KDHX, "Community" and the Rhetorical Zoom Lens
In the conflict that led to the fall of KDHX, language has been a primary battlefield.
Monthly ratings are out, and KDHX’s have continued to plummet. In the past year of open conflict, they’ve fallen to less than a third of the ratings they reached in 2022. By the measure that matters most in media, KDHX’s transformation has been an abject failure. This post will look at the pivotal role language has played in what was essentially a labor/management conflict. Central to this episode is the question of how one defines community.
The Rhetorical War Over “Community”
Anyone who has paid attention to the battle over KDHX’s future knows that the word “community” is at the center of the struggle. Since KDHX has always been a non-commercial, community radio station, this makes a lot of sense. Who is the community that KDHX represents and serves? This question largely defines where folks have fallen on the issue of the station’s reimagining. During the conflict, numerous definitions of community have been put forward by those who have stayed, those who left the station and the listeners who have been along for the ride. In many ways, this conflict of definitions mirrors other cultural conflicts we see both locally and nationally.
The way community has been defined differs wildly and usually in ways that benefit the person using the term. I think it is useful to look at how the word has been used, as this is a key part of the narrative war. Consider this a little light-McLuhan analysis of how communications have been used to define what is and isn’t the community being served by KDHX.
Version 1: Music Nerds
We’re gonna start with what I consider to be the traditional meaning of the word community in the context of KDHX. In the over 20 years that I’ve been listening to KDHX, the meaning of community that I found most commonly used was that of music aficionados. No matter the genre, there were fans that went beyond what is available on commercial radio. These fans flocked to KDHX for shows that delved way deeper into their genre(s) of choice. They wanted the deep cut or tip on newer and independent artists that were out there working to further whatever style of music they were into. Whether it was classic country, music for kids, reggae, free jazz, rockabilly, various domestic and international forms of folk music… and on and on… KDHX provided listeners with something that simply wasn’t offered by commercial radio in our region. In my conversations with other listeners, I believe this to be the most widely held definition of community in the context of KDHX. Or at least it used to be.
Now, I’m not going to say that it was something idyllic. It was weighted heavily towards white listeners. That being said, and we’ll talk about this later, it likely wasn’t as out-of-step with local demography as folks now like to portray. It was also getting better, with more non-white DJs coming online, prior to the recent lineup changes. That said, this version of community, one based on a shared affinity for music, not one based on racial or sex/gender demographics had much to recommend it. Despite it being pretty white, I would venture that the DJs at KDHX were already more racially diverse, compared to commercial radio. Unlike commercial radio stations whose DJ lineups are fairly homogenous, there was racial diversity on KDHX’s roster. My time listening to the region’s commercial stations indicate that their on-air staff aren’t very diverse. They tend to be almost completely one race or another. That KDHX had even its somewhat limited diversity put it far ahead of commercial competitors. One could definitely argue that this level of greater diversity was directly tied to the definition of community that centered a love of music over census statistics.
Version 2: #STL Metropolitan Population Demographics
Now we will move on to the second definition, which is essentially based on demography. In this version, the one currently used by the KDHX organization, community is specifically defined by racial and other demographic differences. More accurately, the broader community is broken down into component units, which are demographic-based communities. That is not to say that the new DJs don’t also love music, but it is to say that the way station’s direction has changed in many ways ignores a central part of that original version of community and the focus on music that is otherwise unplayed on local radio. After a year of turmoil, this version of community has been put out to pasture and the new demography-based version has taken primacy. Along with this, the amount of tunes played that were formerly Top 100 songs has noticeably increased. As this has happened, the station has essentially made a conscious move away from its core audience, which was people who were specifically seeking out things they wouldn’t hear on other local stations. Viewed in this light, the incredible drop in listenership isn’t at all surprising.
Let’s take a minute to talk about why this rhetorical change happened. When management decided that they were going to clean house, some kind of rationale had to be brought forth. What we were given was a narrative that this was part of movement to improve the station and region’s racial equity. The DJ firings were paving the way for a brave new KDHX that would embrace the emergent cosmopolitan St. Louis that centered social justice. It’s a wonderful narrative, but that doesn’t mean it’s truly the impetus behind the upheaval. It also does a weird thing that I’ve noticed has become extremely common among local nonprofit and public policy folks: it limits the definition of community to the city. On a regular basis, people speak about demographics in terms that confuses the city’s demography with the region’s. The reality is that KDHX’s signal goes way, way beyond the city limits. Many of the places it reaches are overwhelmingly white.
This is where the zoom lens comes in. If the goal of KDHX as a community radio station is to serve the listenership in a way that aligns with demography, which is basically what the messaging in their own media output (radio spots, articles, etc.) indicates, then it would continue to be largely white. Instead, the station’s leadership has chosen to zoom in on the city and inner ring suburbs, ignoring a huge number of square miles that are in the station’s reach. I find this is a commonly used tactic in local public policy discussions. Proponents of this or that position will rhetorically delineate things in a what that is beneficial for themselves, even if it doesn’t really line up with reality. If the station is truly supposed to serve the diverse and variegated communities covered by its signal, then it probably hasn’t improved its alignment with said goal. There are a lot of white folks that live around here. There just are. I’m not saying that you’ve got to be happy about it, but it is reality. This might not seem like a big point, but I think it is. Even under their own stated definition, what they’ve done only really makes sense if you ignore huge swaths of territory reached by KDHX’s signal. To me, this is one of the things that makes the station leadership’s rhetoric so dishonest. It’s a frame that makes them into heroes, but it’s a frame that only exists via ignoring the truth about who all is reached by the station. This was a conscious decision that has been made into a central part of the messaging war.
