Tag: WKNO

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Radio Free Memphis! How Did One City Get Four Non-Commercial Stations?

If you enjoy any sort of music or news that’s slightly off the beaten path, you may ultimately have a bit of Scotch tape to thank for its availability on the radio. Back in 1967, when President Lyndon Johnson was about to sign the Public Broadcasting Act into law, the language was being debated up to the last minute, including the use of the word “radio.” In Listener Supported: The Culture and History of Public Radio, author Jack Mitchell describes how the words “and radio” had been removed from the document only days before heading to Johnson’s desk. At the last minute, the bill’s author used tape to add the two words back in, thus laying the foundation for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, including National Public Radio and its nearly 50-year legacy of local affiliates. 

Not long after that, in the mid-1970s, there was an explosion of independent, listener-supported community stations. And since then, public (NPR-affiliated) and community (volunteer) radio stations have offered the best alternatives to commercial music and news radio. For all the touting of “choices” offered by market-driven institutions, commercial broadcasting can take on a dispiriting sameness. As brilliant as pop culture may be at times, let’s face it: A city’s creative life depends on art that rises above the demographic- and market-driven ethos of commercial media. 

Memphis might have been very different if nonprofit radio had not taken root here. But take root it did, and now the city boasts four non-commercial stations that are driven and supported by their listeners. April is an especially auspicious time to honor that legacy, it being the month when two of our most venerable stations were founded. Here’s a look at the state of non-commercial Memphis radio today. 

Darel Snodgrass and Kacky Walton show off their NPR temporary tattoos. (Photo:courtesy of Darel Snodgrass)

WKNO (91.1 FM): The Mother of Mid-South Public Radio

“In April of next year, the station’s going to be 50 years old,” says Darel Snodgrass, director of radio at WKNO-FM. “We went on in April of ’72, which was only like three months after NPR was formed. The only program they had was All Things Considered, so all the rest of the time was filled with classical music.”

As Snodgrass points out, that twin commitment to both news and music has defined WKNO ever since. “There are not many stations that do what we do anymore, that have programming that mixes news and classical music. Most stations have added HD channels and split it, with all news on one and all classical on the other. There are only about five or six stations in the country that do what we do, and mix them. It makes us kind of unique.”

Though one might imagine that a kind of homogeneity pervades NPR stations across the country, there’s actually a lot of diversity among them. For one, stations differ radically in the degree to which they weave local news into the content of national programs. Snodgrass is justifiably proud of WKNO’s commitment to Mid-South news. “Doing local news is hard. It’s a lot of work, and we’ve got people now who do wonderful work. That’s one of the things I’ve been so pleased with over the last 10 years: the growth in our local news reporting.”

But it’s no surprise that the onetime music major and current music host is even more proud of the station’s commitment to his preferred art. As he explains, it is not just music in the abstract, but music as curated by devoted DJs in real time. 

“This [NPR] station is unique in that we individually program our own shows. We pick our own music. This just doesn’t happen anymore. Even other classical music stations have a program director who’s telling them what to play. And of course commercial stations are all heavily programmed, mostly from New York and Los Angeles. So Kacky [Walton] and I consider ourselves to be extremely lucky. We can use that freedom to respond to things. If it’s a gloomy, rainy day, we can play something uplifting.We can react to things both locally and nationally, which a lot of people just don’t get to do. It’s kind of amazing, honestly.”

Kacky Walton, the station’s music coordinator and other music host, agrees. “You can respond to events,” she says. “The best example was after September 11, 2001. We just had news for I don’t know how many days. But when we finally went back to music, there was still that feeling of sadness, and you had to be really mindful of playing something with the appropriate mood to it. It was difficult, but at the same time, I discovered a lot of music that I hadn’t really played before.” 

This was especially true as the lockdown conditions of the pandemic set in last year. Radio took on a new importance in people’s lives. “In hard times, radio gives you a sense of community,” Snodgrass says. “We heard a lot from folks who were listening to a lot of classical music. They may have previously been going to their jobs every day. Now they’re at home, listening to classical music, because it’s a haven, it’s a refuge. It provides a sense of security and continuity. These are pieces that have been around, in some cases, for hundreds of years. And they’re still there.”  

Bryson Whitney
(Photo: Antwoine McClellan | AJM Images)

WEVL (89.9 FM): The Pioneer Spirit

WKNO was one of the first affiliates to join the NPR family, benefiting from the largess of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, but not long after its launch, there arose an alternative take on nonprofit radio in the heart of Midtown. In fact, for many years, it was only in Midtown, because the station’s 10-watt broadcast couldn’t reach any farther. 

“I think I came to the station in 1978, two years after it went on the air,” recalls Judy Dorsey, the longtime station manager for WEVL. “I was strictly a volunteer. I was just interested in it. I’d read about it in the paper and couldn’t believe we had something like this in Memphis. Granted, it was only 10 watts. You could only hear it in certain areas of Midtown. But just the fact that it was there and people were doing this was very exciting to me. And when I first went down to the house where it was located, I knew, ‘Here’s my people. I found ’em.’”

That esprit de corps fueled much of the counterculture, of course, including the little station that could. “There were a lot of what you might call hippies and assorted musicians. They were drawn to it almost immediately. And curious people like me, people who liked oddball music that wasn’t being heard.” As with the hippies that started the Memphis Country Blues Festival, there was an inclusiveness to the WEVL volunteers’ ethos that lent itself to diversity.  

Judy Dorsey
(Photo: Karen Pulfer Focht)

“I remember the first time I heard a live performance on the air,” Dorsey recalls. “I think it was [local blues legends] the Fieldstones. They played live on there several times, because we had connections with them. And they had what they called a Blues-a-thon. And I remember opening the door and there was Rufus Thomas up at the top of the stairs, doing the Funky Chicken! 

