Filling The Void In Creative Community Radio: Ann Arbor Tunes in on WCBN FM

By Bill Adler

If you expect more from radio than background music, if you listen to it consciously, then it's no news to you that the Detroit/Ann Arbor radio scene has entered a period of serious decline. This decline is consonant with a larger national trend. In tact, Detroit's WABX was virtually the last free-form commercial radio station in the country and the powers that be recently instituted a loose format there. Some of the newly-enfranchised dial-cruisers in this town who had come to depend upon the community radio that WABX had long represented and which, for a time, Ann Arbor's WNRZ had likewise represented, have, in their search tor a substitute, stumbled across a real surprise - WCBN-FM, one of three University of Michigan radio stations, beaming away 24 hours a day at 89.5 MHz on your FM dial.

Not that this should be such a surprise. The most progressive programming heard anywhere for years has been on the noncommercial radio stations that dot the country - stations like WDET-FM, Detroit, or the justly-famed, listener-supported Pacifica network. Freed of fears of alienating advertisers, non-commercial radio programmers and directors can take the "risks" necessary to make their stations more relevant to their particular communities and to develop some of the barely-tapped potentialities of the medium.

What is community radio and what about the media's strategic propagandistic importance? It's been pointed out that "in order to maintain a consumer economy like America's, the people in power have to keep a strict brainwash on the other people so they 'II keep doing all the stupid things that are necessary to a consumer culture. Information has to be strictly limited -- you have power over someone when you control the information they receive. When you can define the terms of a situation then you have a great deal of control over the outcome. Community radio provides the opportunity o do a little defining of our own and should be done as a conscious educational tool, a weapon of cultural revolution, to turn people on and charge them with energy and information so they can change their world. "

-John Sinclair, from Guitar Army

Mark Lloyd, WCBN-FM Program Director, echoes Sinclair 's stress on radio's educational possibilities. "What radio stations have to do more than almost anything else is to teach. If you get to the point where you're just throwing junk out there for people to listen to over and over and over again, you're not teaching anybody anything, you're not opening up anything. CBN definitely provides an alternative to commercial broadcasting."

The CBN alternative takes many forms. First of all, an abiding appreciation for the intelligence and adventurousness of Ann Arbor listeners informs each of the CBN execs with whom I spoke. Lloyd declared. "I tell you, I have so much respect for the Ann Arbor community as far as listening is concerned. I think they'll always try something different." He added, "The Ann Arbor audience is a very relaxed audience and they respond to human beings, not, you know, machines behind microphones. Because when you listen to commercial radio that's what you get day after day. I mean 24 hours a day." Chief Announcer Sparky Schlei encourages his disc jockeys to speak conversationally on the air, to let the listener know that "disc jockeys are people."

Secondly, as Schlei has pointed out, "WCBN is the Greater Detroit area's only free-form radio station." Although the individual djs are encouraged to keep current, no one is told what to play or when to play it. You can hear CBN's strictly free-form broadcasting all during the day until the guidelines of CBN's block programming become evident. "Block-programming" means that at certain times of the day every day you can expect a particular type of music. "Jazz Around Midnight" is an especially popular block. The show is done every night from 11pm-3am by a different knowledgeable person and is representative, in sum, of the entire spectrum of esoteric and more commercial recorded jazz. The djs cooking from 8-11pm evenings feature the latest and hottest in r&b fashions.

Especially fine weekly special interest shows include "Global Village" hosted by Mauricio Font and aired Sundays from noon-3pm. The show focuses on the music and current events of the Third World. In addition, Mauricio has conducted live interviews with local politicians such as, recently, Mayor-elect Al Wheeler. "The Women's Hour" is heard on Mondays from 7-8pm. It's produced by a loose collective of women at the university and coordinated by Jordan Barnett. Students Dave Schmidt and John Giese produce the "Big Bargain Comedy Hour," a multileveled all purpose comedy/satire extravaganza that owes much of its inspiration to the Firesign Theater.

