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Eugene's popular public radio station KLCC at 89.7 FM wraps up another successful Radiothon fund-raising campaign this week. The station continues to draw a large audience and high media ratings, and enjoys a high level of financial support from listeners and business underwriters. The station airs lively, national award-winning local, regional and international news, and a one-hour Sunday talk show. But not everyone's happy. Critics assail the station for lack of daily local talk shows, lack of national liberal programming, too much jazz (and not enough hip hop), and a lack of response to public input. The criticism does not appear in polls or fund-raising numbers. The dissent is tucked away amongst individual critics, former station employees and volunteers, and at least one small community action group.
KLCC's management says independent Arbitron ratings show that KLCC has steadily increased its listenership over the years. But according to these pockets of critical community members, the numbers betray a disconnect to a large cross-section of Eugeneans. David Zupan, chair of Eugene PeaceWorks' Eugene Media Action Committee (EMAC), believes programming decisions should hinge on what's positive for the community, not Arbitron data. "Do what's right, not necessarily what will boost ratings," he says. Last fall, EMAC met with several of KLCC's managers including Steven Barton, KLCC's general manager, and Don Heine, the station's program director. Among a list of several concerns, the group echoed the public demand for KLCC to pick up the investigative news program "Democracy Now." Zupan also brought up another recurring issue: the block of time that NPR's highly successful program "Car Talk" takes on Saturday and Sunday. "One suggestion was instead of repeating 'Car Talk,' why not use that kind of valuable space for some more local programming, public affairs, or maybe a labor show would be appropriate," he says, referring to Portland's community radio KBOO's "Labor News" program. Michelle Hollman, a former member of the now disbanded KLCC advisory board, agrees with Zupan. "Where's public access, why do we hear 'Car Talk' twice? There are a lot of voices in the community that we could hear," she says. But according to both Barton and Heine, programming decisions are based on many factors, some unseen by the community at-large, and these decisions undergo much consideration. In regards to picking up 'Democracy Now,' Barton explains that the show would compromise the station's mission to remain objective in its news reporting. "We've heard a lot from people who want us to carry 'Democracy Now.' That's a common thing and it goes in waves," Barton says. "The answer to the reason why we don't carry 'Democracy Now' is because it is clearly an advocacy program. It advocates for certain positions. And it is the host and staff of the program who are advocating." "'Democracy Now' is a news program, where they cover events of the day through a filter that Amy Goodman has crafted," Heine says in concurrence with Barton. The management at KLCC is concerned with presenting ideas on all sides of the political spectrum, Barton continues. "Our position is that we're here to raise the level of dialogue to introduce ideas. We want people to have an intelligent and informed knowledge of what's going on, and an intelligent and informed discussion about it." There was a similar conflict that bled into the news magazine and call-in programs of author and former KLCC reporter Alan Siporin. For more than 20 years, Siporin worked at KLCC as a reporter, commentator and talk show host. In the 1980s, he hosted KLCC's acclaimed news magazine show "The Blue Plate Special." That show was eventually dissolved and Siporin was put in charge of a commentary program, which aired on Thursdays and Fridays, and a listener call-in program, "Critical Mass," which aired on Sunday. In addition to his work at KLCC, Siporin also served as an editor and reporter for NPR. Both Siporin and KLCC management contend that separating news from editorial content was a constant issue during his time at the station. Initially, once a week, a live call-in program topped off "The Blue Plate Special." On occasion, Siporin would transition the two segments with a short political parody ala "Saturday Night Live" or "The Daily Show." This quickly became a problem for KLCC management. "The standards for KLCC News take into account that people cannot leave all their beliefs and values at the door of the news room. But we do expect people to keep their personal agendas out of their reporting," KLCC's News Director Tripp Sommer says. Siporin says that as a remedy, a pure call-in format replaced "The Blue Plate Special." "They said to me, we can get out of this mess that we're in," Siporin says in regard to the format change. "Their argument was, you'll be free to give your opinion and you won't catch any grief from us, so that was the deal. So there is a clear case to be made historically that I was told I could give my opinions." "We put him in a difficult situation in that we welcomed his analysis outside of the news," Heine says. "And the call-in was kind of halfway in between analysis and the news. But yeah, we felt that the news is different from commentary and analysis, and it was uncomfortable for him to navigate between being a commentator with an opinion and a newsperson without an opinion and a call-in show host." But Siporin argues that, as with newspapers, KLCC can take a clear stance on issues of public concern through a distinct editorial section apart from the news, which from his understanding, was exactly what his commentary and call-in programs were for. Barton's response to that is that the management's position was and always has been against hosts giving their opinions on controversial issues. "There has never been a time from my perspective that Alan, or that anyone was free on KLCC to use the air to express their opinions about public policy matters or matters of controversy," he says. That kind of things slides through but it's inappropriate, he continued. Siporin says that he left KLCC mainly due to his health, and kept his mouth shut about the conflicts he experienced with KLCC management over his role as a show host. But for the first time, he wants to go on the record with his criticism over the mixed messages he received from station management. "I had three bosses who gave me three different answers. Don and Tripp clearly gave me the signal, Don more than anybody as the program director, that this was a talk show and that I was doing commentaries. And Tripp edited all my commentaries. And a lot of them were clearly opinions about politics. And months would go by where Steve wouldn't say anything. And all of a sudden he would be pissed off and he it would be like 'you shouldn't be doing this, you're not allowed to do this,'" Siporin says. Siporin makes it a point to note that KLCC is a wonderful and valuable part of the community. "I think it has a lot of serious problems, but it's still one of the best things we have," he says. Among the many things that could be improved upon, Siporin believes the decision making process that goes into programming warrants close scrutiny. The quandary that exists for Barton and staff is balancing public interest and attracting underwriting money and donations. With public funding shrinking, public radio stations must take into consideration their listening demographic and their donor demographic when making programming decisions.