“That was the first night that Dee ‘Cap’n Pete’ Henderson ever came to the station. He lived way over in Box Town, and had gone to Radio Shack and bought a big ol’ antenna, and stuck it up on his roof, just so he could hear the Blues-a-thon, because he’d read about it in The Commercial Appeal. Then he called the DJ on the air and the guy told him, ‘Come on down here! You know more about this stuff than I do!’ So he came down.” That encounter led to the late Cap’n Pete becoming one of the station’s preeminent blues DJs, whose shows are still rebroadcast to this day.

Homemade antennas and chance encounters capture the spirit of WEVL well, which has become a local institution on the strength of its do-it-yourself attitude. It persisted even as the station outgrew its original wattage in 1986. “Our first transmitter building, when we went back on the air in ’86, was all built with donated materials and volunteer labor. I don’t think we paid for anything out there,” says Dorsey.

The same personal commitment, and reliance on local pledges, has helped WEVL weather the cycles of funding and attrition. The Carter years were a good time to begin. “You had a lot of little 10-watt stations starting up at the same time as WEVL. A lot of them were born in that part of the 1970s. We’re charter members of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters — we were some of the first people to join it. Our first station manager and program director were getting paid through grant money from the federal government, and when the grant money ran out, that’s when they left. There were all kinds of different grants in those days. When all that stopped, that was a bad time. It was Reagan, he ruined everything. That was sort of a dark era, because we didn’t have any money to pay anybody. There was a period where it was strictly volunteers. It was a bit chaotic.”

But sometimes you can make chaos work for you, as WEVL’s longevity bears out. Today, they carry on much as before, still using the homemade record shelves made years ago, the epitome of listener-supported radio, with last year’s mid-pandemic pledge drive being one of the station’s most successful ever. 

Marcella’s Memphis Soul Stew hostess Marcella Simien
(Photo: Courtesy of Tommy Warren)

WYPL (89.3): Serving the Underserved, Dishing Out Memphis Magic

Though WEVL’s original 10 watts may have been rather weak, a station now using one of the region’s most powerful transmitters had even more humble beginnings. “We are now a 100,000-watt station, covering a 75-mile radius from the tower in West Memphis. That tower was actually donated to the library in 1997, and its power and size is a bit of overkill, but that’s the situation we’re in.” So reflects Tommy Warren, broadcast manager for WYPL, the station based in the basement of the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library. 

Yet the station still retains its original mission of offering the vision-impaired and others readings of current newspapers, magazines, and books — one of only two such stations in the country. “It started out in 1978 as a ham radio kind of situation,” says Warren. “I am only the second radio manager here since then. Before me, there was a manager who was himself vision-impaired. He organized volunteers, and they’d sit in a little booth and read, and you had to have a ham radio at home to pick it up. It operated like that for about 15 years.”

When Warren came on board, he added an element to the readings by tapping into the huge digital archive of Memphis music in the library system. That has seen its audience increase dramatically, especially overseas, where the station can be heard online. 

“We started doing all the music shows five or six years ago. Now we’re bringing in DJs like Randy Haspel and Lahna Deering and Barbara Blue. People who actually play Memphis music also come in here and produce shows.” 

The new emphasis on music has made WYPL a real player on the community radio scene, although they, unlike the other stations mentioned here, do not depend on public donations. “Because we’re paid for by the city of Memphis, we feel there’s an obligation that we have to live up to. Especially through COVID. When there are emergencies, people turn to over-the-air radio for their first source of information.” 

Jared “Jay B” Boyd, Shelby McCall, and Robby Grant
(Photo: Jamie Harmon)

WYXR (91.7 FM): The New Kids on the Block

Yet another player in the nonprofit world of the airwaves arrived right in the middle of the pandemic lockdown last year, but the timing does not appear to have slowed its roll. Its frequency was already familiar to Memphians, having been where the University of Memphis’ station, WUMR, had lived on the dial for decades. But sometime in 2019, the U of M decided the jazz-only format and station management needed a change of course. 

Robby Grant, executive director of WYXR, describes the process as an evolution of goals. “The University of Memphis knew they wanted to do something different with the radio station. They had an existing relationship with the Daily Memphian, and reached out to them, but the folks at the Daily Memphian said, ‘We don’t want to run an entire radio station.’ So they approached the Crosstown Concourse. The U of M wanted to get more connected with the community, so this was another way for them to reach outside of their campus. It made sense for it to be a partnership.”

For Grant, who has a background in software and web development, a crucial element was also making the most of digital technology to archive every show put on the air, which community stations in other cities have implemented. But once that infrastructure was in place, the shows themselves had to be created. (Including Flyer Radio, a show produced by Flyer staff featuring news, interviews, and Memphis music, and airing every Friday at noon.) 

“They brought me in,” he says, “and I brought in Jay B [program director Jared Boyd] soon thereafter to really shape the programming. I had some ideas. I knew free-form radio allows a lot of flexibility for the community to be involved. I wanted some talk programming. I felt like that was missing. There’s some talk programming on a national level, but I thought there was a way to elevate more of the community talk. The Daily Memphian has their news part of it. So I was working on the nuts and bolts, bringing that together, getting agreements in place. When Jay B came on, we hit the ground running with the programming. We built on our networks, along with the applications process, to find DJs.” 

By the time of their debut broadcast on October 5th of last year, they had 70 volunteer DJs, arguably with a greater programming diversity than any other station in the country. But it felt a bit like a minefield. As Boyd explains, “Frankly, moving from WUMR’s jazz-lover focus to a new format, a free-form radio station, was going to be a hard change for a lot of people, no matter what our content was. We were taking something away from the community that was extremely needed, in some people’s eyes. And that can be rough.”

Nonetheless, Boyd was determined to raise the stakes of the diverse programming. “People may not expect to hear community radio in Memphis, in the South, that has a space for hip-hop, house music, or punk. But the reality of Memphis is that those people are as much if not more representative of our community than the genres most people think of when they consider community radio. So how and why could we be representative of the community if we’re not representative of those people? 

