I’ve gone on several screeds here about a certain local classical music station and its unfathomable management decisions and toxic work environment. But I’m done with all that, even though I’ve merely skated the surface. I don’t have room in my life for any more negativity, not even toward those who most assuredly deserve it.
That’s not to say I will forget. That’s only to say that with this observation of one last related anniversary, my personal Voyager will be leaving this particular solar system, hopefully never to return again.
It was on this date, one year ago, that the final episode of “Picture Perfect” was broadcast locally. Once it was made clear to me that I had no say in the matter, and that I would either agree, going forward, to produce one new show a month for no financial compensation or “Picture Perfect” would be dropped entirely, I would have been absolutely content to let it run out on the original date I was told it would euphemistically “sunset,” April 29.
But of course, management didn’t have its act together and came back and told me they needed to air it for a few more weeks, until May 20. None of it makes any sense, of course. It was all arbitrary. I’m sure any local musicians or performing arts organizations who’ve had to deal with the station, or anyone whose thankless task it has been to help promote these groups, are familiar with precisely the kind of erratic behavior I’m talking about.
When I rejected the offer to do one show a month, for nothing (if you’re going to exploit me, at least offer me a weekly show), management never did follow through on its original plan, as it was presented to me, to air four varied programs, in rotation, in the vacated slot. So they simply jettisoned some popular shows, along with their stable of local hosts, who had been around for decades, on yet another impulse.
In their place: classical music’s greatest hits, sliced and diced and served up in bleeding chunks in a sauce of mindless blather from a service out of Minnesota. In the mornings, in particular, you’re guaranteed to hear up to ten pieces an hour. And I do mean pieces.
At no point during the day will you will ever encounter Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony, or any of Brahms’ symphonies in their entirety (except maybe No. 3), or any Mahler, or the early Stravinsky ballets (complete), or basically anything much over 30 minutes; and even then you will have to pay for it by being on the receiving end of a bunch of three-to-five-minute selections on either side, to meet whatever quota they’ve set for themselves. If it were not for the syndicated evening broadcast concerts, much of the standard repertoire would never be heard at all.
This is the price of dealing with around-the-clock automation. There need to be so many breaks during the hour to allow time for station IDs, promos, and underwriting, and these have to be consistent and synchronized in order to satisfy every affiliate in the country. So goodbye longer pieces. Common sense would seem to dictate that they could adjust the programming and do two or three pieces an hour for some hours, but no! I can only assume they’re afraid they might alienate listeners if they were to play something that’s 45-minutes long that might not appeal to everybody.
This is the state of contemporary classical music radio. Run by a bunch of attention-deficit dimwits with no respect for the audience, simply churning out the aural wallpaper by the yard.
Okay, enough of that. As originally planned, “Picture Perfect” would have gone out on April 29 with an hour of music from barbarian movies. And you know I was down with that. (The show had already been programmed by the time I was notified of the series’ cancellation.)
With the extension taking it to May 20, I had time to think about it, and I concluded on a less defiant, more reflective theme, with “Change and the Passage of Time.” The show included selections from “Kings Row” (Erich Wolfgang Korngold), “The Magnificent Ambersons” (Bernard Herrmann), “The Leopard” (Nino Rota), and “The Fourposter” (Dimitri Tiomkin).
I am fully aware just how much people enjoyed “Picture Perfect.” There was a lot of blowback when it was cancelled, but from everything that’s gotten back to me, the letters, email, Facebook, and phone messages were all met with stony silence.
Even if it is the case that the folks that make the decisions about operations and programming make about as much sense as a couple of guinea fowl, in the long run, it’s really only ever been you, the listeners, that I really cared about connecting with. Not that I didn’t try to please my bosses!
Every once in a while, I’ll stumble across a gratifying little sign of affirmation on the internet. Here, someone posted something nice on the Film Score Monthly page, back in 2014.
https://www.filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?threadID=101054&forumID=1&archive=0
I know what I did was appreciated by those in the know. And those are the ones who matter. My only concern is that to be heard, I have to have an outlet. For now, you can still catch me, and “Picture Perfect,” “The Lost Chord,” and the all-new “Sweetness and Light,” on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon. Peter Van de Graaff, who formerly lost his own long-time slots at the local station, is now music director out there. This is a guy who actually knows what he’s doing.
You can stream KWAX wherever you are, at kwax.uoregon.edu, but it’s gotten to the point now where I’m just going to invest in an internet radio. This will work for me even better than bookshelf speakers, as it’s just like having a regular radio in my house. That way I can have KWAX on around the clock and get on with my life already, without all the reminders and agitation, should I ever happen to flip on the local station. There’s no reason that my love of great music should be mired in so much bullshit.
If you’ve never considered it, google wifi internet radios. It could change your life too, if you’re not already tied in to satellite or Siri or Alexa or what have you.
Suggested music for the reading of this post: Holst’s “Neptune,” with its ethereal chorus mirroring my passage from this particular solar system.
