Here’s something we never thought we’d say: We were very sad to hear about the end of traffic reports on the radio. Public radio station KBEM, which is owned and operated by Minneapolis Public Schools, was on the receiving end of a pink slip issued by the Minnesota Department of Transportation when the new year dawned. With MnDOT canceling its fifteen-year relationship, KBEM will lose nearly half of its operating budget. It’s unclear whether one of the country’s last, best jazz stations can continue—though we hear it is accepting your redoubled financial contributions as a matter of emergency life support.
It was a happy marriage, or at least it seemed to be. We never heard KBEM and MnDOT argue. They were always respectful of each other, even if occasionally there were long, embarrassing silences. At a time when everyone agrees that transportation is one of the biggest challenges facing the state, MnDOT’s decision is breathtaking in its boldness, and could reverberate down to the next statewide election. After all, through KBEM, MnDOT was the state’s most visible (audible) agency and office. It may be the only voice of local government the middle-class taxpayer ever heard.
The press release we received from MnDOT was a model of bureaucratic deflection. In its most telling lines, spokesman Kevin Gutknecht wrote, “access to travel information has grown markedly since MnDOT began its relationship with the station fifteen years ago. This fact contributed to the decision.” Gutknecht could probably use a lesson in cause and effect. If we understand him correctly, it is because the relationship worked so well that it must be ended.
It is silly to claim that KBEM has plenty of viable substitutes today. Commercial traffic radio is the biggest joke in all of broadcasting. A typical traffic report on, say, KQRS, consists of a ten-second advertisement for foot powder pronounced over the throb of a helicopter, cut with five seconds condemning the Bloomington Strip—a daily riddle that is about as surprising as sunset and moonrise.
We’re told we should now call 511 for up-to-the-minute traffic reports, or, alternatively, point our browser to 511.org. So far, we have been unimpressed with these second-string technologies, and given MnDOT’s motherly tut-tutting about safety on our highways, we wonder how it can, in good conscience, recommend using the phone or the laptop while we are driving. This will eventually convert the solution into the problem.
We have to admit, too, that we have grown fond of KBEM’s programming and how well it came to play in traffic. Fifteen years ago, “jazz and traffic radio” seemed like a miserable billing. But our cold hearts were melted, first by “Bluegrass Saturday Morning,” and then by the whole goofy package, from “Engines of Our Ingenuity” to “String Theory” to “Brisas Latinas.” Even in the midst of the most heinous violin jazz or harmonica fusion, we smiled when we heard the reports from Tuttle Elementary, which had achieved a kind of rumpus-room legend all their own. It is a terrible irony that there are now fewer than a dozen full-time stations in the nation dedicated to jazz, the most purely American art form, and that another one may bite the dust.
KBEM is not down and out, not yet, but neither are we sure what the road ahead looks like. If we had a spare half-million laying around the office, we’d be tempted to, you know, diversify our media holdings. But even in the best-case scenario for KBEM, the outlook is heartbreaking for anyone planning a sensible response to rush hour; it looks like we’re stuck with foot powder and the Bloomington Strip.
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