“And there are still places where we haven’t been able to find the right person, who understands what we do, and can present to their segment of the community. Like the Latinx community. But also the Vietnamese community and the Chinese and Japanese and Ethiopian and Somalian and Kenyan communities. There’s tons of cultures who pair their origins with the identity of being American and being a Memphian. But there are only 24 hours in a day, so we have to be creative about how to bring everybody on.” 

Though there are more ambitious plans ahead, Boyd feels that the mix WYXR has settled on passes one key test, perhaps the toughest test of all: “The feedback we’ve been getting is that people don’t know how to explain what we do, except that it just feels and sounds like Memphis,” he says. “I wanted to lead with that.”

Editor’s Note: This month, WKNO, WEVL, and WYXR all have their seasonal pledge drives. We urge you to tune in and give generously. 

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We Recommend We Saw You

Little Tea Shop Documentary Premieres July 10th on WKNO

CREDIT: Courtesy of Last Bite Films.

Courtesy of Last Bite Films.

Suhair Lauck at her post behind the Little Tea Shop cash register. From the documentary ‘The Little Tea Shop.’



The Little Tea Shop is closed for now because of the pandemic, but, thanks to Molly Wexler and crew, fans can visit the iconic Downtown restaurant on film.

The Little Tea Shop, Wexler’s documentary on the restaurant owned by Suhair Lauck, will air at 7:30 p.m. July 10th, 3:30 p.m. July 11th, and noon on July 12th on WKNO-TV. “This is the first time anyone will be able to see it,” says Wexler, founder of Last Bite Films. “Technically, this is the premiere. This is the half-hour version. The short version is 16 minutes long. The one we submitted to film festivals.”

The half-hour — actually 25 minutes  — version is “more of the people who dined at the restaurant,” she says. It “really tells the history of the restaurant, and it goes in deep with the customers. They’re friends. They’re more than customers. They’re the lifeblood of the restaurant. Of course, we go in and get to know Suhair, too, and why Suhair was able to continue the legacy of The Little Tea Shop and really embrace it and make it grow.”

As for the patrons in the documentary, Wexler says, viewers will “see a lot of Memphis favorites like Henry Turley and Charlie Newman. And Pat Mitchell Worley, Mayor A C Wharton.”

Courtesy of Last Bite Films.

Former Mayor A C Wharton at the Litttle Tea Shop. From the documentary ‘The Little Tea Shop.’

Then there are people like Matt Dellinger, author of Interstate 69, a book about the history of the highway. “He’s a really engaging guy from Brooklyn who we interviewed because we wanted someone who wasn’t from Memphis.”

Dellinger’s story with Lauck is “incredible,” Wexler says. “About 10 years ago he was down in Memphis doing research for a book he was writing and he stumbled into The Little Tea Shop. He wasn’t feeling well. And the way Suhair and some of the other people took care of him, he made life-long bonds with people from here. Because of The Little Tea Shop.”

Asked how the documentary came into being, Wexler says, “I actually got the idea when I saw Suhair out one night and it got me thinking about the Tea Shop and how I went there with my dad when I was a kid. He was a lawyer and working Downtown. I couldn’t believe the restaurant was not just still open, but thriving. I thought, ‘That’s kind of unique. I’m curious to learn more.’”

The Little Tea Shop was founded in 1918 by Lillie E. Parham and Emily A. Carpenter as a place for their friends to eat lunch when they were Downtown. Vernon Bell bought the restaurant in the 1940s. Lauck’s husband, the late James Lauck Sr., bought it in 1982.

Lauck, who was born in Bethany, Palestine, moved to Memphis in 1967 after marrying her first husband, who lived in Memphis. She later married James Lauck, who owned The Little Tea Shop, and began her career at the restaurant.

Courtesy of Last Bite Films.

Suhair Lauck in the LIttle Tea Shop kitchen. From the documentary ‘The Little Tea Shop.’

After she got the idea for the documentary, Wexler began visiting the restaurant, but not telling Lauck what she was up to in case she didn’t pursue the project. “Before I ever was even going to film it, I was doing a bunch of research. Just talking to people who ate at the restaurant to find out if there was enough material there to make the documentary.”

 She got together with Newman, John Malmo, and Ken Neill at the restaurant. “Matt was in town. And his relationship with all those people and Suhair was so interesting we arranged to film another day when he was back in town to get him on camera. He adds a lot to the story, I think.”

That “shows how special” The Little Tea Shop is, Wexler says. Someone like Dellinger from Brooklyn “can come in and make these amazing connections. It feels like home here.”

That’s “the root of the story,” she says. “Why is the 102-year-old restaurant so important to so many people as a connector? I think it’s the fact that it feels so comfortable. You feel so welcome.”

A lot of it “has to do with the food. But it has a lot to do with Suhair. The environment she created. I mean, there are many places you can go in Memphis and have a fine meal. You may have great conversations with people you lunch with and that’s the end of the experience. At the Tea Shop, you have a great conversation and so much more. You might meet someone that changes your life. You nourish your body, you nourish your relationships, you nourish your soul.”

And, she says, “You might have a conversation that changes Memphis.”

Courtesy of Last Bite Films.

Familiar fare at the Little Tea Shop. From the documentary ‘The Little Tea Shop.’

Wexler is executive producer and co-director of the documentary. Joseph Carr is producer and Matteo Servente is co-director. “Without Joseph and Matteo, the movie wouldn’t have been made because they brought years of expertise and they were very patient with me.”

As for the documentary-making experience, Wexler says, “I learned that I love making films. I hope I get to do this again. And I love getting  to know people and getting their stories. When you give people this platform to share, you learn about the best of people.”

Wexler says she “probably met 50 new friends. We connected through The Little Tea Shop. There are so many neat things about people that are inspirational. There are a lot of exciting and interesting people living in Memphis whom I had the honor to meet.”

