May 24-30 Utopia Parkway By Gary McVey, ACF Executive Director. A reasoned defense of the post-WWII world, its faith in technology, and its faith in America, in weekly instalments. Previous articles are in the archives section. An introduction to the series appears in Part 1. American vision: the media landscape as Utopia "WCFL, Chicago's Voice of Labor, 1926-'78" by Nathan Godfried is a politically tendentious tract, farther to the hard left than the condescending limousine liberalism of "The Vanishing Vision… " Despite that, there's lots of interesting and valuable information here. Chicago labor--not to mention Chicago broadcasting--is a world that sounds as intensely local as that of Texas. The changes to it over the years parallel those affecting the labor movement on a national scale. In the heyday of the labor movement, there was considerable reason to think that worker organization and education would be naturals for radio. It is no shame to the left to say that WCFL once had a very clear purpose, even if it's also clear that it later lost it. In any case, "WCFL… " although decently written, feels unlikely to be on my 'bathtub circuit' of regular re-reading and continued savoring. ("Texas Signs On" will make the list). But here's the bottom line on that book in particular and the others on my little list in general: there were, and are, lots of ways of conceiving of the proper role for broadcasters and business. The early days, before these models were set and frozen, offer lots of examples of oddball station ownership, and mixed modes of program support. Sometimes a state college brings the world to your night table; sometimes it's the Methodist church; more often, it's a competition between local Chevy and Ford dealers. WCFL as a concept ("labor radio") is yet another alternative to the ways that TV and radio can be brought to audiences. The utopian aspects of the book, which I'll return to, were especially strong in the earliest days, just like the development of the web in the 1990s. Once the delivery of radio's 'services' had solidified into now-familiar forms, "labor radio" (the phrase has a strange incantory value for Godfried) was no longer a mystical ideal but an everyday, rather dreary reality. Just as architectural drawings and models sometimes fail to convey the soul-deadening qualities of a bad building, Godfried's well meaning words paper over what must have been stultifyingly dull programming. His simply repeating that all of WCFL's better shows featured "labor talks," labor songs," or "plays about the meaning of work" doesn't build my confidence in their ability to actually convince, or even hold the attention of a listener. To Godfried, it's enough that old party hacks have time at a mike, anybody's mike… but especially a union-owned mike. That was the '20s, before the real militancy of the depression. By the '30s, when unions were a more accepted feature of national life, the utopian stuff was over. WCFL responded to listener wishes by running much more (national) network material than original (local) programming. The author unfortunately never misses a chance to characterize WCFL's non-audience--or non-believers--as corporate stooges, mindless automatons, or, implicitly, as jitterbugging, "Green Hornet"-listening ingrates who should have paid a little more attention to the (admittedly rare) experiment happening on Chicago's airwaves. After the war, the American labor movement broke Godfried's heart by turning down the hard left's all-or-nothing ideal of socialism without any capitalism, and staying basically loyal to the existing American system. The author despises the (socialist) AFL unions, feeling that history has vindicated the (communist) CIO locals. But there's no evidence that the workers agreed with him. This period, the late '40s, is a time of great shame and anger for the U.S. left; they still feel that the country was on the verge of a great conversion to left politics. It's far closer to truth to say that for better or worse, the country knew what these men offered, and they sincerely didn't want it. Beyond the Red scare, the unions that created WCFL radio didn't make the transition to the '50s any better than the big commercial boys did. The station participated in the first, now little-remembered FM boom, which was later their brief-lived salvation when a 'rock format' unexpectedly took off in the '60s. And for a few precious years--forty years after its founding--labor radio WCFL was one of the most popular youth stations in Chicago. They had plans to go into television, but were persuaded to defer to a consortium of Chicago's non-commercial broadcasters, who were backing what would become the city's NET station. The previously mentioned "TeleVisionaries… " is a fond memoir of a time when the mere fact of educational broadcasting looked utopian, and so in its way is WCFL's vision. "The Vanishing Vision… " is an angrier and more cynical book, but it, like "WCFL… " is the story of a liberal/left dream that was, to its author, clearly strangled in its crib: the public broadcasting establishment is treated here as a bunch of wishy-washy liberal weaklings and stuffed shirts, not as the red-blooded, working-class heroes that would presumably have run the TV station if WCFL had received the license. The human attraction to utopianism fascinates me, and I believe that understanding the consequences of its failure (if it fails) allows you to understand a great deal about history, and how it got us where we are--and how things might or might not have turned out differently. Coming May 31: Reaching the masses: evil profit or vital spirit of capitalism? 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