Barton admits that the 35-45 year old age range is the station's biggest demographic. He does not draw a direct line between programming decisions and people who donate money to the station, but he does say that the 35- to 45-year-old demographic tends to donate more. "As people get older the chances to get a good donation out of them is larger. That's a fact of life. It's not necessarily what drives what we do, but we certainly recognize it as being the reality of the situation," he says. "Car Talk" is one of NPR's most popular programs. Comparing "Car Talk" to "This American Life," which KLCC used to air and is sometimes requested by listeners to pick up again, Barton says, "'Car Talk' is, whatever you think about it, a much more popular program in terms of the listenership for it." "Some people don't like us using audience data, but it's better than using cocktail chit chat to decide what we should be doing," Heine says. But community members such as Hollman and Zupan totally disagree. "They may say that the Arbitron ratings say people love the show," Zupan says, "but that just goes to show how out of touch they are." He believes that the people who make the programming decisions need to sometimes pick shows that do not appeal to everyone, again citing the need for a labor issues program like KBOO's. Heine stands by his statement that "it's the listener who's the most important person in the equation." He notes that KLCC's listeners feel extremely invested in the station because of its history in the community. But he says his decisions will undoubtedly not please everyone. "Anything I decide to do is going to violate some stakeholder's feeling of right," he says.
Currently, all of the programming decisions at the station are handled by Heine, Sommer, Michael Canning (the music director), and Barton. Heine says he bases his decisions on a combination of Arbitron data, listener input and his own 20 years of experience. But that doesn't help Hollman and the other community members like her who still feel slighted. Hollman says she joined the advisory board, which was unofficially disbanded about seven years ago, at the invitation of Heine. Hollman counted herself as a dissatisfied listener after "Pacifica News" and "This American Life" were discontinued. According to Hollman, Heine says the advisory board would be a good place to register her complaints and try to get these shows back on. "I wanted to put my two cents in and what I found was that nothing occurred at those meetings and there were very few meetings," she says. "It appeared to me that it was a waste of my time and that they were doing it because it was on their by-laws or something." Barton says a number of years ago, public radio stations were required to have an advisory board in order to receive money from the Corporation of Public Broadcasting. He argues that they maintained the committee for a number of years after that, but found it to be ineffective. As the station grew, reaching more towns across the state, the station tried to pull board members from those towns. But as it became more evident that not much was getting accomplished at the meetings, Barton says it was hard to keep asking people to drive great distances to attend the meetings. Barton also says there is a desire to bring the advisory board back, but notes that making programming decisions based on that kind of input is difficult. "We'll listen to what people have to say, but it doesn't mean we're going to agree and respond to it," Barton says. "There are so many different opinions that it makes it hard. Who are you going to serve? It may appeal to a lot of people but it may turn other people off." Heine was even more critical of the board. "The advisory board wanted to tell me how to do my job. They wanted to talk about programming and the advisory board needed to be advising the station," he says. "The problem with a community advisory board is how do you select people who truly represent more than just their own personal interests? And how do those people take on the charge of representing not just their personal interests and not the interests of their friends but of the 60,000 people who listen to KLCC." Siporin somewhat agrees with Barton and Heine in this regard, but goes on to say that they would have meetings with staff members where programming issues were discussed, but no votes were ever taken. "I think that if you're trying to run a place day to day and a lot of people who want to give input are only there once a week as a volunteer, you have to move more quickly than that. And I think that a lot of the decisions can't go through the democratic process. Somebody has to say this is my area of expertise. But to have zero democratic input is just flat out wrong," he says. Jenny Newtson, a former KLCC staff reporter now living in Portland, also sympathizes with Barton and Heine and the difficulties they face in making station decisions. However, she says, it seems as if they're betraying the community model that KLCC once stood for. "I guess I can understand what Don and Steve are saying about running a business. But the tradition that we worked so hard to build at KLCC was about doing that [building a community model] through people feeling heard. We always sold it to our community at Radiothon that what they think matters," she says.
The Competition Criticism of the lack of local talk shows on KLCC has been exacerbated by Jefferson Public Radio's relatively recent incursion into the Eugene market with a daily two-hour call-in talk show broadcast on KRVM 1280 AM. The Ashland-based JPR has built a growing audience in Eugene, and many public radio fans bounce back and forth between the two stations. JPR's Jefferson Exchange with host Jeff Golden airs live from 8 to 10 am weekdays and is rebroadcast from 8 to 10 pm. Air America is now broadcasting on commercial KOPT AM at 1600 on the dial, adding a third option for left-wing news and opinion junkies. For programming information, visit klcc.org, jpr.org and kopt.com
Media Watchdogs The Eugene Media Action Committee is a local media watchdog group that has been working with KLCC management for years, providing input and advocacy for news and opinion programming. The group holds regular monthly meetings in Eugene and the next is 5:30 pm Thursday, Nov. 3 at Growers Market upstairs, 454 Willamette. "We welcome old and new folks concerned about media bias, and really putting the public back in public broadcasting.," says David Zupan. For more information, call Zupan at 484-9167.
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