
“The fact that there is this opportunity is just really exciting…because that hasn’t happened in our lifetime that I know of, that frequencies are going to open up,” said Scott.
The decade-plus effort for the proposal and passage of the Local Community Radio Act was spearheaded by Philadelphia’s Prometheus Radio Project and is poised to bring about the rise of countless new community voices.
“I’ve always known that people had so much music that they couldn’t get any airplay for, even locally,” said Weisbach. “Especially now that people can make a decent CD in their bedroom with the software and stuff that’s available now…there’s just tons of it. If there was something like this when [my bands] started recording…I would have been on it…Just to hear yourself on anything, it’s exciting. And that’s what I love. That’s the most rewarding part. When these bands, particularly younger people…it’s just really exciting for them…that they actually listen somewhere and hear their stuff being played. There’s also that thing…I hate the fact that so much emphasis is put on what you look like these days. And radio, that just drops all that right off…It’s a medium for people that aren’t real comfortable with the way they look. And that’s a lot of people. I don’t think most people are.”
Weisbach came up with the concept for Crescent Hill Radio while refurbishing her grandfather’s tabletop radio. The station plays local and regional music exclusively and now features original programs highlighting everything from standup comedy to literary appreciation.
“It’s only AM,” said Weisbach. “And I was thinking it’d really be cool if I could transmit to it some old-time radio show, which I’ve always loved. And so I went online and was looking for an AM transmitter. And that’s when I found out that you could actually buy one that would go a couple blocks. And then I hooked up with the blues guy, Gary [Sampson]…He’s the president of the Kentuckiana Blues Society. And so he brought me a lot of blues music. And then I just started hooking up with some people that brought me a lot more music. And I started getting more publicity to where people knew to send me their music. [After launching the website,] I was inundated.”
Since her father played both piano and ukulele, Weisbach was raised on music. She began playing the banjo in high school.
“And then I took up bass, because you just can’t play banjo on everything,” said Weisbach.
Weisbach hopes Crescent Hill Radio will be able to acquire an FM signal soon.
“A lot more people would be aware of us,” said Weisbach. “That would open up more sponsorship. And more sponsorship means more people working on this together. I would start being able to pay DJs. The timing on this was perfect…There just seems to be a general back-to-community [movement] going on at a lot of levels. With local food, local brands, and that think globally act locally kind of thing.”
“To me, it’s so important for people to get their voices out there,” said Scott. “It’s important for democracy. And it’s so limited, the opportunities for people to have genuine access to media, to just say what they want to say…It’s kind of just a passion of mine…Even though there are all these hurdles and all these things to get through, that hasn’t mattered that much…We gotta do it.”
Informed by a college radio background and a love of the arts, Scott first began to imagine the mingling of the two while working on her senior year honors thesis on performance art at Vanderbilt University.
“I started to realize, as I was investigating the history of performance art, that radio was something that performance artists had never messed with,” said Scott. “Or very rarely had artists experimented with the radio.”
Deciding to rectify the omission, Scott called together a group of friends and pitched her ideas to them.
“And then I’d have them get in their cars,” said Scott. “And when you hear this sound [over the radio,] do this, like honk your horn, or this sound do that, like flash your lights. And it became like a weekly thing that I would send these people all over Nashville in their cars. And they would respond to whatever noises I was making. And it was just really neat. And I started to realize how powerful radio was. But you can really do something kind of radical like that, being able to talk to so many people, communicate with so many people at once.”
Flash forward to the 2000s. Scott had relocated from New York City to Louisville in the wake of September 11 and she again found herself with radio on her mind. Intent on finding more ways to bring international talent and attention to Louisville, she and a friend had been working on a residency program with The Speed Art Museum to attract artists to town. The fellowship didn’t pan out, but in the wake of the Local Community Radio Act, Scott had a breakthrough.
“And I started thinking, ‘Whoa, what if radio is the way we start to attract international artists to Louisville?’” said Scott. “We give them an opportunity here that they don’t have anywhere else in the whole world.”
The ART+FM nonprofit was created in November of 2011. Slightly less than a year later, the station made its online debut at the 2012 IdeaFestival.
“You know, we got [the concept] up and running, kind of set up the framework, and people just came out of the woodwork,” said Scott. “It’s just been amazing. But until
IdeaFestival, it had just been an idea…And I would think, for IdeaFestival, that’s what they want, to take ideas and make them reality.”
