Public Radio: Stop the Begging!

It’s safe to turn on Minnesota Public Radio again— membership week is over. I’ve only been a MPR member for one or two of my twenty-six years in the Twin Cities. I listen most every day, though, especially to The Current.

I’m a member of Twin Cities Public Television, and I probably watch two hours of TPT programming a week. Not much. But I just sent them $50. It’s worth it just to have the program guide. And I want to support Frontline, which is the best journalism on TV. But I’ll never send a check during TPT’s horrendous fund drives, packed with programming diametrically different from what it normally airs. It seems like bait-and-switch, and I have no idea why it works.

But TV is generally appointment viewing, so the fund drives are merely an annoyance. Whereas radio is not. You expect radio to be there when you need it. Which is why I find the begging so much more irritating on MPR. If it is the price we pay for the service being “non-commercial” then we’re better off with ads.

One day I’m going to produce a transcript of a KNOW pledge break. I’m sure it would be as painful for Gary Eichten or Cathy Wurzer to read as it is for us to listen to. It’s only a bit more subtle than back in the eighties, when cranky Marilyn Heltzer would scold KSJN listeners: “This programming isn’t free, you know,” she’d screech.

My classical music friends tell me that KSJN (like most classical music stations) is largely a greatest-hits-of-the-eighteenth-century service; while my ears tell me that MPR’s (locally originated) news and information programming is conventional, establishment-oriented, predictable, and lacking in creative spark. There’s nothing alternative about it. But Bill Kling did not want to create a news service that was true to the mission of public radio. He wanted to create something big and safe that suited his mission of a public broadcasting conglomerate. He succeeded.

Minnesota Public Radio (oops, its programming arm, American Public Media) would never produce a show like This American Life. Something edgy, quirky, personal, and unconventional. Instead it mines the zeitgeist and creates soft, conventional programming designed to attract underwriting dollars. Remember Sound Money? It’s hard to imagine our local boys green-lighting A Prairie Home Companion if something similar came along today.

And I wonder what MPR will do without the Star Tribune to guide its morning news coverage? As big and as authoritative as KNOW has gotten, too many days I hear a story lineup that hews way too similarly to the metro section of the paper. And MPR may not have it around much longer.

So, imagine my surprise with The Current. I know there are music-heads who beef about its flaws, but it’s truly a smart, innovative, and unconventional (though polished) take on popular music radio. It’s the antithesis of the MPR ethos, and perhaps it’s taught the Klingons something about creative risk. It’s a lesson lost on PBS thus far.

But I can’t abide the begging. So I turn MPR off, in all its venues, for weeks out of the year. Say what you will about MPR’s many for-profit subsidiaries, its preoccupation with national expansion, and the sums its executives earn (I know it doesn’t need my money). If it’d merely find a way to end the beg-a-thons, I’d join up. The Current is that good, and I still hold out hope for the newsroom. And at that point, the check’s in the mail.

(Conflict of interest note: A subsidiary of MPR publishes Minnesota Monthly, a competitor of Mpls.St.Paul.)

Ripoffs, Pizza, and Bad TV

OK, enough bridge talk. On to other matters of great importance.

+ Are prices for soft drinks, and especially iced tea, out of control in restaurants? I mean, $3.75 for a glass of flavored water? I think restaurants are using our thirst to cover their losses on rising meat and commodity costs. And while we’re at it, if you price your wine at $14 a glass, you’re not selling any to me.

+ Pat Reusse doesn’t get enough credit. He’s the best sports columnist in town by a mile.

+ If you want to read an insightful piece on how one pundit went from pro-Iraq war to anti-, check out Michael Ignatieff’s essay in last Sunday’s New York Times. It’s a bit long and abstract, but the comments about how Bush’s lack of real-world failures lead him to imagine himself infallible seem right on.

+ The Cubs’ surprising drive to win the NL East must fail. As a born-and-bred Chicagoan and Cubs fan, the most fitting record the Cubs should hold is to go a full century without a title. They are the embodiment of failure and perseverance. Win it all, and they’re just another bunch of short-term heroes. This is year 99, if I’m counting right.

+ If you’re headed to LA anytime soon, don’t miss a meal at Nancy Silverton (La Brea Bakery) and Mario Batali’s new Pizzeria Mozza. Killer. Makes Punch seem like Pizza Hut, and I love Punch.

+ HBO’s Entourage has lost me entirely. Does anyone care about the characters or find the show the least bit fresh or original? How quickly it went stale. If you want fresh and original, tune in at 9:30 p.m. Sundays for Flight of the Conchords. It’s smart and not the least bit crass, which is Entourage’s stock-in-trade.

