Sources at the station say that Christo’s eventual goal is to come up with strong programming from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., giving stations around the country a chance to fill the gap between Morning Edition and All Things Considered with WBUR programming. That, of course, is in addition to such popular WBUR-produced weekend shows as Car Talk and Only a Game, a literate sports program hosted by Bill Littlefield. The station also recently started a new documentary unit called Inside Out whose work, Christo says, will include a combination of worldwide stories (such as the recent “This Year in Jerusalem”) and local ones.
Christo doesn’t deny that she’s ambitious, but she says the notion that she wants to turn WBUR into a national programming powerhouse is exaggerated. The idea, she says, is to produce good programming for WBUR’s listeners first, and then to offer those shows to anyone else in the system who might want them. “The trend in most of the major markets is to do your own very strong local programming,” she says. Besides, WBUR is hardly alone in wanting to share its programs with a national audience — witness Fresh Air, a daily cultural show, from WHYY in Philadelphia, and This American Life, a weekly magazine, from WBEZ in Chicago.
But as Christo’s ambitions for The Connection, Here and Now, and One Union Station suggest, local-news coverage takes something of a back seat to programs that can be marketed nationally. WBUR has six local-news reporters whose work is heard in “cut-ins” on Morning Edition (for as many as 40 minutes per morning, or 20 minutes per hour) and on Here and Now. (All Things Considered does not allow local cut-ins, although there are a few minutes set aside for local headlines.) WBUR has no local newscast, though, and despite producing a slew of award-winning work, the local-news operation clearly plays second fiddle to the station’s high-profile programs. (The entire local-news operation, run by news director Sam Fleming, numbers about 25 people. WBUR’s total staff comprises 150 full-timers and 71 part-timers, freelancers, and work-study students.)
Still, WBUR deserves credit. For one thing, it frequently reports on issues that don’t — but should — concern its elite listeners, such as the troubled public-school system and inmate abuse at state prisons. For another, those six reporters are double the number of full-timers at WBZ Radio (AM 1030), the only commercial station in Boston that does any serious news reporting. And only a handful of public radio stations do any local-news reporting at all; most are content to broadcast Morning Edition and All Things Considered during drive time, and classical music and jazz during the rest of the day.
That’s pretty much what Boston rival WGBH Radio (89.7 FM) does, with one major exception: ’GBH is the home of The World, a one-hour international news magazine co-produced by ’GBH, PRI, and the BBC. The World has a fairly low profile in Boston, but it’s attracted a weekly audience of 1.3 million at more than 125 stations in the US.
There are, of course, different ways of looking at the local-versus-national debate. One point of view is best expressed by Stephen Provizer, the force behind Allston-Brighton Free Radio (AM 1630 and 1670), who, after The Connection blow-up, put out a press release mockingly offering Lydon an unpaid slot. Provizer — like many community-radio activists — was furious over NPR’s decision to join with the National Association of Broadcasters in lobbying against the creation of low-power, community-oriented operations such as his.
“The very definition of a program which can be syndicated is that it can only be local in an oblique way, as it must appeal to audiences throughout the country,” Provizer told me in an e-mail exchange. “If WBUR decides to target a particular (upscale) demographic to keep its underwriters happy, that’s its business. Just don’t claim to be a particularly local or community station.”
On the other hand, Steve Behrens, the editor of Currents, a newspaper that covers public broadcasting, says it would be a mistake to define “community” strictly in geographic terms. “They identify with a community that’s national,” Behrens says of the bobos who listen to public radio. “They have more in common with someone in Seattle than they do with someone down the street in Boston.”
Both Provizer and Behrens make good arguments. And it would seem that both could be accommodated. Surely Christo could find an hour somewhere during the day — at 9 a.m., perhaps, currently given over to the BBC World Service, or at 10 p.m., another BBC slot — for a local news and talk show.
But sources say that though station executives talk about such a show from time to time, the focus remains on producing local stories for Morning Edition — which does, after all, command the largest audience.
For all Christo’s hard work and accomplishments, who is watching over her shoulder? Certainly Christo’s success in attracting listeners and money represents a vote of confidence on the part of the public. Direct supervision, though, is minimal. A station advisory board of a few dozen community leaders — created by Christo herself — provides advice and some oversight, but has no fiduciary responsibilities.
The board is chaired by Kennedy School professor Ira Jackson, a former BankBoston executive and Dukakis-administration official, who expresses support for Christo’s management generally and for the way she handled the Lydon situation particularly. Citing his friendship with Christo and Lydon, Jackson calls the breach “painful,” but adds, “Management made the right call. There is no question in my mind.”
Final authority lies with Boston University, holder of the station’s license. BU executive vice-president Joseph Mercurio says he meets with Christo about three times a month, but makes no more effort to “micromanage” WBUR than he does the domain of any other division head who reports to him. Asked about her handling of the Lydon-McGrath situation, Mercurio replies: “If the question is do I support Jane Christo as the general manager of WBUR, the answer to that is a definite yes.”
WBUR WILL, of course, continue to succeed with or without Christopher Lydon and Mary McGrath. But the station — and its listeners — would be better off with them. Although Christo may have come out ahead in the battle of public perceptions, she’s been left with an ugly rift that has set back her station at a moment when she wants nothing more than to go forward.
