Swing (Jan-Dec 1953)

98 City Station in Stress THERE is some loose talk flying around, most of it out of the mouth of New York City Comptroller Lazarus Joseph, of closing up WNYC, the nation's only noncommercial municipally-owned and operated radio station, because it costs $315,000 a year to operate. This is the most deplorable economy suggestion I've heard this year. The way they throw money around at City Hall, $315,000 is peanuts, and the people of New York get an awful lot of pleasure and profit for their little outlay. What other radio station, for example, has a Shakespearean Festival which, in addition to full length Shakespearean plays, ties Shakespeare into its whole schedule? (The food program discusses food in Shakespeare's time.) What other station, after turning the shop over to Shakespeare for a week, courteously invites in the Baconians to utter their sharp little cries of dissent? Well, WYNC does that and a lot more. Its audience is small — 400,000, which is tiny by New York City standards — but terribly devoted, especially to WNYC's fine musical programs. Many of the former devotees of WQXR, once a pillar of culture and good music, fled to WNYC when WQXR succumbed to crass commercialism. WNYC hasn't any commercials at all, a blessing which alone is worth $315,000 a year. The station has been threatened with extinction before. The late Mayor Fiorello La Guardia considered the station such a total loss that one of his campaign promises was to close it down. Under the urging of its present director, Seymour Siegel, La Guardia not only changed his mind but became the bright star of the program department, his shrill imprecations against the money-changers enlivening the New York air as it hasn't been enlivened since. When New York's newspapers were shut down by a truck strike, he read the funny papers to the children, an unforgettable experience. La Guardia is gone, but his philosophy still dominates WNYC. Since it can never reach the entire audience, WNYC reaches out for (and gets) the opinion-makers in the community. It never underestimates the intelligence of its listeners and consequently it reaches the intelligent who are almost unavailable to other broadcasters. La Guardia told the folks where their tax dollar went and WNYC still does. La Guardia also had an old womanish desire to change everyone's eating habits to what he considered the proper foods. WNYC still does this. The City Food Guide tells what is plentiful and therefore cheap in the markets. Because of this program, vegetables like kale which were once spurned by the housewives have become popular. Its most popular programs, though, are music programs, and the music lovers are devoted to WNYC's David Randolph who is the music connoisseur's connoisseur. Randolph gets so esoteric that sometimes no one but himself knows quite what he's up to. Once he dug out the ten most esoteric records he could find — some of them didn't even sound like music — and asked the audience whether they liked them. That drew 2,000 letters, many of them very esoteric, too. Randolph regularly pulls 400 to 500 letters per program (and, incidentally, Comptroller Joseph, he worki for exactly nothing.) WNYC frequently employs what Siegel calls "a circus technique," scrapping its whole regular program schedule for some big flashy affair like its American Art Festival, or Opera Festival, or Great Play Festival, or Children's Drama Festival, or Book Festival. They're crazy for festivals over at WNYC. The station proudly boasts that it has carried more United Nations coverage than any other station in the country (600 hours last year), that it devotes more time to public health than any other in the nation, that it's virtually the only station that has one special program for doctors and another for lawyers. All this for $315,000. It's a bargain. Postcript: In the future lies television, too. The City Planning Commission has set aside $379,000 to build a municipal TV station. If WNYC (which is safe until July 1 ) is eliminated, there probably wouldn't be any city TV station.