South Dakota Public Broadcasting is making out worse than most in our state budget cuts. Schools "escaped" with 6.6% funding cuts; most other agencies are taking a 10% hit. SDPB, apparently having kicked someone's dog, gets a 16.6% haircut... which by most yardsticks would constitute decapitation.
But heads aren't rolling, at least not that we know of. Bob Mercer notes that while SDPB is canning Jazz Nightly's Jim Clark, who makes $15.93 an hour, at least six management positions earn over $50K a year.
I won't try to provoke intra-office warfare. I will simply note that Jim Clark arguably provides, as Mercer says, SDPB's "most outstanding talent and radio program." I don't know what Uncle Jimmo's listernship stats are... but check that name. Uncle Jimmo. How many other South Dakota broadcasters have carved out an identity so distinct that their nickname sticks in the cultural psyche? Think about the memes he's introduced into our local culture: he's our buddy in the banyan tree. The time from Fort Pierre to Rapid City is Mountain Daylight Swingin' Time. He always begins and ends his show with signature songs—and think about it: how many times have you hummed those tunes to yourself in the shower, or at the wheel, or during your coolest stroll down Phillips Avenue? Uncle Jim gets into our heads because he is catchy, he's clever, and he's good.
Since he joined SDPB in 2001 to carry on the radio station's unique South Dakota jazz tradition (weeknightly jazz on the air since 1956), Jim Clark has brought character to our public radio. Jim is the first person I ever heard on SDPB read the weather with verve. He's the first local on-air talent who jumped out as a real person at me; prior to Jim, even the newscasters sounded consistently wooden and impersonal. Jim Clark is always live.
Bill Janklow's idea of public radio, as my friend Larry Kurtz likes to call it, as improved immensely since Jim Clark's arrival. Gary Ellenbolt has taken over morning news duties. He brings a live-ness similar to Uncle Jimmo's to the morning news. Gary's got great radio voice. He tells groaner puns, something which I originally dinged him for. I think I was just having a reaction to actual change and character on the morning news. Gary's never let the joking get out of hand; he's never descended into lewdness or shock-jockery. he's just keeping the news human and hooking the listeners.
Paul Guggenheimer has turned SDPB's noon forum program into Dakota Midday, the most intelligent hour of local radio in the state. Look at some of the guests Paul gets: James K. Galbraith, Phyllis Schafly, George McGovern, the guy they had Tuesday talking about escaping with his family from behind the Iron Curtain in 1983, Ricky Skaggs, Rollie Fingers, not to mention a variety of our own legislators... And that's all in the last six months! Find me one other broadcast journalist in South Dakota who has done as many substantive (and live!) interviews with real experts and newsmakers in the last year as Paul has. I'm betting you can't do it.
South Dakota Public Broadcasting is a valuable cultural resource, a public good for our state. No one else in South Dakota provides as much real news as SDPB. No one else regularly provides the musical variety SDPB does. Jazz, classical, Celtic, big band, even the alt-rock/country/indie of the amazing, hair-raising, I'm-back-in-high-school-and-music-is-cosmic World Café—no commercial station in South Dakota offers anything close to that program quality or variety. The free market will not replace South Dakota public broadcasting. The free market will not produce Statehouse. The free market will gravitate toward the second- or third-best pablum that is just not bad enough to make people turn the channel before the next commercial break.
Doug Wiken, who's had his share of beefs with South Dakota Public Broadcasting, understands the profound public value of South Dakota's best broadcasting. So does journalist Kevin Woster (and not just because he enjoys the sound of his voice on the Political Junkies segments on Dakota Midday... although that homegrown punditry is another example of SDPB's unparalleled value).
South Dakota Public Broadcasting is a vital cultural and educational resource in our fair state. Unfortunately, in the eyes of our Legislature and Governor, culture and education are expenses, not investments. When we lose Jazz Nightly and the other services South Dakota Public Broadcasting will axe to balance its Pierre-tightened budget, our state will accomplish the remarkable feat of saving money but being poorer for it.
Bonus Double-Dip: Add Jim Clark to the thousands of jobs we will lose as the South Dakota Legislature joins Republicans nationwide in using budget cuts to drive us back into recession.
No! Not Uncle Jimmo! He's one of the best things about SDPR! As much as I enjoy the great programming on MPR, I miss my evenings with Uncle Jimmo. What an incredible shame.
Re: the management positions at SDPB, the organization is more than getting its money's worth from them. SDPB's workers, management or not, are passionately dedicated to public broadcasting, most of them wear multiple hats and do multiple jobs, and they do a crapload of work. Let's not turn this into a finger-pointing exercise in blaming SDPB's workers for the short-sighted, gratuitous cuts imposed by our legislative vandals in Pierre.
