| President’s
Corner
 Recently
I was sorting through storage closets here at WOSU-FM in search of archival
materials for our 50th station anniversary celebration later this year.
Amongst all of those old wonderful taped interviews and programs, I found
something that really peaked my interest—a conference packet complete
with its agenda from the 1982 Music Personnel Conference (MPC) held in
St. Paul, Minnesota.
Being the curious sort, I’ve been studying the contents to see what the
session topics were 17 years ago and how they compare to our interests
today. As you would expect, there are on-going concerns such as the effect
of budget cuts on music programming, audience research, producing live
music events, building a record library, 20th century music and how to
program it, pronunciation workshops, and the future of non- commercial
radio. A few topics, which caught me off guard given their current
significance, dealt with
the help and hazards presented by the public radio satellite; localism
versus automation; computers in radio (imagine that!); and a growing trend
of commercialism in public radio. I applaud the committee who constructed
this agenda, for their topics were not only timely for them, but futuristic
as well, goals that the current AMPPR board of directors shares in developing
agendas for our membership.
I also discovered that this was the last MPC held before AMPPR’s incorporation.
Why is this significant? Because during this 1982 conference, the attendees
voted on the proposed charter for the Association of Music Personnel in
Public Radio and its by-laws. This was an interesting coincidence for me
since the AMPPR board is in the process of reviewing and revising the by-laws
in preparation for voting by the membership in attendance at the next MPC.
Given the importance of these governing rules to our organization, it is
equally important that all interested parties be present to vote on our
proposed amendments during the business meeting at the New Orleans conference,
February 16-20, 2000.
If wishes can come true, when someone looks at the 2000 agenda many years
down the road, they’ll decide that our topics and discussions were pertinent
to the future of public broadcasting.
Hope you have a happy and safe summer!
Beverley Ervine
President |