They whittled the documentary down to make the 16-minute version for film festivals, she says. “The half-hour version is more Memphis-centric. The shorter version is more universal. I’ve submitted it to about 25 film festivals.”

After the documentary premieres on WKNO, the station is “going to offer it up for other PBS stations in Tennessee and maybe the region to show it if they want to. Ideally, we’d love to get distribution for it. There are a few networks that could be a good fit.

“If it wasn’t for the pandemic, then WKNO would have had a big watch party and everything, but you can’t do that. What I’m hoping is that since people can’t go to the restaurant and everybody is missing that sense of community and all that great food, maybe this will bring them a little bit of happiness and remind them. It might make them a tad bit sad, but, hopefully, it will also make them happy. It will make them remember the good times there and, in kind, make them want to go back. They’ll feel that sense of missing that restaurant a little bit more.”

For her next project, Wexler says, “Joseph and Matteo are tossing around a few ideas, but the pandemic kind of makes it challenging. It’s a good time to brainstorm. We have one idea we’re excited about, but it’s a little challenging to move forward now.”

The new project, Wexler says, would be “very different, but still Memphis-centric.”

Courtesy of Last Bite Films.

Suhair Lauck. From the documentary ‘The Little Tea Shop.’

Categories
Intermission Impossible Theater

A Memory of Charles Billings

Charles Billings, speaking the speech…

Synchronicity’s a bear sometimes. Over the past month I’ve been cleaning the clutter from closets, drawers, and cabinets at work and home; disposing of all those things I thought I needed to keep but really didn’t, and finding special places to store all the trivial nothings that grew into meaningful somethings while I wasn’t watching.

One of the things that turned up was a handwritten missive from Waynoka Ave. in the 38111 that began, “Dear One…”. Even if his name hadn’t been embossed in red at the top of the card I’d have known in those two words, this was was a summons from Charles Billings — actor, vocalist extraordinaire, and the longtime voice of WKNO. He’d enjoyed my 2009 guest appearance on Michael Feldman’s show Whaddya Know? and couldn’t wait till he saw me in person to tell me. The note ended with an invitation, “Come have a drink with me at The Grove Grill soon,” and his phone number, which I realized wasn’t in my current contacts list. So I immediately logged it into my phone thinking I’d surprise him with a call sometime soon.

We’d communicated now and then, but there hadn’t been a proper bull-session since right after he’d sent that card. I’d heard rumors of health issues and have been trying to be better about staying in touch with old friends — particularly the people who sometimes come into you life that you may not see all the time, but whom you sometimes just want to write or call out of the blue to say, “Dear one…”.

Days after unearthing his note from the bottom of my office filing cabinet, I received news that Charles Billings — No, the Great Charles Billings — had passed away. Still processing.

Charles was such an integral part of Memphis’ cultural life for so long there’s no good way to condense his accomplishments into a paragraph or two, so instead I’ll share my earliest — and frankly, my weirdest — memories of one of the most charming, gracious, and talented people I’ve ever known. Whether he was acting in dramas by Arthur Miller, Leonard Bernstein musicals, or belting one out for Opera Memphis, Charles made everything look effortless. Nothing impressed the younger, only recently urbanized, me half so much as the way he could sit down to the mic at WKNO, drop his deep, honeyed Southern drawl, and wrap his tongue around the names of all those classical composers. Fresh out of farm country, this very nearly astonished.

Since the bad news broke, people have posted many photos of Charles wearing tuxedos and suits but, honestly, I can’t think of him without seeing the man sporting 18th-Century British military drag with a sparkling rhinestone tiara perched atop his thinning, close-cropped hair, wearing a devilish, grinch-like smile bookended by a dangling pair of rhinestone “ear-bobs.”  It’s an imprinted memory from 1986, when we were both cast in Betty Ruffin’s production of Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s Restoration comedy, The Rivals. These sparkly items, left over from some past show, were worn for our enjoyment, and to let everybody know it was backstage story-time and Prince Charles would be holding forth. Until his next scene, anyway. This was my very first show in Memphis and my first opportunity to learn from professionals — like the man with the booming baritone voice wearing the tiara whose commitment to excellence combined with wild and wonderful offstage antics to teach a young aspiring actor some valuable lessons about fearlessness and freedom.

Now, because I’ve never known how to write a proper obituary, let me share an off-color story.

The Rivals is probably most famous because of the character Mrs. Malaprop from whom we get the expression “malapropism” — an accidental insertion of wrong, similar words into common phrases with humorous results. Naturally, during down time between scenes, the cast made its own modern malaprops built around lines in Sheridan’s script. Mrs. Malaprop’s already bungled Shakespeare, “A station like Harry Mercury,”  became, “A station like Freddy Mercury,” while Charles’ line to a disobedient son, “Damn me if I ever call you Jack again,” was given a decidedly NC-17 twist. I’ll leave the actual change to the reader’s imagination, but suffice it to say, it was naughty. It was silly. It made good use of the word Jack, and it was all in good fun until the night Charles, in the rarest of rare moments, became tongue tied and very nearly said the adult “backstage-only” variation in front of an audience. Keeping a straight face was difficult for everybody.

“I’m gonna get all y’all,” he said, bursting into the green room beet red, and snickering like a school boy who’d just split his pants.

I mention the dirty joke both because it’s so inextricably woven into my own origin story as a theater person who fell in love with the live-ness of live theater, and to contrast with the other thing I so strongly associate with Charles Billings — his vocal interpretation of  sacred music. He was the kind of singer literally able to shake rafters while inserting incredible nuance into every phrase. It was a powerful, revealing, and otherworldly voice that made it easy to imagine other, better worlds.  If I had only one sentence to summarize the man – very nearly a myth in local arts circles — I think I’d skip all the usual and well-deserved lines about gentility, elegance, generosity, etc. and go with something a little more hypostatic.

