Will Community Radio Return To Ann Arbor?

Ann Arbor will have a new "progressive rock" radio station on the FM dial starting in about 60 or 90 days.

Actually, the station won't be entirely new, but yet another revised version of WNRZ- FM, once this community's most popular spot on the radio dial before dj's and staff were shut out from the station in April of 1973

The upcoming revival of NRZ comes on the heels of FCC approval of a transfer in station ownership to Community Music Service, Inc., a Rochester, N.Y.-based corporation which currently owns and operates WCMF-FM, a commercially successful pop-music station on the east coast. Spearheaded by one Jim Trayhern, the corporation was first revealed as the new owner of NRZ over one year ago, but it has taken the FCC this long to officially approve the transfer.

Since the firing of dj's and community staff a year and a half ago, a mostly scattered. irregular and hardly visible block of contemporary programming has been available on NRZ from 9pm to 6am nightly. During the day the FM station has been simulcasting country music with its AM sister-station, WNRS. 

Last Monday night what was left of the FM rock programming left the air for what is expected to be a two or three month period of preparation for the emergence of the new NRZ' (the call letters will be changed however). According to the new station's recently hired General Manager, Stuart Goldberg, during the shutdown a good deal of money will be invested to repair NRZ's badly worn and outdated facilities, beef up the signal and transmitter qualities, install up-to-date production facilities and also a live-broadcast studio. Promotion and sales campaigns will be readied, a new staff hired for the FM, and in general the station will prepare for its new existence. During this period the AM country music station will be simulcast on FM until midnight daily.

WHAT IT MEANS FOR ANN ARBOR

According to General Manager Stu Goldberg, the advent of the new station means that "good progressive radio will return to Ann Arbor on a local basis - and it won't be a rip-off." Goldberg says the station will employ a format - some kind of restricted list of what the disc jockeys can and cannot play - but he isn't sure exactly how tightly it will operate, as that depends on who is hired. Stu also insists there will be room for community access programming - live band broadcasts, shows for gay people, women, social services and alternative organizations. Additionally, the station's news will be locally originated.

While the assurance of community access is heartening and exactly what this town needs in a radio station, the idea of a forced musical format could prove a real boondoggle. In the past the advent of formats at progressive radio stations has served to severely restrict the variety of music and potential creativity of disc jockeys. When we questioned Stu about the extent of the format, he was fairly noncommittal, and would only offer that the sound of the station would be "somewhere in-between WABX and WRIF."

"This station is not going to be Top 40 in any way," Stu declared last Monday "But it won't be free-form, either. Free-form has gotten to the point where it has lost continuity and regularity."

Of course that depends on where you're coming from. To many the unformatted approach is not only the past but also the future of culturally-oriented radio. The problem has always been to keep the form free plus the money coming in at the same time. The solution depends on how a disc jockey utilizes his or her freedom at the turntable. In the past at NRZ some jocks abused their freedom to the extent of playing 2-hour long sets of only acoustic folk music or by opening up the microphone to the sound of turning television channels for 10 minute stretches.

That aimless variety of free-form caused the commercial death of NRZ's last full incarnation and would again if invoked now. But there's another way to implement the concept, which would be to gather together a group of conscious disc jockeys and allow them to determine programming which allows for musical creativity coupled with an awareness of the need to be commercially viable - i.e. to gather and sustain a large audience but without a regimented playlist.

A large audience must be sustained in order to gain sufficient advertising revenue so that the station can survive. But there are different ways to attain commercial success. One is the crass method - become a mindless WRIF Top 40 station where only money and hit records are considered. Another is to provide relevant, informed and exciting programming which relates to the local community, attracting listeners through a wider variety of music than simply what the record industry happens to be pushing this week. Such an approach also includes a prominent emphasis on informed local news, public service announcements, talk-shows, calendar information and an activist involvement with the lives of a station's audience.

How the new station's sound will fall between the two approaches remains to be seen. Hopefully Trayhern and Goldberg, who is 23 years old and formerly Station Manager of student WCBN-FM, will recognize the potential for a community-based non-crass approach in a place like Ann Arbor. We already have the ABX and RIF approach on the dial. What is needed is a unique and far more stimulating radio station.

As for who the all-important disc jockeys will be, that should be known in about a month. Stu offered us no assurance that on-air staff will primarily drawn from this immediate area which will hopefully not pattern the common industry practice of importing djs who know little about their audience.

THE BIG Z IN HISTORY

As Stu Goldberg pointed out in our interview, NRZ's biggest problem has always been absentee ownership and management. Chicago lawyer Thomas Boodell, the last owner, never paid much attention to the complicated workings of his station. He consigned management positions to hack industry self-seekers with zilch knowledge of Ann Arbor in all but one case. He allowed the physical condition of the station to lapse into disarray.

Through his neglect, WNRZ became an albatross around Boodell's financial neck. As it continually lost money and stayed out of the limelight necessary for a radio station's financial success, Boodell hired and fired a series of managers who in turn would send FM programming reeling in one direction or another with various staffs. Most of the programming, as a result, was either strictly commercial Top 40 or came on like the college radio amateur hour.

But in 1972 NRZ started coming out of the closet. Complete freedom to disc jockeys was implemented, and a new staff hired. Live broadcasts began originating from downtown bars, helping to create a thriving local music scene. John Sinclair and Hawg Tate were given 7 hours every Sunday night on the air, local community access was accentuated with an afternoon show of music and info supplied by aspiring young djs from town, the music kept you tuned in at least half the day - WNRZ was beginning to happen.

But it couldn't last, because the approach was not hooked enough into economic reality. While some disc jockeys were thriving on their freedom and becoming immensely popular, others insisted on abusing it - by over-emphasizing only one music genre (the slow folk variety), droning on with over-extended and uneventful raps - just doing their own thing, despite the survival needs of the station, which

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required a professional approach and a large audience. Plus general station mismanagement brought along with it a disorganized and unsystematic ad sales and promotion approach.

So despite its positive progressions, WNRZ-FM was thrown off the air by Thomas Boodell in April of 1973 with a series of abrupt phone call firings and changed locks on every station door. Boodell didn't want to lose money anymore and certainly wasn't willing to make the effort needed to change what was costing him revenue.

Upon hearing of the lock-out, a group of disc jockeys and listeners organized a petition drive aimed at pressuring Boodell into putting the station back on the air and actually dealing with its problems. The drive was successful in collecting 10,000 signatures in 3 weeks. Largely as a result of the adverse publicity, Boodell eventually recanted to the extent of offering a token 9pm to 6am slot for the progressive fm programming to return nightly.

Before Boodell's decision came down the group of DJ's and activists who mounted the petition drive had been meeting to determine what to do if they ever got back on the air. Agreement on that question was never reached, however, as the contradiction between the two sets of staff people remained antagonistic. When Boodell's offer came, the disc jockeys who had never paid attention to station economics grabbed at getting back their jobs, while the others declined to rejoin a situation they felt hadn't ironed out the problems which caused the lock-out in the first place.

Since then, most of those jocks have left the station, which has remained country until 9pm and then sporadically "rock" after that. Hardly anyone's noticed the FM, which is part of why the new owners want to change the call letters. Now comes Jim Trayhern and Stu Goldberg to try the whole thing again. This time around they have money and experience, so can hopefully bring to fruition the involved and compelling programming that was emerging on WNRZ just before it was knocked on its ass. They could make the money they need that way, or they might make it by sounding like the other stations already on the dial. This community is ready to respond to the first and better approach. It has been for years.

-- David Fenton