NEA Shows Little Love for Classical Radio

In what was a surprise to virtually all the major producers of classical radio, the National Endowment for the Arts has taken a hard left turn, and diverted long-standing television and radio funding to gaming, mobile, and web projects.

A detailed and scathing article in the New York Times gives examples of organizations that have lost some or all of their funding after years of building partnerships with the NEA.  The MET Opera, PBS, and American Public Media (Performance Today and SymphonyCast) all had their funding decimated.  Some of these organizations regularly received large grants, but they were really only a drop in the bucket of their large budgets.  Smaller organizations would get $20,000 or $30,000 that they would leverage for other meager funding, and that would be half their overall budget.

For years producers have considered the NEA a vetting organization.  Grantees and their projects are vetted by peer review panels, and only projects that have a certain level of quality, broad reach, and committed carriage make it through the process.

But the NEA has had a change of mission, according to the article by Elizabeth Jensen.  Instead of setting the standards for quality production in public media, the NEA wants to be out in front of experimentation in new media.

In a telephone interview Alyce Myatt, the endowment’s media arts director, said that while public television and radio remain “the leads, we also know we have a generation — not of kids but adults — who are consuming content online and on mobile.”

Both public and commercial media are in a fluid state, she said, adding that “as a federal agency I think it’s imperative that we assume a leadership role and help move the field forward.”

In particular, she said, the endowment hopes to encourage a public media sector for gaming.

It turns out Marshall McLuhan was right: the medium is the message.  Content is no longer king.  The king is dead.

Instead of letting the cream rise to the top in a field that has more money than God — Microsoft, Google, and Facebook are good examples of who should  be funding these experimental projects — the NEA seems to be intrigued by the shiny new toys.

There is no limit to the number of amateur media creators out here who are playing with these new toys.   You can find everything including the kitchen sink on YouTube.  There’s also amazing, unique, incredible content on YouTube but there is no NEA sorting through the offerings to point you to the best quality productions.  You can hear a great piece of music performed so badly it makes your ears hurt.

Gaming is a multi-billion dollar industry.  Does it really need the NEA’s peanuts?

The NEA is indeed a federal agency and ultimately answers to us.  Aside from the pain of losing my own funding, I want to ask honestly if the NEA should be using taxpayer money to fund experimental media in an area that is so well-funded by venture capitalism.

The NEA has been the excellent keeper of our artistic archives, the chronicler of our creativity, and the narrowly focused agency that funded the fine arts when popular culture wasn’t interested.

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UPDATE:  In discussing this with my brilliant, hip, 20-something assistant Michelle Scharlock, her view is that not only are the media changing, but the content is too.

I guess the one problem with appealing to younger audiences and new music listeners is the fact that you alienate radio stations…so maybe there is a way to go around radio stations??

I think that video games and movies are largely building the next generation of orchestral/symphonic listeners. The advantage/disadvantage to all this is that this is totally unexplored territory for most people – which is bad on the one hand since it’s hard to convince people to try new things and good on the other hand because that’s the entire selling point – we can bring people into this crazy world of really awesome stuff and show them how it works…

Personally, I think the most exciting shows … are the ones with new content. I know radio stations hate all that stuff, but I think part of it is a matter of reframing the situation for them.