Slippage

About a year ago...or so...not sure about the date...KING-FM got a stern shaking up. Longtime Program Director Peter Newman "retired" (and reappeared immediately doing various announcer fill-in shifts), and "consultant" Bob Goldfarb was brought in to, uh, not sure what he meant to accomplish on the only classical station in Seattle, but maybe it had something to do with, uh, ratings? Ya think?

Anyway, Bob did a great job. (Though the ratings remained steady--about a 2.5 share overall.) Gone were all interruptions to the, like, flow, you know what I'm sayin'? And a couple of long-time voices got, well, fired (including the night guy, a prominent local classical personality who, I suspect, got bigger than the station, and/or annoyed the arts power people, and/or talked too much, and/or/or was just totally too hokey). There was some listener outcry, couple of newspaper articles, but the management hung tough.

Especially gone were a few late-Sunday night hour-long "outside" programs, like that Concert Network show with what's-her-name reading poetry among oh-so-cleverly chosen classical cuts. The Romantic Hours, yeah, that's it. Mona Golabek. Love that name. Anyway, gone.

Well, last night, the first night of the new year, one of those shows slipped back on the air. Ten o'clock, where a little pipe organ music couldn't possibly harm the Monday morning ratings on a classical station, now, could it? Well, Consultant Goldfarb evidently thought so, didn't he? He blew the organ show into little smithereens and dropped them, a cut at a time, into the night show. Clever PR move, while hosing out Sunday night.

But Mr. Goldfarb decided his work here was done and "retired" himself (I think) a couple months ago, and returned to wherever clean-it-up consultants go when they're done cleaning up.

So, now, damn! No sooner does the bad cop slam his laptop and jump the JetBlue to wherever, the wonderfully responsive "new" program director "listens to the many loyal listeners" and reinstates "The Organ Loft," which not only connects listeners with the great organs of the world, but artully promotes several enterprises of its host-producer, including an organ-hugging non-profit foundation and, what's this!...a record label. But hey, it's only a half-hour, and it used to be an hour, so no harm done, right?

KING-FM is that rare bird, a commercial radio station licensed to the Seattle arts communty, and is expected to reliably produce a gob of annual gold for the Symphony, Ballet, etc. It's the legacy of the founding family of the KING broadcast empire--to make sure Seattle always has a classical station. Nice, huh? You tell me how quick any of the big Radio Guys would grab and flip 98.1 to the Best Hits of '83-to-'79, if they could. But, its bronzed status doesn't keep KING safe from all harm--it's gotta perform, baby, or, uh, we'll bring in a consultant.

Still, it's a community treasure, sir, and subject to community influences other commercial radio operators laugh off. Or was it all those emails from the Friends of the Organ Loft?

Whatever. Even high-class radio's a circus. That's why we call it show business.