Charles Billings was fully human and he was entirely divine. He’ll be missed. He already is. 

Charles Billings in The Rivals (Center, forward facing). McCoy Theatre, Rhodes College.

Visitation will be from 5-7 Tuesday, September 26th, at Canale Funeral Home. The funeral will be Wednesday, September 27th at 10:00 a.m. at Calvary Episcopal Church, Memphis.

Categories
Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

TED Talks PBS Special Has Memphis Ties

TED Talks, the popular online lecture series, is premiering its new broadcast special on PBS this Wednesday night and the nationally broadcast show features work by Memphis artists. 

A virtual set created by Memphians K. Brandon Bell, Sara Rossi, and Dan Baker.

K. Brandon Bell and Sarah Rossi’s work on the Tony Awards was previously featured in the Memphis Flyer. Along with animator Dan Baker, they created the virtual sets that hosted the speakers for a TED event last November in New York’s Town Hall Theater on Broadway. Three shows for PBS were created from the event, and the first one, “Science And Wonder”, will air on WKNO Wednesday night, March 30 at 9 PM. Here’s a preview:

TED Talks PBS Special Has Memphis Ties

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Jim Eikner

Memphis lost one of its finest citizens last week — Jim Eikner. Lawyer, onetime prosecutor, actor, singer, painter, wit, public speaker par excellence, he was, among many other things, the on-air presence and golden voice that sustained WKNO, Memphis’ public broadcasting station, for decades. He was a blend of dignity, service, and wit who, even before his ascension in the current year to the presidency of the Rotary Club of Memphis, was the embodiment of the club and its motto, Service Before Self. And no Memphis Rotarian can forget — or emulate — his erstwhile weekly news reviews that for years, faithful to Aristotle, always both amused and instructed.

Jim’s death was attributed to heart failure, though it is misleading to leave it at that, since his heart — in the metaphorical sense, anyhow — never failed us. Indeed, as we learned, even after he was disconnected medically from his artificial life supports, his heart kept beating for some time before subsiding into its final, reluctant rest, as if to remind us that he intended to remain with us in spirit.

We learned upon his death that Jim was 82, and, as we thought about that, it certainly made sense. He had the gravitas that comes with such age. But in another sense, he was still Jimmy Eikner of Messick High School, a youth who was equal parts sober-sided and impish. He stayed that way throughout his time at Southwestern at Memphis (now Rhodes College) and at the University of Tennessee Law School and throughout his adult career as a full-time Renaissance man.

It was ironic that Jim Eikner should leave us on the very cusp of spring— he whose wardrobe and manner always distilled the essence of that season. But it was appropriate that, after one of the bleakest local winters on record, the weather should relent this week after his death, enough so to allow several of us to fetch our own cords and seersuckers from their hiding places, in his honor.

One of Jim’s memorable roles as an actor was that of Norman in On Golden Pond, the octogenarian who in the course of the play comes to terms with the generations that are preparing to succeed him. Eikner himself never had to play catch-up with anybody of any era. He was a man for all times and an inspiration to them, as well, and will not stop being that.

The one thing we will miss the most about Jim Eikner is that voice of his, something that he himself was so dismissive about, referring to it as mere nasality, but which we knew to be an uncommonly mellow instrument, whose silky baritone expressed all the tones and nuances of life like nobody else’s. But it will still be there, in the mind’s ear, to fill such uncomfortable silences as come along.
These remarks were given at Tuesday’s Downtown Rotary Club by Jackson Baker.

Categories
News News Feature

Remembering Pierre

When I first met Pierre Kimsey I had no idea what to make of him.

It was an era when it seemed everyone in the television industry was trying to find the elusive magic formula that would capture viewing audiences in whatever media markets we were in. The “happy talk” format, which often painfully forced interactions between news anchors, was just starting to become a trend. I could imagine to uncomfortable viewers it verged on the voyeuristic. Here were people in a previously one-dimensional box suddenly sharing snippets of their personal lives when they were on camera in an attempt to humanize themselves with a strained 30-second exchange of conversation.

But I knew, when Pierre and I watched in disgust — at the now defunct Fort Pierce, Florida, television station WTVX — while two of our anchors feebly struggled to talk to one another, I’d found a kindred spirit. What I didn’t know was it would be the beginning of a 30-year bond between two people who saw an opportunity to explore television as the free-form medium we thought it was meant to be.

WTVX, a UHF start-up, was the perfect testing ground for us. Pierre was hired as feature reporter and film critic. I reported and anchored sports, but was pressed into service for news stories, as well. Our station struggled to find an identity in one of the fastest-growing television markets in the country. Since we had to fill hours of news time with a small staff, it was imperative that on occasions, we would stretch the envelope of creativity.

I specifically remember when, in his role as film critic, Pierre came up with the idea of doing a review of one of the original trilogies of Star Wars movies. He enlisted my help as co-starring in a four-minute piece in which he portrayed Han Solo and I was his nameless co-pilot. I was nameless because Pierre, long before such concerns existed, worried that casting me as “Chewbacca the Wookie” might come off as racist.

In true Pierre form, the preparations and logistics were meticulous. We commandeered station owner Frank Spain’s twin engine plane, which was parked in the station’s lot. Our fellow employees came out and rocked the plane as if it were undergoing an attack. The finished product was seamless. With his usual unselfish nature, Pierre gave me all the laugh lines while he played the foil. It was brilliantly edited and produced … and when the ratings came in, it was stunningly obvious, almost nobody watched it. Thus was life at X-34!

After working together for a couple of years, Pierre took a job in Detroit and became a sensation. We kept in touch through the years as I eventually landed in Memphis, and he fell from the stars in Detroit as a feature reporter to be resurrected in Huntsville, Alabama, as a producer of award-winning documentaries.

We eventually reunited at WHBQ to work together on investigative stories. It was during that time I came to fully recognize the talent and caring for the human condition Pierre had behind his cultured and sometimes distracted demeanor.

