Filed Under: Too Beautiful to Live

Monday last week started earlier than usual. Trinity had woken up at about 5:00 and had trouble getting back to sleep. I finally got her settled down, but there was no reason for me to go back to bed for another half hour. So I got up, made a pot of coffee and got online to check my email. I also checked in on my Twitter account to see what, if anything, was there. I saw a post from Laura Conaway at the Bryant Park Project that mentioned her affection for Hadlock Field in Portland, ME -- home of the Portland Sea Dogs. I "tweeted" back: "Good morning, Laura C! Nice to see a Portland reference (and Hadlock Field!). We were there for Sea Dogs' grand opening back in '94!"

Laura tweeted back: "You awake?"

"Since 5:00," I responded, thinking she was simply surprised to see someone up and tweeting so early. Laura and I have never met (or maybe we have back in Portland...you never know) so my response was simply informational since I imagined that's what she was wondering. Then I went to the Bryant Park Project blog and saw the following headline: "NYT: NPR is canceling the BPP." I was stunned. The BPP had become part of my morning ritual. It was a smart, funny, well-produced morning show that I got via one of NPR's satellite channels. It was on air only nine months before NPR decided to pull the plug. But it was more than a radio show. It was, by virtue of its multimedia platform (radio, blog, Twitter feeds, video segments), a virtual community, the likes of which I had never really experienced before. Unlike most radio or television programs, the BPP staff opened themselves up to their listeners: they responded to blog comments in an honest (read non-diplomatic) fashion. They posted about their lives sometimes (the birth of Allison Stewart's son, for instance). They talked back to their listeners on air, but not in the manner of call-in shows. Rather, they included their listeners in the show.

And now they were going to be gone.

"Just saw the news....damn," I tweeted back to Laura.

Laura then asked me if I would be willing to be interviewed about the news. Of course I said yes. Not only did I feel that I might have something to say, being a media studies professor, but this was my chance to be even more a part of the show and, well, community that I had come to truly enjoy.

We did the interview and it aired not long afterward. I ended being part of a little blooper when they played my soundbite after introducing it as the thoughts of another listener in Paris. But Laura caught the mistake right away, owned up to it, and then used it. That was one of the pleasures of the BPP: it was human, it was honest.

The last two weeks have been interesting to say the least. The show turned part of its attention to itself and its "immanent demise," a move that a few folks found off-putting and narcissistic, but which played more introspectively and humanely than that. The staffers were clearly coming to grips with the news that literally changed their lives, helping each other cope, and they were, once again, letting their listeners in on the process. For their part, the fans of the show started coming out of the woodwork. The blog post about the cancellation got more than 600 comments of which only a small handful (maybe less than 10) bid good riddance to the show. The vast majority of the comments spoke to the affection and loyalty listeners had come to have for the show. Most expressed utter disbelief that NPR -- so committed to intelligent, forward-thinking journalism and entertainment -- could be so short sighted with regard to the BPP. There was sadness and anger in many of the posts; but there was, more importantly, empathy. Many of the fans reached out to the staffers and took the opportunity to tell them just how much the show had meant to them day to day. And the staffers responded in kind.

You just don't see this kind of thing every day in the traditional media.

There were ideas about how to save the show, of course: format changes, on-line only "broadcasts," "money bombs" to NPR, letter writing, even a plan to inundate NPR headquarters with the fronts of cereal boxes sent as postcards.

None of these things worked, of course, NPR had made up its mind. And so it was that the final day came to pass...today.

Nancy and I took the kids to daycare and, before getting to work on the article that I am finishing, I took time to drive in the car, listening to the last ever BPP broadcast. Gliding through the streets of this little post-industrial mid-western city, listening to a show from New York on my satellite radio, I was struck by the contradictions of the modern media landscape. The old and the new exist together in an uneasy relationship. I cruise past the ugly low-rise storefronts -- the relics of a bygone era in Terre Haute -- pulling in distant signals from space. I conjure up my critical academic distance and think to myself: "There's something to be written about this. It really would make an interesting case study."

And then Alison Stewart, the show's host, introduces the show's editor and (she emphasizes) her friend, Tricia McKinney, who will be presenting the song of the day meant to represent the final stage of grief: acceptance (the show did the five stages over the past five days through songs). Tricia had chosen a song by Dan Zanes (late of the great Del Fuegos) called "Smile, Smile, Smile," because she said it would make a great funeral song, focusing on the good, simple, and happy things about the person -- or, in this case, the people -- we have loved and will miss. These are the things that end up mattering most: the way someone breaks into song at strange moments, the way one eats their toast in the morning, the way someone laughs. It's a cute little song and nicely captured the moment.

But then Tricia started to talk about it and her voice broke. She started to cry. She talked about the love she has for the people involved in the show, how much it's meant to her. Alison Stewart broke in: "You're my friend. You're not supposed to make me cry!" My critical distance failed me. My eyes welled up. Tricia McKinney, a friend of sorts (though we've never met), made me cry: right there, in my car, 1,200 miles away.

And there it was: the power of this show. It had managed to break down barriers that other shows work so hard to erect between itself and its audience. Those pretend points of connection -- called "interactivity" -- that we're all so used to, suddenly became painfully, beautifully real.

And maybe that's why the BPP really was "too beautiful to live."

Thanks folks! And to you all, I raise this virtual toast.