If an all-sports radio station were offered the Super Bowl, and turned it down unless they could broadcast it later in the day, or in the middle of the night when nobody was listening, you’d think that the station would face a very long inquiry into its sanity.
But every year, when the Metropolitan Opera, our country’s operatic equivalent to the Super Bowl, goes out on its annual ritual of renewing contracts to its broadcast series, that’s just what happens.
It’s nobody’s fault that the Met’s perceived appeal has noticeably lessened over the years.
Increased leisure time choices, particularly in the field of cultural entertainment, plus a more sophisticated but a more niche-oriented consumer base, have conspired to confuse the public about what the Met has to sell. And while the Met and the radio stations that are necessary to carry the broadcasts are not at all confused about whether such a thing as a selling proposition for the broadcasts exists, they are far from being of one mind about what that proposition is. Certainly, it seems, neither the Met nor the stations are exploiting the full resources of their marketing potential.
One can imagine that if the Met were fully a professional business, instead of a not-for-profit hybrid, it would be far more expert and high-tech in creating and re-creating the operatic experience, and it could be motivated much more positively by success.
For its part, if public radio were properly financed by the government, and constituted a major media force, it could take the money that Texaco now gives the Met for producing the broadcasts, and re-establish Met on the national scene the way it was in its heyday, in the days when NBC was its network.
Professional sports provides useful examples of how the Met and public radio could exploit their latent power.
In order to promote national identity and recognition, the Met could form an umbrella organization of major opera companies across the U.S. This umbrella would be responsible for developing and articulating clear messages about the Met to a broad national audience. Like the dairy industry’s “egg-a-day” campaign, the purpose of a national opera campaign would be to create awareness of the product and of the advantages it offers. The process to select the message with which to kick off the campaign would be made public in order to educate the audience being sought and enlist their support. By the time the actual campaign got underway, a lot of people might already be listening to “an opera a day.”
The message could go a lot of different ways. It could be as bland as those that come from the Met, and most other opera companies and symphony orchestras these days. It could be bold and compelling. The important thing, however, is that it be carefully defined in terms of measurements and goals, effectively crafted with a concern for the growth of the classical music industry as a whole, committed to by the participating parties as if they were of one mind, and given the proper roll-out and exposure time.
Most important of all, as public focus shifted from concerns about the Met’s relevance and cultural diversity, its declining radio audiences and its elitist sympathies, to what experiencing a great opera performance could really be, the industry’s entire promotional apparatus could be brought directly to bear on devising tactics and strategies, and on achieving the desired outcomes.
Right now, of course, because their sponsors support the arts in order to promote a vague notion of cultural virtue or to legitimize themselves publicly, radio stations that broadcast live opera or symphonies are very cautious, and feel compelled to praise each live performance to the stars. If the radio stations were allowed to communicate the excitement that people experience either when everything goes right or turns out unexpectedly, the audiences would grow exponentially.
Once the public knows that “live” is not like recordings, that the tenor might not hit high C; that the conductor might lose her nerve in starting the last movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony; then their expectations about the event, based on knowledge of the music itself and what options there are in its performance, will be measurably enhanced; and, as a direct result, the likelihood of the becoming involved will increase. And as any marketing consultant knows, making insiders out of outsiders is the surest way to expand a potential consumer base.
Within this context of educating and enlarging the consumer base spearheaded by the opera industry itself, public radio would be able to turn its full attention to broadcasting live opera in such a way that expectations created by the marketing arm would be fulfilled. They could begin by turning to the high-end audio industry to learn how the enormous attraction of the physical sound itself–known to be a key factor in the success of mass cult movies like Star Wars–can be conveyed to the public and be made part of the selling proposition.
There are other, more radical possibilities on which all sides would have to collaborate. Make the broadcasts available cheaply on CD, for example. An industry that is vastly supported by the public, as it is now even in its current poor state, has an obligation to give back abundantly whenever it can.
Those who believe in the efficacy of the remedies I propose have probably already anticipated two obvious questions.
The first question is whether the Met and public radio could do it themselves, at either the current levels of public funding, or less?
It would certainly take a lot of skill and daring. It would take a leadership who understands the anxiety of an existing workforce during large-scale change as fiercely as it is determined to expand that workforce so that it is more professional and better paid. The advantages of doing it this way would be to create an organism that could eventually be a part of the country’s educational system in the way the public media were originally meant to be. Now, they are only so in name, not spirit.
The second question is what the effect would be on the industry if the large opera companies became for-profit businesses.
It happens to HMOs. The buyer negotiates a purchase price with the board of directors, the state’s attorney general approves the price, and the money from the purchase is used to fund start-up ventures similar to those whose service to or viability in the marketplace the organization was originally mandated to promote (in the case of opera companies or symphonies, a sort of unexpected cultural dividend). For a prospective owner, buying the Met would be no worse a gamble than spending $250 million for a football team. Of course, with football teams, the cities give the owners uncounted millions just to come to town, as is happening now in Houston and Los Angeles. If New York City were willing to throw in exclusive use of the Opera House itself, some billionaire with Verdi on the brain instead of basketballs might be persuaded to buy the Met–and if the Met’s board refused, they would have a hard time explaining it to the politicians–especially the bit about the dividend. It would certainly realign notions of the importance of culture to the identity and prosperity of major cities.
However it happens, one thing is certain: Bringing opera back as a major force in society could create the intellectual, emotional and financial profits that could literally be the foundation of an entire new industry.