As I related in a recent WKNO tribute to Pierre with my television colleagues Jackson Baker, Bill Dries, and Andrew Douglas, issues such as the depth of poverty and racism in Memphis truly angered and befuddled him. He wasn’t naïve enough to believe that every man could be transformed into a foot soldier for change. However, unlike many of us, he was willing, until proven otherwise, to give everyone he met the benefit of the doubt.

Pierre’s unmatched body of television work was reflective of his attempt to reach the core of people’s feelings. He assumed a life’s mission to make that one-dimensional box come alive, not through idle chatter but by producing thought-provoking weekly programs and thoroughly researched documentaries for WKNO.

My biggest heartbreak is in knowing that for all the lives he may have unknowingly touched and motivated, Pierre died alone. The circumstances of his death will haunt me for the rest of my life. Why didn’t I ask him about his health? Why didn’t I have him over to the house just to talk with him about whatever was going on in his life? Why didn’t I know there might be something amiss?

The answers to those questions were just a phone call away. Yet, it was a phone call I didn’t make.

Decades ago, I didn’t know what to make of my first meeting with Pierre Kimsey. But I learned, as so many viewers also did, to appreciate his creative genius. He will be sorely missed.

Les Smith is a reporter for WHBQ Fox-13.

Categories
Intermission Impossible Theater

Girls will be boys at THE CLUB

The Club at TheatreWorks

  • The Club at TheatreWorks

“A gentleman is any man who wouldn’t hit a woman… with his hat on.”— From The Club‎

Ann Marie Hall doesn’t mince words.

“We’re not just sexist, we’re racist too,” she says archly doting on her production of The Club, a slyly insightful if somewhat obscure musical review compiled by poet Eve Merriam with choreography by Courtney Oliver and Jackie Nichols. The title of the show refers literally to Gentlemen’s clubs at the turn of the 20th-Century where certain privileged males of Anglo extraction could escape family obligations to gamble, drink, and conduct private business. More broadly it also alludes to the white male privilege exemplified in period songs like, “String of Pearls,” “The Juice of the Grape,” and “Following in Father’s Footsteps.”


Sights and sounds from The Club, 2012

This isn’t Hall’s first encounter with The Club, which showcases an ensemble of female performers impersonating men of means. In 1980 she played Freddy in the show’s regional premier at Circuit Playhouse and revived the role a year later for Playhouse on the Square.

Ann Marie Hall directing The Club, 2012

  • Ann Marie Hall directing The Club, 2012

Hall sings Miranda in The Club, 1980

  • Hall sings “Miranda” in The Club, 1980

“It was very popular,” she says.

Categories
Special Sections

WKNO-TV to Feature “Ask Vance” — Tune In!

Southern Routes Airs Thursday

  • “Southern Routes” Airs Thursday

After years of turning a deaf ear to movie directors, television executives, and purveyors of cheap pornography, I finally gave in to the persistent demands of WKNO-TV and will now make a regular appearance on their popular Southern Routes series.

It’s true! The first show airs on WKNO this Thursday, February 4th, at 8 pm.

So plop yourself in front of the television, set your TIVO, or just wander around the appliance section of your local Target store. If you still miss it, the show will repeat on Saturday, February 6th, at 2:30 pm and again on Sunday, February 7th at 12 noon. After that, well, I really can’t help you.

I won’t tell you what topic I’ll be discussing on the premiere episode; you’ll just have to watch. I guarantee you it will be a good show, since it’s produced by a super-talented gentleman named Kip Cole, and the “Ask Vance” segment (no, the whole show isn’t about me — not yet, anyway) will be produced by my pal Bonnie Kourvelas, who has produced and hosted many of WKNO’s wonderful Memphis Memoirs specials. If you saw “Beyond the Parkways” or “At the Movies” — well, that was some of her fine work, so I’m in good hands.

Don’t worry; I’m not leaving the world of magazines or blogs or books or calendars; I’m just spreading out a bit, that’s all.

Of course, this is only the first step. Next: Billboards, iTunes, and podcasts. I’m trying to get some of my colleagues to wear those old-timey sandwich boards — adorned with a stunning portrait of me, of course — and walk up and down the Main Street Mall. So far, no takers, even though I’ve offered them a fistful of nickels. How lazy can you be?

(And yes, that IS me on the TV screen in the photograph here. Don’t squint at the image; click to enlarge it, for goodness’ sake. Gosh, what a cute tyke! I think I was only 35 or so, singing in the school play.)

Categories
News

WKNO To Host Oral History Workshop

Inspired by Ken Burns’ documentary The War, WKNO, along with the Memphis Public Library & Information Center and the Library of Congress Veterans History Project, is presenting an oral history workshop on November 10th.

Representatives from True Story Pictures and The University of Memphis Department of History will help participants learn about telling their family’s stories. While The War focused on World War II soldiers, this workshop is open to veterans and non-veterans alike.

The workshop is free and is being held on Saturday, November 10th at 10 a.m. at the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library. Reservations are required and can be made by calling 458-2521.

Categories
Cover Feature News

Fresh Air, Dead Air

CREDIT: Richard Thompson

The week before Christmas, Memphis’ public-broadcasting station WKNO-FM gave its listeners a surprising gift: an announcement that its news-oriented affiliates, WKNA-FM 88.9 in Senatobia, Mississippi, and WKNQ-FM 90.7 in Dyersburg, Tennessee, would be sold to Christian radio networks.

By April, or perhaps sooner, the Tupelo-based American Family Association (AFA) will assume the broadcast license of WKNA, and Rocklin, California-based Educational Media Foundation (EMF) will take over WKNQ’s, pending regulatory approval. (AFA declined to comment since the transfer is pending; EMF did not return calls for comment.)

Because of the timing, some listeners missed WKNO’s December 18th announcement of the agreement, valued at $2.8 million combined. Still, the news hit hard.

