By Bob Ottenhoff
I am so grateful I was able to attend last week’s public meeting of the WBGO Board of Directors. I heard from volunteers who have loved working at the station for 25 years, from parents whose children learned about jazz from our public concerts, from people who rely on our news and public affairs for local news and from musicians who love our variety of music. There was so much beautiful passion. And, so, when the station failed to live up to what is expected from us, we heard that, too.
Forty years ago, I helped start WBGO (with thousands of volunteers contributing in thousands of ways) based upon a simple but powerful concept: to build a community of people that love jazz, created by and sustained by its listeners. Now, I’m back as interim CEO to get us started on the next 40 years. And once again we’ll be asking for the guidance of the WBGO community for help.
The fruit of our work is a testament to the talent of our staff and the commitment of our supporters, but you can’t have fruit without roots - and it is our deep roots in Newark that anchor us as a cultural institution. The station was born in Newark and will forever be grateful for the encouragement and nurturing we have received.
Although times have changed, our basic values at WBGO remain the same: appreciation for artistic creation and musicians, a respect of jazz in all its traditions, a commitment to diversity and inclusion and an acknowledgement that the vibrancy of the WBGO community depends on all of us doing our part to make the station successful.
At the same time, WBGO finds itself at the nexus of accelerating cultural and technological shifts, which present a new set of challenges. The music industry has been turned upside down and the public today has more music choices than ever. Every year brings new technologies and gadgets that threaten to overturn old norms and traditions. Listening to music is more personal than ever - and at the same time universal - thanks to the global reach of the internet.
We must embrace these challenges as opportunities. While our transmitter is the only one regularly broadcasting jazz over the airwaves throughout Newark and the metropolitan area, the Internet has both introduced competition and allowed us to share our programming with thousands of listeners across the world.
I believe the recipe for WBGO’s next 40 years is found in the history of jazz itself - and in our roots. We need to continue to pay respect to the rich history of our home in Newark and the traditions of jazz while being open to new streams of music and to new ways of delivering the music. If we do, 40 years from now, WBGO will be grounded and unchanged in its principles and traditions and completely new in ways we can’t even imagine.
I am so proud of what our station has done over the last 40 years. Only this week, WBGO’s Jazz Night in America won an award for Best Syndicated Radio Program, and our podcast The Checkout was declared Best Podcast by Jazz Times. In the fall, WBGO on-air host Sheila Anderson was named as an inaugural Dan Morgenstern Fellow by the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers-Newark. And the WBGO news department continues to win awards year after year, including sweeping three categories at the New York Association of Black Journalists Awards.
Still there is much to be done. I ask for your support as we reconfirm the principles on which the station was founded and have made us so successful.
Bob Ottenhoff is interim president and CEO of WBGO.
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