Association of Music Personnel in Public Radio 
Spring 2002

      The first Music Personnel Conference, known as "Music Programming for Educational Radio," was held at WUOM in Ann Arbor on November 6 and 7, 1962. Forty-five people attended, representing the educational radio stations in the Midwest.

Radio has changed a great deal since 1962. Today, public radio conferences often are business conferences, as exemplified by a recent announcement about a seminar called “Preparing the Next Generation of Public Radio Leaders.” The purpose of the seminar is to “cover business strategies in today’s broadcast environment” and to “address effective ways to negotiate.” The first “MPC” was convened by “several Midwestern music directors to discuss mutual problems and possible solutions.”
      Time does change the face and purpose of institutions; and technical advances have changed everything, especially the media, and more particularly the medium of radio. 
Radio’s high-tech evolution has presented us with a few unexpected problems, although in the 1960s we recognized the potential for them. Since high-tech hadn’t yet affected our lives, much less our radio work, we could only ponder the possibilities, as did Norman Cousins in The Saturday Review of Literature when he used the classified ad space at the back of the publication for his famous bogus ads: “Computer error results in 7,000 left gloves, make offer.”
      Today, 7,000 left gloves are a serious result of computerization, especially noticeable to those of us in broadcasting who remember carts and tape cutting. In 1962 radio was labor-intensive. Many people learned their trade and art by starting in the mailroom, so to speak, and learning by watching and listening to people who understood the medium thoroughly. The chief engineer was a god, and the goal of radio neophyte operations people usually was to obtain a first-class FCC license. 
      One of the first obligations of an apprentice was to listen—listen to the professionals and to the station’s programming. The programming was the product, and everything that was put in between programs had to complement the programming. Packing breaks was not an issue; making the programming shine was the only issue. After all, the station existed to please the listener. 
      Public radio was designed to eliminate commercial interruptions of any kind, because commercials were considered to be non-programming elements that were annoyances to the audience. The concept that commercials sell products and in turn fund broadcasting was taken into account by courting listener support off air. On-air fundraising was considered to be as intrusive as commercials. In 1962 it was a novel concept, but it worked. Listeners were willing to pay for programming without interruptions, but never with enough money for stations to hire large staffs and keep expensive facilities; thus, training volunteers to do the work and paying minimum wage for those positions that had to be funded was the only solution.
      Accomplishing the work of a radio station with only a few professionals meant that a large percentage of the paid staff’s time was spent training starry-eyed professional “wannabes.” Radio was a romantic profession, and those people who volunteered were in love with the very idea of broadcasting the good stuff to eager listeners. They understood that they had to learn the basics before they could directly affect what went out over the air; so, as in the movie industry, the “starting in the mailroom” concept was understood. 
Since then we’ve developed underwriting as a euphemism for advertising on air, and computer-driven technical operations have been developed to override the need for dedicated volunteers. Public stations are now in the position of having to pay large amounts of money for syndicated programming to please listeners. Local programming, still often done by volunteers or low-paid hosts, is sandwiched between network programs and promotional material of various sorts, including on-air fundraising. Research has told us that this kind of format brings in more listeners who, in turn, are more likely to support the station financially. Technical operations are now being handled usually by one person and a bevy of automated machinery. It’s not a very romantic business anymore, and the term dedicated is used more to describe paid fundraisers and researchers than volunteers. 
       New people must train on equipment that doesn’t require that they listen to the programming. Many music hosts learned about music by presenting it to their listeners, even if they didn’t have a music background. Radio was an education not only for the audience, but also for the host. 
      Here is an example, which actually happened. A syndicated production of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, a three-hour Easter program from SymphonyCast, arrives on two 2-hour DATs and is put into AudioVault. The program breaks at halftime, well into the second DAT, with an introduction to the second half of the program, giving the station the opportunity to identify itself. Hourly station IDs have always been an FCC rule, although allowances have always been made even by the FCC for “works of art.” 
      In this example we’ll add an ID, followed by an underwriter, followed by a jazzy Weekend All Things Considered promo before the introduction to the second half, and another underwriter and another bright, uptempo promo after the introduction before the music resumes. Then we’ll add more underwriters and promos, along with an ID, at the end of the program. 
      On the computer screen it looks all very neat: “program,” local input, “program,” local input, “program,” and local input plus ID for the top of the hour; and best of all, it comes out at 2:59:59—a perfect fit into a three hour hole. 
      But, of course, in the aural world it’s wretched radio. The operations assistant has not listened to a bit of it and has no idea of the flow and grace of the St. Matthew Passion nor the deep emotions it engenders and sustains in the radio audience. Furthermore, she would never know what she had done, because the next day when the program aired, she would not be listening. 
      In earlier, more analog days, a fledgling operator would have been sitting in a studio transfixed for an hour and ten minutes or, let’s face it, we’re talking young people here, bored to death but nonetheless absorbing the atmosphere, the tone, the sound of Bach, and would have known what sound would fit next in the sequence. The apprentice would be completely aware of the outcome of whatever was used in the mid-program break and would have the next two hours to listen and think about it. 
      When the AudioVault was first introduced, it was described as a replacement for carts (does anybody remember what carts are, you know, scratchy, noisy, hissy, wump-wump-filled plastic boxes with one loud wobble in every one where the tape was spliced?) As awful as carts were, you learned to produce with them carefully because you would be listening to the playback; and if the splice came at an awkward place, or the wump-wumps showed that you didn’t erase carefully, or if you cut off the beginning or ending of your actuality, you would cringe in horror as it played back. 
      With digital editing, many of the old flaws of carts are gone, but new flawed radio elements are introduced. Is the level too hot? Does the music fade smoothly and end before the cut does? Does the music enhance voice a pleasing way? Will the item flow with the items that precede it or follow it? The production judgments still have to be made; but because the elements are often just wave forms, or “cuts,” in an edit list, the producer doesn’t have to listen to them. They become just so many megabytes of data, so it becomes possible to produce a long concert broadcast without ever listening to the music.
     Technological advances have provided us with the means to reach more people more quickly. For those of us who were in radio in 1962, these advances have allowed us to learn new ways to produce and deliver radio programs to new audiences. For younger people coming into the business of radio, the “new technologies” aren’t new, they are the only way radio is done. For better or worse, change is always the only constant. Forty years later, those of us who remember radio in 1962 can only use what we know to help those who don’t to make the most of the medium that has been so influential in helping us move forward, technologically and aesthetically.