A comedian once mused: "I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather . . . not screaming in terror -- like the passengers in his car."Grandpa must have been listening to Vermont Public Radio.
Earlier this week, VPR announced that its longtime general manager, Mark Vogelzang, would be leaving the station "for a new venture to increase philanthropic giving to public radio on a natual scale." This will not, apparently, trigger a national search for a new leader for VPR; the station's trustees have already promoted its vice president for development, Robin Turnau.
"The end of an era, no doubt," proclaimed Philip Baruth on his blog Vermont Daily Briefing. "And an undeniably brilliant era it’s been."
Undeniably? Brilliant? I respectfully dissent.
Let's get one thing out of the way right off. Yes, where we stand depends on where we sit. Baruth has long used VPR's commentary series as his preferred outlet of self-promotion. I, on the other hand, am an occasional guest on the New Hampshire Public Radio program Word of Mouth, where I talk about architecture. So I suppose it is predictable that Baruth would hail his friend Vogelzang as a brillant programmer while I think NHPR and its leadership leave their Vermont counterparts in the dust.
But I have been keeping my ear on public radio in New England since there has been public radio in New England -- and I am here to testify that Vermont Public Radio has long pursued a cautious and soporific strategy in contrast to NHPR's bold an innovative approach. Back when NHPR did it nearly a decade ago, it was a bold move to scrap the perennial public radio mainstay of classical music and move to a news, culture and information format. VPR resisted the change for years and, even today, makes its separate classical music service a key element of its operation -- even though, in today's MP3/iPod era, there just isn't any real reason to clutter the public airwaves with yet another rendition of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. Don't get me wrong -- I love Mozart as much as the next guy -- and, like the next guy, I have loaded approximately half the complete works of Mozart onto my iPod, with more to come. For stuff that isn't several centuries ago, I turn to my radio.
NHPR has invested considerable resources in developing unique programming of real depth, the two most notable examples being the aforementioned Word of Mouth and the venerable Exchange interview program hosted by former NPR newscaster Laura Knoy. Both programs are highly produced. VPR, by contrast, has done two things: used its commentary series as a means of airing a bunch of local voices on the cheap, and offering Vermont Edition, which isn't anywhere near as well-produced as its New Hampshire counterpart. For example, a recent week of downloads -- oops, there I go, iPodding again -- consisted of show after show about Vermont's budget crisis. An important subject, of course, but by now you would think these people would have have risen above their 1950s "educational broadcasting" roots to understand the programming has to be interesting to do any real good for the world. And tedious prattle about budget cuts is enough to send even the most dyed-in-the-wool, Susan Stamberg-loving public radio fan surfing the XM/Sirius channels.
For me, the paradigmatic VPR moment came in late 1998, when the impeachment of President Clinton was in full swing. National Public Radio was offering gavel-to-gavel coverage of the hearings, recalling its similar and laudable treatment of the Iran-Contra hearings in the 1980s. Given the subject matter -- stained dresses, what the definition of "is" is, all that stuff -- the hearings made for great radio. Except that VPR kept preempting the hearings because it had produced and then scheduled for broadcast this series of mini-documentaries about the Ticonderoga, an old steamboat that now sits like a great beached whale on the back lawn of the Shelburne Museum in South Burlington. So this great, historic live radio kept yielding to vignette after vignette of old people talking about shoveling coal into the Ticonderoga's boiler (invariably pronounced "boy-luh.")
That, to me, is Mark Vogelzang. iI it is cute and well-tested, if it tends to reinforce the image of Vermont as an agrarian theme park, it gets on VPR. If it is edgy and interesting, you hear it on NHPR. You want a brilliant public radio station executive? Try Mark Handley, the now-retired CEO of NHPR who built that station into the terrific service he turned over to his able successor, Betsy Gardella. Handley was not afraid to take on the Mozart Mafiosi because he foresaw that in the coming era of multimedia, doing public radio the old way was a ticket to oblivion.
And another thing: Why is it always the development people who get all the laurels in the public radio world? The development person who figures out how public radio can raise money without resort to those intermindable pledge drives, which make their stations totally unlistenable -- now there is someone who deserves radio sainthood. Meanwhile, here among us mortals, what about promoting a visionary programmer instead of a fundraiser? It is altogether too easy, even when listening to a great public radio station, to begin wondering whether the fundraising supports the programming or the programming exists to enable the fundraising.
Thanks for the memories, Mark Vogelzang. As the results of your stewardship of such a vital public resource, the sheep may safely graze.
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