Over a year ago I posted
a piece about WFPL, a Louisville NPR news/talk station. It was a first person essay explaining why I can't stand to listen to them anymore. Much to my surprise, yesterday I received a lengthy response which I have copied, along with my response to the response, below. I get my NPR and PRI content via podcasts now though I occasionally hear WFPL in the evenings when my girlfriend or others have it on. They still play the same music behind their sponsor slots and I have to put my fingers in my ears and hum. Note that "Anonymous" says he or she doesn't "get a chance to listen to WFPL very often." I have a feeling that's true of most of the staff.
Anonymous said...
I work for Louisville Public Media (formerly the Public Radio Partnership) which is the home of WPFL, WUOL, and WFPK. I don't get a chance to listen to WFPL very often and must say I haven't heard these conditions that the blogger talks about.
What I DO KNOW is that, during business hours (8-5 M-F) we certainly know when a station is on or off the air. There are "dead air" electronic monitors connected to radio receivers that sound a loud alarm when one of the three stations has no audio for more than like a minute or so. So, we are monitoring the on-air signal from the transmitter and not just what is going out of the studio.
Now, I am not sure that this alarm is audible at the Receptionist's area. She has enough to do with routing calls and dealing with walk-ins and can't hear any of the stations. That fact that she wouldn't know doesn't surprise me in the least.
Occasionally for maintenance we have to take the transmitter off the air for brief (or longer) periods. No one may know about this except for the Engineer.
A lot of WFPL is automated. No one is there overnight. If you ever hear two shows at once, it is most likely that someone left more than one pot up on the console. Yep, that's user error - but sorry that no one is there to apologize to you for it.
If you hear a promo over an ongoing show, it could also perhaps be the same reason. Often the hosts will cut their promos while their show is on. Of course, you monitor what you are doing at the time and not what is going out so one pot routed to the wrong place is going to cause this problem. This is NOT dead air so the alarm doesn't go off.
There is no substitute for a person manning the console 24/7 to make everything go smoothly. This position was eliminated years ago to save costs.
With all of these faults, WFPL is like basically no other station in the country. Most markets have one Public radio station. Some markets don't even have that many! A market with one station is trying to be all things to all people all of the time. News maybe for an hour, then classical music around dinner, then Jazz at night and they might even sign off before midnight. To have a station that is all news/talk is pretty much a rarity!
11/27/08 12:47 PM
Alan Evil said...
So, by virtue of your singularity it is acceptable to fail in some instances and be mediocre in others?
I thank you for the lengthy rebuttal except you rebutted very little. There were three specific reasons I stopped listening to your station. Let's review them again, shall we?
1. The music. You are still using the same song snippets behind your sponsor announcements. That drives me bat shit crazy! The music is horrible. It probably wouldn't bother me at all if I only heard it a few times, but every last note of what you use now makes me grind my teeth. You pay someone to "produce" your music for you. FIRE HIM.
2. Your automatic switching system can remain maladjusted for weeks at a time and you do not staff WFPL to cover 24 hours of broadcasting so the station can crash and burn after 7:00pm and there's nobody there to fix it. Admitting that you "save costs" by not having a human in the control booth does not make it the right way to run a radio station. An alarm that sounds in an empty room... that's like that tree in a forest with noone around.
3. State of Affairs is still on and I still don't listen to it. You guys produce some good stuff but State of Affairs managed to fail most of the time. I really don't know if it's improved because I've stopped listening to WFPL.
When it comes down to it, if you people would just change the fucking music regularly I would send you some money and become a listener again. But as it is I simply can't stand to listen to your station because of that music. It's like you don't want to wash your underwear or clean the glass in your front door. It's as if you really don't care what your station sounds like to the people that listen to it every day.
The original piece about WFPL is a first person observation and a negative critique. I won't sing your praises because you're obviously doing just fine at that on your own. The way WFPL is run at the most basic level of broadcasting programming over the air is lame in my opinion. My breast has not swollen with pride because you're so special. You may be a one of a kind but that doesn't make you great. It just makes you one of a kind.
11/29/08 9:18 PM
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2 comments:
Actually, all news and talk NPR stations are not a rarity. I pick one up out of Beaufort, SC. They call it an "NPR News Station". Instead of classical or jazz overnight, they run BBC World Service. The closest they get to music is running a local jazz program, Prairie Home Companion and Piano Jazz on the weekends. That amounts to about 4 hours of music. The weekdays, it's all news and all talk.
From what I understand, there are a good number of stations running with this format.
On top of that, thanks for the internet. Georgia Public Broadcasting is horrible and their local affiliate is worse. They have no concept of volume or EQ and they go dead all the time. It's guaranteed that if I tune in, within 10 minutes there will be some sort of disruptive mistake. I can't listen to it anymore.
What I think it boils down to is a lack of proper training and professional pride. I'm seeing and hearing dead air on radio and TV almost everywhere I go.
Seems to me that most of the staffs of public stations are there for a stepping stone to the next phase of their careers and don't really give a rat's ass.
The rest I attribute to the dumbing down of America. College graduates today have about as much acumen as many of the special-ed kids from my high school. It's disgraceful. And these idiots get bigger checks because they have a diploma? We live in hell.
A bit of synchronicity, tonight from 5:00pm the NPR feed was digital noise, appearing to play one word for every four in a jittering pattern that was impossible to discern. I as nice enough to call WFPK (the fully staffed and awesomely sucky "adult alternative" public music station in the same building) and tell them WFPL was broadcasting noise. The response? "On the weekend it's run pretty much off a server. I don't know if I can do anything about it." You couldn't put on a cd until it cleared up?!? No, of course not. That would require competence and actually caring about what your station is broadcasting. Glad we could clear this up, Anonymous.