+ While I’m on the subject of TV, there’s an awful lot of good stuff this summer. Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares on BBC America (Can Fox’s version this fall be anywhere near as good?); Damages and Rescue Me on FX; Mad Men on AMC; this hilarious new reality show Flipping Out on Bravo about an obsessive-compulsive house flipper in LA. My only reservation is that it’s summer. Run these shows when it’s cold, not when we want to be outside.

+ Who do you think won the Zimmern/Bourdain battle of New York this week on Travel Channel? Andrew’s clearly the better dresser. And he tells me his ratings were better. You will find over time that my TV recommendations are far better than Zimmern’s.

+ Can we all agree that websites that play music when you land on the homepage are a plague that must be snuffed out? Yes, that’s you, Via.

+ I have not given money to Minnesota Public Radio in a long while. I’m just not a big fan. But I’m considering writing a check because The Current (89.3 FM) just gets better and better. Could they start a similar station for all the great music that’s more than two years old that never gets any airplay?

+ Spent last weekend in San Diego, a metro area that’s about the size of ours. Want to know what life is gonna be like here in a decade if we don’t invest faster in roads and transit? It’s gonna be gridlock seven days a week. Traffic in San Diego is so bad, so much of the time, that it’s actually a deterrent to visiting. And that 75 and sunny every day really wears on you.

+ Finally, one more bridge item. The Strib’s cutesy headline after the collapse—“Buckling and Swaying, Then Down, Down, Down”—was tacky. Just as the headline “Terrorized” was after 9/11. I don’t know what consultant told them that factual headlines don’t work after big news events, but the cutesy crap trivializes it.

The Worst Romantic Songs of All Time?

Turnaround, Every now and then I get a little bit lonely and you’re never coming round
Turnaround, Every now and then I get a little bit tired of listening to the sound of my tears
Turnaround, Every now and then I get a little bit nervous that the best of all the years have gone by
Turnaround, Every now and then I get a little bit terrified and then I see the look in your eyes
Turnaround bright eyes, Every now and then I fall apart
Turnaround bright eyes, Every now and then I fall apart

Is this the worst song of all time? How about this one?

I need a hero
I’m holding out for a hero ‘til the end of the night
He’s gotta be strong
And he’s gotta be fast
And he’s gotta be fresh from the fight
I need a hero
I’m holding out for a hero ‘til the morning light
He’s gotta be sure
And it’s gotta be soon
And he’s gotta be larger than life

These lyrics were written by Jim Steinman (yes, a guy wrote these lyrics) and made famous two decades ago by Bonnie Tyler, who has a voice that sounds like she’s smoked about 1,800 cartons of cigarettes. The first verse above is from "Total Eclipse of the Heart," a mawkish mess of a song I am still hearing on Twin Cities radio (stations such as WLTE and maybe KS95). I imagine, as Tyler sings . . .

Once upon a time I was falling in love
But now I’m only falling apart
Nothing I can do
A total eclipse of the heart
Once upon a time there was light in my life
But now there’s only love in the dark
Nothing I can say
A total eclipse of the heart

. . . that thousands of women listening in cars pull over to the side, weeping over a lost relationship, then driving away stronger, more confident, not to feel that kind of pain again—until Tyler comes on singing "Holding Out For A Hero."

Judging by her website, Bonnie still does quite well with these songs, has gotten some better control over her makeup, and is resiliently popular in Ireland and Germany. I’m sure Steinman and Tyler have made a great deal of money off these two ditties, one of which was originally written for Meatloaf, or so the Internets say.

Some enterprising Scandinavians (I can’t tell whether they’re Swedish, Norwegian, or Danish—Norway is my guess, based on the clothes) have covered "Eclipse" in a video, playing instruments made from kitchen appliances. And then there’s Mimmi Sandén, a five-year-old who cleaned up doing Bonnie Tyler covers on Talang 2007, which, according to Wikipedia, is one of the most watched shows in Sweden this year (airing on TV4, in case you have satellite). The top prize was 1 million kronor ($41.44). Sweden is just nutty about talent shows, judging from TV4’s website. And it has national health insurance.

But I digress. It’s time for you to weigh in. Ladies in particular. These songs are historically bad, aren’t they? In the bottom ten of their genre post-1840?

Before I leave you, though, remember:

Forever’s gonna start tonight
Forever’s gonna start tonight