For those who don’t know, I do a radio show once a week on CKCU, our nation’s oldest and most distinguished campus-based community radio station. It’s funding drive season, and the two hours of begging for money on the air last week got me thinking about the function of community radio – other than satisfying my love to play music, what does the radio station do, and why does it deserve the money it’s asking for? Especially considering the fact that in the shift from more communal modes of organization to more individual ones, radio was one of the first technologies to be absorbed into the Internet? Community radio – defined as radio that’s community based, independent, and participatory – not only incubates and creates opportunity for media talent, artists, and local business but in fact has a critical role in the building of place itself.
In addition to still being the most democratic way to transmit information (at least until access to the Net becomes an inalienable right), people in places like Afghanistan have used radio for its very strong community building functions. It permits feedback and creates the critical collective third place wherein a culture develops, by playing the role of arbiter (and depending on the host and quality of the programming, arbiter elegantiae) between the global and the local – or as some young people might regard it, the digital and the physical. Moreover, radio does this on a scale that is appreciable by the community.
To that end, community radio is still the most representative of what’s going on at the ground level of any broadcasting locality precisely because it is implicitly community based and rooted to a physical locality/broadcast radius. The Internet, for all of its wonders, cannot make that claim. Place can easily be dissolved in the web, which is both its strength and weakness. The Internet might be more democratic in terms of access to information, but actually less expressive in terms of what that information means to the person accessing it, and their world. Community radio helps to emphasize that while preserving micro-cultural diversity within larger regions by physically defining that community and giving that locality a collective voice.
Ironically, at least as it relates to music, the MySpace/online music revolution might have served to make community radio more relevant. Young people with seriously sophisticated media sensibilities often require more than a link to take something seriously. A link might get a cursory glance, but something physical and real – something tethered to human contact, effort, and excitement – is what garners the sustained look. When a local band or group or personality has made it on community radio it communicates that something about that band or group or personality – whatever it is – has translated beyond the flux and fire of the digital world for somebody. They’ve been pulled out of the faceless ether of information and brought into a real, physical community, and community radio is a much more authentic word of mouth than its digital counterparts because of it.
How do you feel about the relevance and value of radio in these digital days? How does the concept of a physical broadcasting range help form community?
And now, as always, some music.
November 2nd, 2008 at 11:44 am
As a telecommuter, my interaction with radio these days is limited because I only listen to it in my car. When I do tune in, I act like someone I never thought I’d be, mumbling, “Who is letting this awful music on the radio?” And, around the D.C. area, the most community oriented that radio seems to get is by announcing traffic snarls at rush hour. I’m not the most well-informed when it comes to this medium, but it seems to me that the point of digital media is making their programming available to the masses… and they’re popular because that’s what people want.
November 3rd, 2008 at 12:05 am
Kwende,
I’m working on some of those questions on a project with KBOO, Portland’s community radio station. As the broadcast media has gotten better in the past couple of decades (Portland now has a full time jazz station, a full time classical station and an NPR flagship — all noncommercial)there is serious competition. And as you mention, the Internet, iPods and satellite radio for additional competition.
KBOO has been the alternative lifestyle, left-liberal voice in the city, but the definitions and format were set 20 or more years ago. During that time not only the media but the community have changed — the influx of the creative class, more minorities and immigrants, and a one time overgrown lumber town becoming a thriving urban center.
So how does a station, or an institution, adapt? The local aspect is a large part of what we’re looking at. How can radio build community, how do we serve the aforementioned audiences, how can we go beyond listeners to involved citizens? What’s missing and what hasn’t been thought of yet?
November 10th, 2008 at 10:09 am
Hi Kwende – I’m a community dj myself, and for quite a different operation that the one you volunteer for. My station – the incorporated, organization part – seems to reject a lot of the role that you describe above. We play alternative music, provide a forum for the different arts and cultural groups, and take on a few public interest stories, mainly picked up in syndication. No current events, and certainly no strongly voiced political views are permitted from any of the hosts or staff.
While I still feel that my station fulfills a very valuable purpose, I wonder whether we can really claim to be a community voice with such restrictive policies. Certainly we don’t have the following that other community stations in Canada do.
That said, I agree with you about the difference between a link to myspace versus a spin at CKCU or the like. I feel it myself, when I play a tune I haven’t heard anywhere else, and then my colleagues at the station follow suit. It feels great, like you’ve unveiled something really important.
November 26th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
You might be interested in a report that I did some work on about the arts and community radio sector in the UK. It was commissioned by Arts Council England and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. One of the most telling quotes from one of the station managers (Ed Baxter of Resonance FM in London) was that the station was about ‘bringing a community into being’ rather than reflecting a static, pre-existing community. That’s exciting. And it’s getting cheaper and cheaper to produce and distribute radio (but perhaps harder and harder for people to get paid or earn a living doing it). Anyway, the report is here – at http://www.artslearningconsortium.org.uk/documents/CommunityRadio.pdf