“Thanks for the early onset of holiday depression. WKNO’s sale of the Senatobia station to Christian radio is like a bad dream,” Joe Boone wrote in a letter to The Commercial Appeal in December. “I moved away from home but return frequently. Being greeted by the BBC was my favorite thing, outside of friends and family. Now it’s more true than ever: If 50 people moved away from Memphis, I would never see it again. You can have it. I want to love Memphis, but it won’t let me. Oh, well, go Tigers and thank God for satellite TV.”

Chris Rimel, co-publisher/editor of the Dyersburg State Gazette and a WKNO supporter, didn’t like the news either, considering there’s only so much tower space for radio stations to lease in that city, located about 90 miles north of Memphis on U.S. Highway 51.

Once WKNO gives up WKNQ’s transmitter lease, Rimel said, “they are basically leaving Dyersburg for good.” When that happens, WKNO can forget about mailing him a pledge card.

Richard Thompson

Michael J. LaBonia believes the pending transfer of WKNA and WKNQ is a positive for WKNO. The sale will bring WKNO closer to its goal of building a new, $8 million facility debt-free.

The depth of the contributor unrest is unclear, since both stations are still on the air. WKNO, which is used to complaints, has braced itself nevertheless.

WKNO has ensured the survival of WKNA’s and WKNQ’s most popular programs, National Public Radio’s (NPR) Talk of the Nation and BBC World News. The former started simulcasting on WKNO-FM 91.1 on January 22nd; the latter show will be broadcast on WYPL-FM 89.3, the Memphis/Shelby County Public Library’s radio station, beginning February 5th.

Michael J. LaBonia is president and CEO of Mid-South Communications Foundation, the nonprofit that created WKNO-TV Channel 10 in 1956. WKNO-FM began in 1972. “We haven’t abandoned the goal of providing two full-power services to the market,” LaBonia says. “We’re just changing the approach to achieve that goal.”

WKNO provides programming 24 hours a day, seven days a week to 1.65 million people in its designated market area. WKNO still has WKNP-FM 90.1 in Jackson, Tennessee. LaBonia says the transfers are not the end but the start of a new — and inevitable — beginning.


The Approach

Going back to 1989, when it purchased the license of WNJC from then-Northwest Mississippi Junior College and created WKNA, WKNO sought to create a full-power, all-news format service for Senatobia. It later adopted that same plan for Dyersburg. What they’ve tried has failed, LaBonia says.

“In the last five years, we’ve done everything we thought we could do to make that [plan] possible,” says LaBonia, “but we get complaints.”

In some areas, their respective signals are spotty at best — and that’s after the power was boosted to 100,000 watts from 20,000 watts. “We are not able to get comparable service” in Senatobia and Dyersburg compared to WKNO-FM in Memphis, LaBonia says, adding that there is only so much that readjusting the direction of their antennae can achieve. “There are so many other noncommercial stations. You’re restricted by the amount of power and the direction of the antennae because you can’t interfere with the other stations.”

Even in Memphis, LaBonia experiences the same frustrations like any other listener. “I can’t get it at home. I get it in my car,” he says. But LaBonia is confident that will change with the new offerings. “We’re kind of enthused and excited about the transition taking place for us.”

The plan is for WKNO-FM stations to go high-definition, which will allow it to offer multiple, CD-quality radio streams on one frequency. It’s similar to what WKNO-TV Channel 10 does with WKNO-HD Channel 10.1, which began in 2004, and WKNO2 Channel 10.2, which launched last year.

“You will still be able to get 91.1, but you’ll also have 91.1 B,” says LaBonia, adding that WKNO might consider purchasing another FM station too.

WKNO already has a federal grant and its own matching funds to build an HD radio station. There’s a federal mandate for all radio stations to switch to HD by 2009, which would make WKNA and WKNQ expendable anyway since they have analog frequencies. LaBonia adds that neither WKNA nor WKNQ is profitable. Over the last 15 years, he says, WKNO has spent, on average, about $93,000 a year to subsidize their operations.

That’s tough for a community-operated nonprofit that receives the majority of its funding (83 percent between fiscal years 2001 to 2004) from membership activities and corporate and foundation support.

And that support fluctuates. From fiscal year 2004 to fiscal year 2006, Mid-South Public Communications Foundation experienced a 53.4 percent drop in direct public support as well as a 31.4 percent decrease in government contributions, according to its federal income tax statements.

While community support is influenced by the economy, public stations get grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which in turn receives its funding from Congress. In recent years, that source of funding has come under attack, so much so that public-broadcasting supporters fear that deep cuts in funding could ultimately affect the quality of and decisions related to local programming.

LaBonia says the challenge now is to find a balance in funding operations. Subsidizing competes with programming for crucial operating dollars.

Richard Thompson

Dr. Karen Bowyer, president of Dyersburg State Community College, believes the loss of WKNQ will leave a void in Dyersburg, but it doesnt mean that shell cut her support for public broadcasting.

WKNO operates its TV and FM operations in what was once the entertainment building for the old Kennedy Hospital at Getwell and Park, which has been the South Campus for the University of Memphis since 1967. WKNO has been a tenant there since 1979.

While the university has grand plans for that campus (including a $44 million center for its audiology and nursing schools), WKNO wants to get out. Its building has no elevators, and the acoustics are a nightmare for production.

Toss in the fact that a prominent U of M booster has suggested locating a new multi-million-dollar football stadium on the South Campus, and LaBonia says, half-joking: “We have to get out of here, for sure, but we probably have some time before that happens.”

So, this is where the transfers come in: Ultimately, the sales of the two stations will net WKNO $1 million, giving it a total of $7 million in funds, close to its goal of $8 million for a new, 35,000-square-foot facility on five to eight acres. LaBonia wants the project to be debt-free.