To be sure, her willingness to pay Lydon $230,000 and McGrath $165,000 (and possibly much more in bonuses) could hurt the station’s vaunted fundraising machine. Just last week, Globe consumer columnist Bruce Mohl wrote a tough piece explaining why he’s not going to give to WBUR anymore, and Christo says she takes such criticism seriously. But she adds that a recent fundraiser was successful. In any case, most listeners would probably rather see Lydon and McGrath return than agonize over their salaries. Though The Connection has been okay without them, there has been a noticeable decline in quality. Meanwhile, Lydon’s webcasts at www.ChristopherLydon.org, though heard only by a tiny audience, have featured such superb guests as Tip O’Neill biographer Jack Farrell and Pulitzer Prize–winning composer John Corigliano. In a media culture in which WHDH-TV (Channel 7) anchor Kim Carrigan can be let go over a contract dispute when she was already reportedly making more than $300,000 just to read the news, most listeners understand that quality costs money.
Lydon sounds energized by his efforts to put into practice the entrepreneurial spirit he’s been celebrating on the air in recent years, saying, “I’m not a Republican yet, but this is a great country and a great economy where professional journalists like Mary and me can raise investment money without begging, and we can present ourselves as L&M Productions without anybody laughing.” He adds, puckishly, “That sounds like neo-Rotarianism.”
Still, rumored alliances with WGBH or with New York’s WNYC have not materialized, and both Lydon and McGrath make it clear that they would like nothing better than to return to WBUR’s airwaves — provided the partnership thing can be worked out. So eager is Lydon to get this message across that he called me after a phone interview and left this voice-mail message: “I am always a believer in win-win, and this whole thing has always been pregnant with win-wins — although the definition of it keeps changing, I suppose.”
In a similar vein, McGrath says this of Christo: “She has said publicly she wouldn’t fund our show and she wouldn’t take any risk. She doesn’t have to. We imagine being up and running and on the air again in the near future, and we’d love to be on WBUR.”
Christo says she would consider buying a syndicated Lydon show just as she would consider any new program.
Maybe Lydon and McGrath can make it on their own. But somehow I can’t help thinking it would make more sense for them to call up Christo, tell her they’d be happy to accept the extremely generous contract terms they were offered, and go back to work. Christo won’t talk about it, but a knowledgeable station source is convinced that the door is still open for Lydon, although it’s less clear whether McGrath would be welcome back as well. Christo should be willing to take them both back if it can be done without giving away a chunk of the station.
Lydon has been praised in extravagant terms by folks such as Globe columnist David Warsh (he recently wrote that restoring Lydon was “a matter of genuine significance to the identity of the city of Boston”) and the aforementioned Bill McKibben (who, in a piece for Salon, called The Connection “the best call-in show that anyone’s ever done” and Lydon “America’s best interviewer”). That’s laying it on a bit thick. Lydon’s a fine talk-show host, but David Brudnoy, at WBZ, is better. And Lydon’s an engaging and imaginative interviewer, but not quite as engaging or imaginative as, say, Terry Gross, the host of Fresh Air. Still, the combination of Lydon’s restless intellect and McGrath’s relentless pursuit of topics and guests made for terrific radio.
For all their enthusiasm, Lydon and McGrath could find it’s a cold world out there if they really intend to go independent. Jay Kernis, a 60 Minutes producer who’s leaving to become NPR’s vice-president for programming, says the network remains committed to The Connection, and that he’s gone so far as to offer Christo his assistance in winnowing the list of possible hosts. As for a syndicated Lydon show, Kernis says, “Chris and I have spoken,” but “I’m looking at 15 or 20 active proposals, and I don’t start until May 7. I don’t know whether stations even want another talk show.”
Lydon’s closest supporters are hoping he can somehow work it out with Christo. “How in Boston can there not be one person that they’ll both listen to? Neither one of them is right,” says Cambridge photographer Elsa Dorfman, who, along with her husband, civil-liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate, has helped to underwrite Lydon’s webcasts. Atlantic Monthly senior editor Jack Beatty, editor of the forthcoming Colossus: The Saga of the American Corporation (Bantam Doubleday Dell), who’ll soon do a stint as substitute host of The Connection, adds: “This is just a disaster, a calamity that this has happened. My hope is that somehow they will reconcile.”
Bob Ferrante, the executive producer of The World, knows Christo from his days as the executive producer of Morning Edition and Lydon from when they both worked at WGBH-TV (Channel 2). Ferrante helped create The Ten O’Clock News; Lydon was the anchor until the show was canceled, amid much acrimony, in 1991.
“I think this was a tug-of-war between two very strong broadcasting personalities,” Ferrante says of Christo and Lydon. But if Lydon hopes to return to The Connection, Ferrante adds, he’s got to recognize that it’s Christo who holds the upper hand. “What he wanted was ownership in something that wasn’t his in the first place,” Ferrante says. “He was an employee, just like the rest of us.”
Maybe Lydon should take a cue from the entrepreneurial class that he so much admires. The ’90s, after all, are over. The IPO didn’t work out, the stock options are under water, and Alan Greenspan is powerless to revive our dreams of unimaginable wealth. The well-educated, well-paid listeners who tune in to public radio, and The Connection, are getting up every morning and going to work each day — picking, in other words, someone else’s cotton.
At the end of the day, a job is a damn nice thing to have. Lydon and McGrath ought to do what they can to return to theirs. Not just for their sake, but for the sake of the bobos who love them.
Dan Kennedy can be reached at dkennedy[a]phx.com.