Uncle Jimmo will be missed. He has taught me much about Jazz and is a real gem. I hope they can find some way to keep him and possibly syndicate his show to public radio organizations in other states.
I have to confess I'm not terribly sorry to see Uncle Jimmo go - I always find myself switching over to MPR at 8pm to get additional coverage of issues, etc. while I do my water changes in the fish rooms. The Jazz & Jimmo's persona always rubbed me the wrong way. Not something I want when working on my hobby.
That said, I understand the cultural value and tradition the Jazz show represents, and I imagine it's a cost-effective way to fill a couple hours. But, if SDPB has to make cuts, I'd rather those cuts be in "fluffy" sections than the sections that actually help keep us informed - Statehouse, Dakota Midday, etc.
If we want to keep SDPB going, we're going to have to open our wallets a bit more.
What I don't get - why didn't SDPB do a funding drive in anticipation of these cuts? MPR did a BIG sustainability push. They generated a new segment of supporters to help cover their expected shortfalls, so they don't have to chop programs.
An adequate description of my digust could not possibly be appropriate in Cory's house. One of the ironies of Jim's exit is that the programming likely to replace his show will be going to out of state syndicated urban producers.
or my disgustiveness.
We need these cuts to pay for the GDD "fat cat" corporate fund.
Public broadcasting and jazz programming may have started in 1956, but it was not available outside a locality until 1979. I have written about it previously: http://northernbeacon.blogspot.com/2011/03/music-was-driving-force.html
But the matter of Jim Clark deserves some very special mention. I was torqued off enough when his program was reduced by an hour some months ago. Jim Clark knows jazz. He knows what edifies and entertains the casual listener, and he knows what erstwhile players and dedicated devotees of the music need to sustain their interests. Uncle Jimmo can speak to the history of jazz and is not locked into any particular style of the genre. One of his most redeeming features is that he does not, as do many public station jazz djs do, play much "academic jazz," which neither swings nor connects with the roots and lifeblood of jazz. And Jim Clark knows music programming. He understands pacing, complement, contrast, and how to feature an artist to advantage for both artist and listener.
Just as the budget crisis has allowed wing-ding politicians to prosecute their desires to subjugate women, plunder the environment, increase the oppression and exclusion of the working people, and reduce the effects of the biggest danger to them, education, it can be used to dismantle those cultural resources which sustain people, such as Jazz Nightly. I suspect Jim Clark/s firing is something that is a goal for some within the SDPB bureaucracy--he does radio entirely too well to be let alone.
The cultural landscape will be much bleaker without him. Those tea party types are taking back their state--all the way back to wonderful desolation of the dust bowl, which was also the result of cultural malpractice.
I'll echo Chris S. -- as a former SDPB employee I will absolutely go to bat for the managers. They, like many state workers, are over worked and under paid and they are the very soul of public broadcasting.
"Uncle Jimmo's" salary probably amounts to about 6 cents per person per year in South Dakota. It seems to me that the attack on SDPB by Retrograde Republicans aided and abetted by Gov. Daugaard is motivated more by a desire to attack public knowledge and information that does not fit into the GOP mythology than it is by a desire to eliminate a structural deficit.
Daugard said that it seemed like a good compromise between those who like public broadcasting and those who don't. My guess that amounts to a lopsided compromise by a 100,000 or so South Dakotans and a handful of corporate greed monkeys and a few dozen wingnut loons who view anything that does not fit into a Sunday sermon as the work of the devil or if not that some kind of evil despotic, Marxist plot against goodness, virtue, hotdogs, apple pie, and the American way.
The Taliban Republicans talk compromise, but seek a feudal state with a few very, very rich and the rest of us toiling for 12 hours a day to pay sales taxes to make the rich richer.
This may not be class warfare (I think it is) but, it certainly is cultural warfare. Those interested in Government of the people, for the people, and by the people better recognize that the modern retrograde GOP is the antithesis of that ideal.
This is a red alert on the dangers of the Taliban Republicans. Incidentally, our federal government now plans to issue actual Red Alerts via social media.
Why blame those in Pierre for cuts to a PBS station WE should, and I do support Uncle Jimmo programs and others w/ my monthly contributions. It's MY choice to do so and not the responsibility of the legislators whomever they are!!
Mr. Harris, thank you for joining us with your willing donations to SDPB. Nonetheless, as stated above, there is a distinct public good provided by public broadcasting (arts, education, and news that we don't and won't get from the commercial media) that warrants public support as well.
Also, all public donations go toward programming. None of it pays salaries. While the Friends of SDPB do an amazing job, I can't imagine increasing contributions to the point that they could pay for salaries and other infrastructure.
So sad to lose Uncle Jimmo. That was a program I was proud to say was South Dakota's own. Bad choice SDPB