All Talk
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WBEW, the Chesterton outpost acquired by CPR over three years ago, is about to get a wattage boost that’ll expand its broadcast to nearly the entire Chicago area. The station is now being envisioned as a “multimedia service” intended to snare a younger and more diverse audience. Malatia says WBEZ will continue to do interviews with local musicians on shows like Eight Forty-Eight, and WBEW will frequently play full cuts as segments within its public affairs-and-culture format, but neither will offer a “consistent stream of music, no place where you can go and hear music for a half hour at a stretch.” Shows that will disappear include local productions like Comin’ Home, Encanto Latino, and Jazz with Dick Buckley and syndicated programs including Afropop Worldwide and Blues Before Sunrise.
Malatia says he wants to find a place for “every single person on staff” before anyone new is hired. Over the next six weeks they’ll develop a budget to present to the board, which could still scuttle the plan. Though this has to be a more expensive option than an all-music station, he says it might be just as manageable if the Web component becomes a major source of content. Malatia doesn’t know of any existing models for the whole package, and says he expects that as they experiment with these ideas they may “morph into something a little different.” He says the change of heart was evolutionary, driven by the “melting away of public service media around us” through mergers and disinvestment. “As we looked at the highest and best use of this new resource,” he says, “it became clear to us that while doing music serves many wonderful purposes, what’s needed now is a place where people can be encouraged to think about making change and can face issues that divide us as a community.”
