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An Open Letter to the South Florida Jazz Community:
On February 28, 2010, the esteemed Dean of South Florida jazz radio, Len Pace will retire. WLRN has made the decision to replace him with a generic AUTOMATED jazz feed, with Ids inserted to make it seem that it is a local show, when in fact it is not. I feel that this is a very bad decision and I am asking for your help in dealing with this.
The Jazz community in South Florida is at a critical crossroads. It’s positive growth and general health can only be measured by such events as Larry Rosen’s second SOLD OUT season with his Jazz Roots programming, new jam sessions springing up at many places, and the whole new generation of jazz musicians and jazz appreciators coming out of the many great University Jazz programs that are coming out to these events. We need to foster this new found interest in every way possible and keeping live jazz on the air is paramount to our efforts.
The actual cost of the generic automated service is about $3000 a year (plus the cost of the expanded equipment needed to do this). The cost of a live Jazz Announcer, playing local music and doing local and national interviews FIVE nights a week is only $10,000 per year total, assuming Len’s shift would be filled by the less expensive part time programmers, as has been done before at WLRN on the Sounds of the Caribbean show. This is ONLY a difference of $7000 a YEAR in return for massive local cultural continuity! Many of you contribute quite a lot during our fund drives and it is not unreasonable for you to ask why are your pledge dollars not supporting such a small need as this that would have such a large reward in the end.
The reasons for keeping a real local announcer on the jazz shift are many and obvious: aside from playing all the locally produced music we play, we are constantly promoting local events, doing interviews with all the national artists that travel to South Florida, and we are always playing music that would be way too adventurous for a generic show to play, helping to expand our listeners tastes and expose them to vibrant new music. Add this to the dumbing down factor that a generic radio feed often provides (take Cox Communication’s efforts as a recent example), and the loss of the rich cultural edifice of jazz radio in our area – I am sure you will agree that this programming change needs to be rethought right away.
In other words, a generic automated jazz show on WLRN is not what Public Radio is all about. Please join me in expressing your opinions on this. You can best affect a change in this by sending your comments to the following people:
Dr. Solomon Stinson, Chair of the Dade Public School Board
305.995.1334 email: sstinson@dadeschools.netMr. John La Bonia, General Manager for WLRN
305.995.1000 email: jlabonia@wlrn.orgMr. Rick Lewis, President of Friends of WLRN
305.350.7968 email: rlewis@friendsofwlrn.org