Kallenbach Unplugged
after 25 years on the job, WPR honcho talks politics, art, and the future of radio
Eric Larson, photos by Andrea Paulseth |
Dean Kallenbach has hosted a lot of discussions during his lifelong career in public radio. Beginning as a part-time disc jockey in Rice Lake during college, he’s worked for various radio stations across the Midwest, eventually getting hired at WPR in Eau Claire in 1986 – a position he still holds. Now, after a quarter century, it’s our turn to pick his brain. Here’s a look at what Dean had to say once the mics were turned off:
You’ve obviously been in radio for a while – over the course of your time here at WPR, how have you noticed the community change?
Well, certainly I kind of came to the job towards the tail end of the industrial age. … We saw the economy shift from an industrial to more of a service economy. And that changed, obviously, income levels in many ways. But I think in the last, oh, 10 years or so we’ve seen the resurgence in the downtown area that we’re watching now. And I think, as a community, there’s a little more emphasis on diversity and a little more emphasis on the arts. I think those are both good things – we’re finding out there’s more of a life than work. People here pay attention to the life that’s going on around them and the culture that’s going on around them.
Are there any changes you’d like to see in the future?
I thought there’d be some way we could come up with a top-notch art center in support of this community. The State Theatre is a fine facility, but it’s limited in the kind of things you can do with it: the stage is relatively small, the loading area’s small – it’s not the most intimate of theaters. For the type of things we ask it to do now, it’s not really the ideal situation. I’d like to see the community move in that direction, and I sense that move has already happened.
Over the course of your career, how have media and the radio evolved?
Well, back when I was starting, AM was listened to more than FM. That changed in the late 70s when FM started to take on more listenership, and of course now FM is very strong compared to the AM stations in general. Certainly talk radio is helping it make a bit of a comeback – so that’s been one big change. Another big change is that back when I started in the 70s, there was regulation that required so much public affairs programming and so much news programming for each radio station. Those regulations went away in the 1980s; this community probably at one time had 12 to 18 radio journalists, but has now moved down to maybe a handful. That’s been a big difference, and it speaks to the need for public radio to continue to be strong. It’s not partisan and it’s not taking a single side and leaving the other behind; we try to treat both sides of an issue.
What about public radio loyalty? What can we expect from that in the future?
My boss when I started here, Jack Mitchell – who’s really one of the important figures in public radio nationally; he was actually the first voice on the air of All Things Consideredin 1970, the newscaster nationally for that show – was the director of radio for WPR when I came on. In the early 90s he made a change to our mission statement, which originally said, “We would deliver high quality radio programming to serve community needs through civil discourse and news and information, as well as cultural programming.” And he changed that word ‘radio’ to ‘audio’ because he had anticipated we were coming into an age where there would be a number of different ways to deliver audio programming rather than transmitters. What that change meant was that we’re going to worry less about how we deliver the content, and more about the nature of the content, the quality of the content, and make sure that it’s available on the platforms that people are using. I think we’re well positioned that way. We’ve got a website re-launch coming up in the next year or so that’s really going to accelerate that for us. But already the information we put out is available, searchable, and we know a lot of people go looking for it every day online. Internet radio is something of competition, but I think we’re well positioned to be a player in that competition, not only in Wisconsin, but around the world.
It’s obviously been quite the year for political drama in Wisconsin. What, from a public radio perspective, is the best way to cover highly controversial topics like that? Do you have any past examples?
From the standpoint of the news coverage, I think it points out the conflicts that we see; more than ever the need for us to be able to talk about issues in a setting where we have to face each other. It’s easier now, in this day and age, to isolate yourself from the other side of the issue. If you want, you can sit on the same website or listen to particular radio stations that have one point of view, or just get certain kinds of magazines or whatever it is. And really, you know, pretending your point of view is the only one that’s out there. I think public radio’s going to continue to play a strong role because it emphasizes civil discourse; and that’s the sort of thing that gets you in a position where you can start making some headway.
Let me share a story with you that’s kind of an example of that: It doesn’t have to do with the state political conflict, but more so the local one. About a year ago – last summer, in fact – the Durand School District was undergoing some turmoil. The school board was trying to figure out how to meet expenses, and some ideas came up that were quite radical, such as drastically reducing the number of credits required to graduate. There was a lot of letter writing to the editor of the local newspaper … a lot of discussion, a lot of yelling at board meetings, things like that. So we brought in on one of our shows the head of the school board, the head of the teacher’s union, and the spokesperson for the group that was pushing for these changes; they all came in to the studio. I came to find out as I was talking to them that they had never been in the same room before, and in fact, they had not all met, despite the state discussion that was going on. So we sat down, we talked about the issues; everybody stood their ground on the issues, but it was a cordial discussion because they had to look at each other, they had to talk to each other in the same room.
To me, the fun part about that is that when the show was over, they all left the building and I stayed to do a little more work. Then, a half an hour later, I left the building and the three of them were still standing, talking in the parking lot. Now those are people who would not have gotten together on their own. But because they got together, got to know each other as human beings, they came to realize that – to a large extent – they all wanted the same thing: they wanted responsible spending on good education. They were all coming at it from a little different angle, and discussing things together. I don’t know if things were resolved from that, but I took heart in the fact that discussion was had and people continue to discuss after the fact – and I’m hoping that’s always the case, that when we have a show about a controversial issue, the discussion doesn’t stop with the show, but it just helps people to be more informed so that they can have those discussions on more of a fact-based basis as opposed to an emotional basis.