Version 3: The DJs and Super Fans
While the two above versions of community are the two that I most often hear people express, there is definitely a third version that I here expressed by some listeners and DJs. It is a definition that basically defined the community as the DJs and a core of listeners that have been with the station for a long time. Boomers and GenXers who have long listened and donated to the station. People like me, basically. That being said, I never held that definition, despite having played plenty of KDHX events, my bands have gotten lots of spins on the station, and knowing a bunch of DJs. While I can sort of empathize with that definition, I find it to also suffer from the same issue as the station’s current definition. These folks have also zoomed into “their” definition of community, ignoring lots and lots of people who listen (or did) to KDHX. I also find that it is this definition that station leadership uses are a rhetorical foil to their own.
Why It Matters
There might be other version of “community” floating around this situation, but I think these are three that are widely in circulation. Really, I think the first two are the most common, with the third being a sliver of the larger conversation and largely confined to online chatter. So, does it matter? I think so. I think this battle over definitions has actually been central to the conflict over at KDHX. If you read the articles that have been published, it certainly matters. Management has really centered their version of “community” in pretty much all of their communications. They have aggressively sought to define the term, thereby defining the central term in the public debate. Largely, they have been successful. The stores, etc. that I’ve read don’t really push back or analyze whether how station leadership’s demographically defined version actually lines up with the people in the station’s broadcast range. I’m sure that’s because they don’t want to be called racist. Given the liberal bent of the media outlets covering the situation, this should be no surprise. For example, I don’t think anybody at the RFT is eager to public something that well end up with their getting made out to be a bigot.
Outside of these rhetorical considerations, I think there another big one, and it relates to where we started. The station’s ratings are in the basement. That’s a fact. They’ve basically squandered decades of work to build KDHX into a station that had a very sizeable following. They did so while largely functioning under definition #1, at least as far as most people understood things. Under definition #2, things have gone very poorly. Again, I think that the zoom lens matters. If you’ve convinced yourself that the station needs to reflect the demographic makeup of the city and inner ring suburbs, then you have written off a huge number of potential listeners. Probably half of the people in their listening area live outside the bounds of the city and inner ring suburbs. Now if you’re only looking at the zoomed in version of the community, then the numbers they’ve been talking about make sense. Making these changes should have brought more listeners, as the DJ demography more closely matches the city’s make up. If you don’t zoom in, then you see that the station’s realignment probably hasn’t brought it closer to being truly representative of the communities in their broadcast range. In fact, it may have become less so.
What Will Kranzberg Do?
At this point, the station’s listenership has dwindled to a point where it can’t realistically sustain operations. You don’t lose 2/3rds of your audience and not notice it in the bottom line. They’ve got some reserves and could take loans against assets, but they don’t seem to have a plan to get back to solvency. As such, there’s really only one question that will determine the station’s future: what will the Kranzbergs do? Their position as the station’s largest patron and related heavy usage of the station to advertise things happening at their Grand Center assets has always meant that they were the only ones who could’ve really stepped in and stopped management from doing what it has done. At the same time, they funded the study that management used to justify their actions, which has meant that they couldn’t really say the station is headed in a bad direction. The station’s advertising value has plummeted, though, which means that it definitely isn’t providing much bang for the buck, compared to years past. Lots of value has already been destroyed, which may make the Kranzbergs less likely to keep it going. That said, our oligarchs and local gentry have so much money that they can afford plenty of vanity projects. Maybe they give enough to keep it going. Maybe they help broker a deal for STLPR to buy it up as a music-focused subsidiary. Given the financial struggles of the larger NPR affiliate network, that’s not super likely. Still definitely possible, especially with a big gift from the Kranzbergs’ foundation. Maybe they decide there’s too little value left to make it worth saving. There are other possible outcomes, too. No matter what happens, you can be sure that that KDHX isn’t going back to being the home for music nerds.
I think this is the real meaning of community that got lost in the rhetoric: KDHX was once a station where its destiny lay in the hand of a broad community. That’s no longer the case, as only folks with big money can currently come in and save it. To me, that means it isn’t really community radio. It’s just another oligarch asset. Agency over the station’s future is no longer in the hands of the listeners, because so many folks no longer listen. At this point, KDHX is just another piece in the Kransbergs’ Grand Center Glass Menagerie of cultural properties. Let me offer this financial agency-focused definition as a final option in defining “community” radio. If KDHX is basically just responsibly to a handful of ultra-wealthy individuals, then I don’t think that meet this definition of being “community” radio. “Community” radio, as KDHX was founded to represent, was essentially in opposition to corporate/commercial media. It was founded very specifically as an alternative to a media landscape almost completely controlled by rich people and giant corporations. I think this is actually the definition most apt to the KDHX project. If KDHX’s destiny lies in the hands of the wealthy, and I would say this has actually been the case for a number of years. It’s already discontinued being the kind of community radio it set out to be. In that light, you can see that the current promotional spots are right. What we had really was probably irreplaceable. Wrecking it was a terrible idea from which the station will likely never recover. It’s a damn shame.