Classical music and the cod liver oil theory of broadcasting

Early last week, Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher wrote The Silence of Sunday Morning Classics about a new report from the National Endowment for the Arts that was critical of public radio for what the NEA views as a diminished commitment to classical music in favor of news.  The report, Airing Questions of Access: Classical Music Radio Programming and Listening Trends [PDF] is actually a meta-study of earlier reports, not new research.

It would be helpful in interpreting the NEA's position to read another of its recent reports, The Arts and Civic Engagement: Involved in Arts, Involved in Life [PDF] wherein the headline for the "10 Key Findings" section is, "Arts Participation Builds Civic Engagement" (italics added).   Here is the report's conclusion:   

Americans who experience art or read literature are demonstrably more active in their communities than non-readers and non-participants. Their lifestyles reflect the same level of vigor and social commitment as those of sports enthusiasts. (According to separate findings from the survey, arts participants volunteer, exercise, and do outdoor activities at rates comparable to those of sports event attendees.) Thus, literary reading and arts participation rates can be regarded as sound indicators of civic and community health.

Shifting the focus to young adults, the analysis finds that more than a quarter remain committed to charity work. Relatively stable, if small, percentages continue to engage in plays, musicals, and opera. For other performing arts, young adult attendance has declined, sometimes precipitously.    

Young adults also show diminished interest in reading, exercise, and sports events. Moreover, in no activities—arts or non-arts-related—did young adults in 2002 surpass the participation rates reported by young people in 1982 or 1992. (The increase in opera attendance between 1982 and 2002 is statistically insignificant.)

These declines merit attention because they are the first signals of arts participation patterns by Generation Y, the second largest generation in U.S. history. With 68 million people born between 1977 and 1994, this cohort’s current and future engagement levels will determine the viability of our arts and our communities.

That headline makes the common mistake of implying causality from mere correlation and in doing so tars those the providers of who have replaced arts programming with news programming with the problem of lack of civic engagement.  It's just as possible that arts participation and civic engagement each benefit from a third variable (or combination of other variables) -- for example, educational attainment.

This is important because it goes to the core of their criticism of public radio programming.  Their job is, of course, to be advocates for the arts, but I'd hypothesize that if someone did an identical study of news listeners, it would find that there is a strong correlation between news listening and civic engagement also.  And there the causality might be more plausible.

[Warning: here's the obigitory paragraph before the sentence beginning with "But."]  I'm a classical music fan with a sizable personal collection.  For 34 of the 37 years I've worked in public broadcasting, I've had responsibilities at stations with significant classical music commitments.  I personally find the diminishment of classical and jazz formats on radio a sad thing.

But...  But it's unfair and bad statistical analysis to blame news for the diminishment of classical and jazz music and, worse, for the diminishment of civic engagement in our culture.  Arguably, classical music is dying as a radio format because its fans are dying.  I love Brahms' choral masterpiece, Ein deutsches Requiem (I own 13 CDs and a video of it).  Recently, I attended the Spokane (Wash.) Symphony's performance of it and noted the ages of the other participants.  I'm on the leading edge of the baby boom, yet was one of the younger people there.  It's likely that many of those under 30 attending were there because grandma bought an extra ticket to have some company.

It's also unfair to blame NPR (disclosure: I sit on its board of directors, but am expressing a personal opinion here) for the diminishment of classical and jazz programming.  NPR programming is a reflection of what its member stations want, just as its member stations are a reflection of what their communities want.  Unlike the BBC or CBC, American public broadcasting services are determined at the local level.

Finally, the criticism leveled at public radio by the NEA and others is an artifact of the scarcity of FM spectrum.  That scarcity masks the classical music listening that goes on via CD collections and, increasingly, on the Internet and digital music players.  HD Radio, Internet radio, and the "new" spectrum being redeployed to multimedia services in the 700 MHz band are destroying (some would argue have destroyed) the scarcity factor.  Those who think that radio stations should play what's good for people, not what people are voting for with their listening, will find the world of abundance is much friendlier to their cause.