“We’re not just building a building,” says LaBonia, adding that an Memphis Light, Gas & Water site off Interstate 40 is one of several possible locations. A land deal could be completed within the next two to three months. LaBonia estimates that it could take 18 months to construct the new facility.

The new building will allow WKNO to take advantage of emerging technologies and get ahead of the federal mandate for radio and television broadcasting to transition to high-definition formats by 2009. A number of Memphis media outlets have already made the switch.

In order to watch HD TV, you need a high-definition television. Same for HD radio. HD receivers can run from $77 to $1,500, according to Shopzilla.com.


Listeners

It’s still a mixed bag for listeners, at least for now.

Talk of the Nation simulcasts from 7 to 9 p.m. at the expense of some classical music programming on WKNO-FM. NPR’s Fresh Air With Terry Gross has been reduced to a half-hour during the week and now starts at 6:30 p.m. That was a slot once occupied by the 30-minute version of NPR’s All Things Considered, which is gone.

So is the classical music discussion program Exploring Music with Bill McGlaughlin from the 8 p.m. slot on WKNO-FM. Teri Sullivan, WKNO promotions manager, says: “It will go away for the time being.”

WYPL will carry BBC World News seven days a week from 6 to 8 a.m. and 11 a.m. to noon weekdays. Tommy Warren, broadcast manager for WYPL TV/FM, said the addition should strengthen the station’s morning programming. To make room, Warren said the station has reshuffled some of its pre-recorded programming.

Richard Thompson

A land deal could be completed in a couple of months. Construction could begin by the middle of the year.

However, Senatobia and Dyersburg are too far away to receive strong and consistent signals from Memphis, according to a 2004 public coverage study conducted by the Public Telecommunications Facilities Program (PTFP), which is administered by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.

Senatobia has alternatives: Rust College Public Radio, WURC-FM 88.1 in Holly Springs, and Mississippi Public Broadcasting WMAV-FM 90.3 in Oxford. Though WURC airs Talk of the Nation from 1 to 2 p.m. weekdays, it does not carry BBC World News, and its programming schedule is weighted toward jazz and gospel, not classical music.

On the other hand, WMAV has plenty of classical music but no BBC World News or Talk of the Nation. It does broadcast All Things Considered, according to its schedule.

WKNA would be the 20th station in American Family Radio’s (AFR) Mississippi portfolio, which includes adult contemporary and classic gospel formats. AFR, a division of the American Family Association and founded in 1991, has stations in 35 states.

In Dyersburg, public radio’s roots run deep.

An anonymous Dyersburg resident was one of two people who gave WKNO its name more than 50 years ago. KNO stands for “knowledge.” Now, it feels like WKNO is leaving for good, since its transmitter lease is part of the sale to EMF. Without WKNQ, according to the PTFP study, the seat of Dyer County will become a pseudo-void of public radio, existing on the fringes of the coverage areas for KASU-FM 91.9 in Jonesboro, Arkansas, and WKNP-FM in Jackson.

Life could revert back to pre-1993, the year WKNO created WKNQ. Before that, the city’s public-access TV channel broadcast the WKNO signal on its network. “It was a good strong signal too,” said Bill Hiles, a public-broadcasting supporter who retired this month after 23 years of reporting for the State Gazette.

And it’s not that people in Dyersburg are opposed to Christian radio. But there are already two EMF-owned “K-Love” stations: WUKV-FM 88.9 in Union City to the north and WKVZ-FM 94.9 in Ripley to the south.

The K-Love Radio Format began in Santa Rosa, California, in 1982. The network spans the country, from Alaska to Maine and from California to Florida, reaching more than 200,000 listeners online and 2.5 million via the radio each day, according to its Web site. The stations focus on providing news and information on Christian artists and events.

What’s the point of a third Christian radio station, asks Rimel. He’s not opposed to Christian radio, but he doesn’t believe that public broadcasting should sell stations for a profit. “Why did they expand to WKNQ in Dyersburg if they were not committed to the mission of public radio?”

Dr. Karen Bowyer, president of Dyersburg State Community College, was instrumental in bringing WKNQ to Dyersburg. She is also upset. She starts her day with NPR’s Morning Edition, loves the special programming that public radio offers, and depends on the international news to keep her abreast of what’s happening elsewhere.

Bowyer believes that international news gives people alternate perspectives to consider beyond their own. “We need another news option,” she says.

“For a democracy like the United States to flourish, we really have to have informed people at the grassroots,” Bowyer says. “We have to have everybody voting intelligently and having a lot of information. I think public radio provides a lot of that.”

Adds Hiles: “The strength of WKNO and NPR is their international coverage. ABC still does a credible job of international coverage, but CNN and MSNBC have three stories a day and they’ll repeat them over and over and over again. NPR does repeat, but I listen to NPR most days.

“You miss a guy talking about the difference between exploration and drilling in Anwar,” Hiles says. “You don’t typically hear that in your television broadcasts, and you certainly don’t hear it on your typical radio broadcasts. There are more people than you would believe who are interested in what they hear on NPR.”

Carol Feather, a music professor at Dyersburg State, says, “We get a lot of rather unbiased news from the BBC. I think you’ll find a much more balanced approach, a totally different approach from the U.S.”

John Gaudlin, retired president of First Tennessee Bank of Dyersburg, says he believes that the transfer will have a “big impact” on WKNO’s fund-raising efforts locally. “They’ll have a lot lower response from Dyersburg.”

Hiles is done. He’s retiring to Lexington, Kentucky, where he can listen to all the public radio he wants without a problem. If his WKNO pledge card came, Hiles says he would not renew. Neither will Rimel.

Bowyer says she believes that there will be “a definite void” and plans to talk to WKNO about what will happen next. And while she’ll miss the shows, public broadcasting is too important to her to cut her support of it.

Feather agrees, adding: “I’m not going to jump ship.”

Richard Thompson is a veteran business journalist who also publishes Mediaverse: Memphis, a Web site that covers Memphis media.