Dumbing down local Public Radio

[fran7371@uidaho.edu (John Francis)]

I have sent this letter to the Daily News.  I hope some of you become as
upset about the dumbing down of KWSU (AM 1250) as I am and will join me in
trying to persuade managerment to restore the dumped programs.


Editor:

Last Saturday, Oct. 2, without warning, the management of KWSU Radio (AM
1250) permanently dropped  five hours of the most wide ranging and
intellectually adventurous shows from the station's lineup, and substituted
pop music.   And it wasn't even done to save money.

	Listeners will no longer be able to hear Tech Nation, To The Best of Our
Knowledge, or The Cleveland City Club.

	The biggest cut was all three hours of To The Best of Our Knowledge.
TBOOK is  a weekly series of three one-hour programs, each of which
examines some broad theme-new research on the mind, or changes in
consumerism, for example-by interviewing writers, researchers, and other
experts.

	Tech Nation (TN) is a one-hour program that covers science and information
technology.  The Cleveland City Club (CCC)  features speakers on everything
from medical breakthroughs to urban sprawl.
	
KWSU station manager Roger Johnson told me the programs were not removed to
save money (TBOOK is cheap, and TN and CCC are free, I learned later), but
to improve audience ratings.  He hopes to do this with a pop music program
that features artists "ranging from Taj Mahal to Linda Rondstadt." [The
quote is from the program promo.]
	
Have KWSU listeners been well served by this change?  TBOOK particularly is
considered by journalists to be the best radio program of its type in the
U.S. TBOOK, TN, and CCC were shows that concentrated at broad topics.  By
contrast, most of KWSU's news programs-Morning Edition, All Things
Considered, The World- concentrate on current happenings: Clinton, Kosovo,
Wall Street, etc.  Thought-provoking programs that look at less transitory
subjects are needed for balance; but those are exactly the ones  that have
been eliminated.

	Saturday 7-12 p.m., when the doomed programs aired, is a pretty
inhospitable timeslot for news programs; small wonder the ratings were low.
My friends and I value the shows, but we certainly don't stay at home
Saturday nights to listen to them. We tape the programs on our VCRs and
listen to them at our leisure. So do others.  Maybe the ratings aren't
really that low after all.  (Taping is easy to do; just leave your radio
connected to the "audio-in" jacks on the back of the VCR  You can tape the
programs automatically. And one videocassette holds eight hours.)

	Why does KWSU think a pop music audience is more desirable than the one
for TBOOK? People who listen to unique programs like TBOOK likely will be
more grateful, and pledge more money,  than pop music listeners, who can
find that music anywhere.

	I'm sure we all hope KWSU Radio prospers, but dumbing down the programming
isn't the way to go about it.

	Call KWSU at 335-6511 or email nwpr@wsu.edu to express your opinion.
Contact me if you would like to join in trying to reverse the cancellation.
I'm at 883-0105, or fran7371@uidaho.edu.



John Francis
311 East 6th St., #2
Moscow, ID 83843
(208) 883-0105       fran7371@uidaho.edu