Finally, CBN regularly broadcasts information of services and events of interest to the community through its Campus Criers. Also, "Where To Go" is a feature that lists all of the movies, lectures, dances, etc. sponsored by non-profit organizations and is heard 5 times daily.

Once again, it's crucial to keep in mind that CBN is a non-commercial radio station and not subject to economic pressures. Perhaps it's unfair to compare it to commercial stations in the area but then again they now have the golden opportunity to benefit from CBN's example. It's evident from the ever-growing public response to the CBN alternative that that kind of programming may not be quite so "risky" as they may think.

Actually, though, CBN is becoming as prominent as it is almost by default. CBN is, after all, a state-supported, student organization at the university, and was originally conceived of as a facility to teach students applied radio techniques. The uneven quality of announcing on the air obtains because CBN is indeed not a professional station but a training-ground. (The very rawest initiates are confined to WRCN, CBN's carrier-current Top 40 format sister station). Internal conflicts are arising now that CBN finds itself increasingly drawn to fill the void left by the passing of WABX and WNRZ. General Manager Ross Ojeda explained that CBN is a "Free-air station" which means that the waves we are using belong to the public. And in a very real sense we are using the public's money. Because we are a state supported institution. I feel a very deep commitment to be more sensitive not only to the student community but to the larger Ann Arbor community as a whole." Mark Lloyd pointed out that "the thing about Ann Arbor is that the student and non-student communities are totally intermixed, and you can't really play to one without playing to both. It would be a mistake as a program director, as a radio station, to divide the two." Sparky Schlei suspects that "50 percent, if not more, of our listeners are from outside the university."

Ojeda acknowledged that he hopes to fill the gap left by WNRZ. "In its heyday a huge amount of the area's 18-35 year old population listened faithfully to it and regarded it as a community link for information on concerts, club entertainment, election results, events and rumors. I think CBN can do all this and do it well." (Unfortunately, CBN, because of its university affiliation, will never be able to do it all well -- CBN News is forbidden to editorialize.)

As summer approaches CBN is making preparations to serve the Ann Arbor community even better. Mark Gregory, designated Chief Announcer for the summer, remarked that because the university community is "greatly diminished" during the summer, CBN would broaden the scope of its public service announcements and community criers. But his grand plan is to set aside "at least one day a week as a guest spot for disc jockeys who used to do creative programming professionally, but are no longer given that opportunity." Tentative arrangements have been made with Bob Rudnick, a one-time co-host of WABX's legendary Kokaine Karma show and former full-time announcer at WNRZ; Jesse Crawford, an outrageous announcer at the now-defunct WKNR-FM (now drummer with the Mojo Boogie Band); Larry Monroe, briefly program director at WNRZ; Mike O'Brien, former WNRZ fulltime announcer and with writer/critic/music lover John Sinclair.

There is actually some debate as to whether or not this is at all kosher. Current CBN by-laws state that air personnel must be students or former students or that a non-station member on the air must have direct member supervision. The question before the CBN Executive Board is the relative merit of a particular non-member's contribution versus a student's. Program Director Lloyd is all for increased, if judicious, community input. "We understand that we have to teach the students and to teach them totally from student input is absurd because students that come down here can't possibly know everything there is to know, they can't possibly be able to say everything that there is to say. So if we get somebody else down here who has something else to say and he or she's not a student, I think by all means they should be down here if they address themselves to the student body and to the community."

Gregory also talked about making use of the excellent production facilities at CBN for some live broadcasts of local blues, rock and jazz musicians. He mentioned the successful, high-quality broadcast of Chris Brubeck and Madcat Ruth at CBN during Sky King's recent appearance in town. "Hopefully, in this time of depression, we can pick things up a bit musically, and do some good things," he concluded.

What may turn out to be a prophetic testament to the power of the new community spirit at WCBN was contributed by an anonymous caller during one of Mark Lloyd's recent "Jazz Around Midnight" shows - "You folks down there at CBN have definitely lured me away from ABX."