The launch came with just three months notice, as Scott had originally contacted Kris Kimmel, the founder of IdeaFestival, just to talk about a future partnership.
“Instead, he turned the tables and was like, ‘OK, we need you guys at IdeaFestival…We want you to be in The Kentucky Center lobby broadcasting from IdeaFestival,’” said Scott. “Here we were a brand new radio station and interviewing some of the smartest people in the world.”
ART+FM has since broadcast from the St. James Court Art Show and will also be attending the Slant Culture Theatre Festival, hosted at Walden Theatre.
As the station makes its transition toward full-time programming, Scott envisions that content will fall largely into three general categories: musical programming reminiscent of the best of college radio, an ongoing series of interviews with artists both nearby and across the globe, and experimental projects that treat the airwaves as an artistic medium.
“We would like artists, audio artists, all kinds of artists to really think about radio in new ways,” said Scott. “And our idea of art is very broad – just as long as people are doing something creatively. They’re looking at their job creatively or they’re looking at their work creatively and trying to think of new directions for it to go in. That, to us, is art.”
Scott believes ART+FM has more freedom, both artistic and otherwise, than most traditional radio stations.
“We were joking the other day that this is like college radio for grownups,” said Scott. “It’s obviously more professional than college radio. Well, it will be. At the moment it’s very DIY.”
ART+FM has accumulated around 40 volunteers to date. About 30 of these are on-air talent and the rest serve as carpenters, sound engineers, graphic designers, etc. ART+FM will be setting up in the space formerly occupied by La Bodega in NuLu within the next month and they are very eager to settle into a permanent physical location.
“[We want to] continue broadcasting something that’s different from what’s being broadcast on any other station in America,” said Scott.
Future Sounds
Ask any dedicated lover of radio and they’ll tell you that there’s something infectiously special and enduringly fresh about the world’s second oldest form of mass communication. You’ll likely hear the words “magic of radio” as they attempt to put their finger on it. It’s both disarming and cozy, inherently emotional and yet reliably coherent. The sounds come into your space, as opposed to you coming to them.
“You get so much out of a voice by taking away the visual,” said Bullard.
“[It] allows the listener to input into the situation and sort of help craft what’s going on…because not everything is just given to them,” said Scott.
And so, as we look at the future of the waves that we have in this town, it’s no surprise that the confluence of new technologies with the medium that so closely resembles one of the most primal of human activities – the act of oral storytelling – is no less full of apparent contradiction.
We’ve not only redefined the concept and accessibility of “live” radio, but rendered it captured and infinitely on demand. We’re using social media and real world interaction to break down the two-way mirror and have more meaningful conversations than ever. We’re providing the next generation of talent with a platform that would otherwise be nonexistent. We’re returning to the hands and mouths of everyday citizens that which has been relegated to a select number of autoplay corporations for decades. And I use the world “we” as an invocation of yet another of the mysteries of radio: ownership.
“People really feel intimate with DJs…consider them friends in a way,” said Scott.
Radio has a level of inclusiveness apparent within so few places in modern society.
“[Glass] has created a multi-generation audience interested in public radio, ranging from a hipster in Brooklyn or Bardstown Road to an old woman waking up in the morning and listening as well,” said Bastian about Glass’ “This American Life.”
And this depth of comfort and attachment that listeners can develop with a voice is such that there can be a fundamental strangeness when you see someone you’ve heard on the radio.
“I know it’s weird,” said Glass, toward the beginning of his talk. “Like if you’ve heard me on the radio, to see me talking and hear my voice come out of my head. And for the first minute, nothing I say is even going into your brain. It’s like, ‘That’s his voice, but it’s coming out of his mouth. And that’s what he wore?’”
It’s a strangeness not unlike that “happy, pleasurable surprise” to which he had referred.
Not every city has what we have. It’s here because of passion, both past and present, and a willingness not only to support but to contribute as well. In fact, 97 percent of WFPK’s funding comes from the community. Two of WFPL’s most recent hires were talents that had been downsized from The Courier-Journal. Neither Crescent Hill Radio nor ART+FM would exist if it weren’t for the crazy-eyed tenacity of the respective women behind them.
The future of Louisville radio is now. It’s us. It’s everywhere we go. And it won’t be televised.
-Chris Ritter @CTSmash
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