--Dennis

Comments

[Sunil Iyengar]

Dear Mr. Haarsager:

Thank you for highlighting two reports recently issued by the National Endowment for the Arts: "The Arts and Civic Engagement: Involved in Arts, Involved in Life" and "Airing Questions of Access: Classical Music Radio Programming and Listening Trends." By treating them interchangeably, however, you have obscured their separate purposes, findings and implications.

"The Arts and Civic Engagement" draws from a national survey of more than 17,000 American adults to show clear and compelling correlations between levels of arts participation and civic activity in the general population.

For example, people who read literature or attend performing arts events are shown to exercise, go camping, hiking or canoeing, and play sports or attend sporting events at roughly twice the rate of non-readers and non-arts participants. Arts participants are also nearly three times as likely to volunteer than non-arts participants.

The second report, as you correctly note, is a summary of existing data on the availability of classical music as a radio format in the U.S., with commentary from NEA research staff. Given the appropriately different goals and conclusions of both reports, many of your statements hinge on a false premise.

For instance, you write: "[I]mplying causality from mere correlation...tars those who have replaced arts programming with news programming with the problem of lack of civic engagement." But "The Arts and Civic Engagement" warns at the outset against inferring cause-and-effect relationships from the data, and the headline to which you object should be read in this context--i.e. that arts participation itself is a component of a civically engaged life.

More puzzling is why you should infer that we anywhere consider arts versus news radio programming as mutually exclusive factors in building civic engagement. "The Arts and Civic Engagement" does not so much as mention news programming, and neither report necessarily disputes your hypothesis that "if someone did an identical study of news listeners, it would find that there is a strong correlation between news listening and civic engagement also."

We do not view arts participation as the sole correlative, or even a prerequisite, to civic awareness. Yet the links we tested between arts participants and civic activities--the ratio of arts participation levels to those for other forms of engagement--held constant when we analyzed this population by income or across educational or regional subgroups.

Moving to the "Airing Questions of Access: Classical Music Programming and Listening Trends" report, nowhere do we "blame news for the diminishment of classical and jazz music, and worse, for the diminishment of civic engagement in our culture."

Our other report, "The Arts and Civic Engagement," does show alarming declines in arts participation and civic engagement--as measured by our survey--but those declines are reported and discussed only for the young adult population (18-to-34-year-olds).

Neither do we "blame" news or public radio "for the diminishment of classical and jazz programming." Not only does our "Airing Questions of Access" report leave out discussion of jazz radio from its analysis, but the document limits its review of news/talk radio programming to quantitative data and to references to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting mission statement and the Public Broadcasting Act.

Regarding data on public news/talk radio, the report finds that between 1994 and 2005, public radio's classical programming hours grew by 25%, compared with 115% for news/talk. Further, in 2005 the number of public radio hours devoted to news/talk was 224,000--more than double the amount for 1994. By contrast, in 2005 public radio played 168,000 hours of classical music. In the last 15 years, moreover, at least 20% of the top-30 radio markets have lost a classical radio station to news/talk.

Your observation that public radio programming "is a reflection of what its member stations want, just as its member stations are a reflection of what their communities want" does not explain away the dilemma of rampant duplication of news programming across stations serving the same or adjacent markets.

Finally, any assumptions about widespread listener access to non-analogue radio for classical music will need further study as the technology proliferates.

Yours sincerely,

Sunil Iyengar
Director, Research & Analysis
National Endowment for the Arts

[patricia heasler]

Focusing on the "charity" work that interests young adults correlates interesting enough with the growth of social cause marketing. Also, I think all three universes converge when you have a philanthropic young artist who listens to classical music and gives arts lessons to homeless youth.

[Craig K]

I think we also need to remember as segments fragment, stations may have to decide to:
1. Go broad and capture a lot of people and/or
2. Go deep, with a niche and build a strong, smaller base

Given other options for listening to it, classical doesn't seem to fit either one. Sad? Maybe. The fault of news programing? No.