DIALSCAN: CLEVELAND, MAY 30, 2009

As far as good radio goes, in Cleveland, Ohio, there ain’t much; it figures that Cleveland is the home of the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame. But that’s no reason not to talk about what little there is.

Both big sports radio stations in Cleveland are owned by the same conglomerate, the ironically named Good Karma Broadcasting, Inc. I start at the high end of the dial, WWGK-AM 1540, commonly known as KNR2. I encounter a NASCAR race and am immediately baffled; how it is five guys with light Southern accents can make the tedious act of driving around an ovular track exciting for radio listeners is beyond me. Just to give you an idea as to NASCAR’s target audience, the race being run in Dover is called the Heluva Good 200, after the ranch dip. I could go on and on about NASCAR, but let it just be said that I hope my mind goes faster than these cars do.

At WKNR-AM 850, the ESPN Radio affiliate, two chipper-sounding young guys are talking about the Cleveland Cavaliers basketball team when they’re not antagonizing audience members. Apparently the Cavaliers are on the brink of elimination from their playoff series with the Orlando Magic, and these two fellows (Cameron & Wood, I guess they’re called) are doing the alpha-male equivalent of reading tea leaves and bird entrails, predicting the outcome of the game. I almost can’t listen; why should people worry about the outcome of a sporting event? It’s wasted energy. There are more important things in sports and in the rest of life. But I guess it all depends on when and where you listen. (By the way—doesn’t it seem to you that half the radio commercials sell you ways to get out of debt? How much more debt do the schmendricks want you to get into so that you, dear Reader and Listener, can get out? Just a thought.)

With unseemly alacrity, I switch to the FM dial, where the pickings are just as slim. At WCPN-FM 90.3, the NPR station, it’s On the Media, where an attorney is being interviewed about journalist’s rights. I run screaming from the lawyer; in the course of my line of work (process service), I hear enough about lawyers and subpoenas and summonses every single day. I do stick around long enough to hear pseudo-intellectual babble about rating agencies, conflicts of interest, etc.

The last grape on the tree, I am pleased to report, belongs to the classical music station, WCLV-FM 104.9, the radio home of the Cleveland Orchestra. And it brings to mind a memory. Many was the Tuesday night where I could sit on my bed in my bedroom in Malvern, PA.—my boyhood home—and hear the Cleveland Orchestra under Christoph von Dohnanyi wafting out of my old clock radio, being beamed through WFLN-FM 95.7 in Philadelphia. Whatever Maestro von Dohnanyi and his men were playing at Severance Hall, I always felt like I was at the seventeenth row of the orchestra, dead center. I was always just a wee bit sad to see the broadcast end, because then it meant I had to turn off the radio and go to sleep. In many ways, I am still that would-be patron of the arts, sitting in the concert hall, hoping to be swept off my feet.

But it won’t happen now; they’re airing the 2007 Cleveland International Piano Competition on WCLV. It’s a classical music station—not ESPN Classic. Oh, well.