The Tempest in My Personal Public Radio Teapot

By Marjorie Smith, 1-06-06

I don't know about you, but I am extremely dependent upon my favorite radio station. I wake up to Yellowstone Public Radio and it follows me through the day until -- maybe -- something on public television causes me to shift channels, as it were.

I am bereft when the occasional weather events between Bozeman and Billings knock YPR off the air, forcing me to get my morning news fix from another station. (Although a sizeable portion of YPR's listener/supporters are in the Gallatin Valley, the station broadcasts from Billings where it is connected to MSU-Billings. In recent years, a satellite studio has been added at the Bozeman Public Library to allow for some Bozeman-based programs.)

Because YPR is such a big part of my life, I am disconcerted by sudden changes in its programming. If you are an NPR listener, perhaps you remember feeling a little lost without Bob Edward's wonderful voice on "Morning Edition" a few years back. You'll understand how bereft I felt at the sudden disappearance of the comforting, slightly strained and often unable to suffer fools gladly tones of Marvin Granger.

Granger has been station manager of YPR (formerly known as KEMC) since 1984, the very year when I returned from a couple decades wandering around the globe and settled down in my hometown, which for me makes his THE voice of public radio. Granger has spent his entire career in public broadcasting, coming to Billings from Minnesota where he, famously, gave Garrison Keillor his first job in radio. Marvin has built the little station on the campus of MSU-Billings (formerly known as Eastern Montana College) into an impressive, highly professional and successful operation, which serves all of eastern Montana, most of the Hi-Line, northern Wyoming and the mountains all the way west to Helena and Butte. With an advanced presence on the Internet (it's possible to "stream" YPR broadcasts on your computer anywhere in the world) pledge drives have an interesting geography these days, with pledges occasionally coming in from far flung addresses.

Granger and his extremely competent staff manage to juggle varied constituencies so that the pledges keep coming. We get the National Public Radio news and discussion programs, lots of classical music including a weekly opera, almost three hours a day of jazz (presented by Brad Edwards, one of the state's leading jazz drummers), "Prairie Home Companion" AND the Car Guys. When I travel outside of YPR's broadcast range, I scan the dial to locate another public radio station but it's never quite right. Either they run "Performance Today" at the wrong time of day, or their local news sounds amateurish, or they play all news and no music or all music and no news.

So imagine my dismay when just before the October pledge drive began, Marvin Granger disappeared from the air. At first I assumed he was sick although it was odd that no one mentioned his name. And then, on my very first visit to the NewWest I found the horrible truth: Marvin Granger -- Mister Public Radio as far as I am concerned -- had been suspended with pay from his duties by the chancellor of MSU-Billings. The Billings Gazette reported that there were personnel issues involved.

Fearing the worst in this era of sex-scandals in high places, I was almost afraid to find out: What sort of personnel issues? What could be so serious that the regents of the university would pull the auditory rug out from under my daily life? I asked a couple of friends whose association to YPR is closer than mine -- they'd heard nothing. I waited for the Bozeman Chronicle to ask the embarrassing questions and satisfy my curiosity. Not a peep. I sent an e-mail to Lois Bent, the station's interim manager, another extremely able broadcaster with whom I have occasional correspondence regarding our mutual passion for the performing arts. What have you done with Marvin? I asked. No reply.

Finally this week I decided to play investigative reporter and see what I could learn. I contacted Ed Kemmick, the Gazette reporter who'd written the October 20 story to see what he could tell me. He responded quickly with two links to subsequent stories and this is the upshot: Marvin will be coming back and as far as I can tell, the whole thing was the result of bureaucratic misdemeanors within the MSU-Billings system. Apparently, Marvin, radio professional that he is, was trying to run YPR as an ensemble of creative, talented people who are almost certainly doing work far above and beyond the job descriptions the university's personnel rules dictate. And some bureaucrat found it necessary to crack down on him. Imagine! Broadcasting to the largest land area in the lower 48 states without dotting every bureaucratic "i" and crossing every "t."

Okay, I'll admit it, I'm extrapolating my own experience with various bureaucracies into the Gazette's reporting. But just a small sample: in one of the stories published in the Gazette last month, Mary Pickett (a childhood neighbor of mine here in Bozeman) reported that MSU-Billings Chancellor Ron Sexton said one YPR employee's formal job description never reflected his new duties (that would be Ken Siebert, the guy who makes it possible for folks around the world to listen to YPR on the internet) and "another employee's contract had not been formally renewed recently as required and that the person's employee contract could not be found. The contract between the station and the campus also could not be found by either station management or the university."

So it goes in the bureaucratic groves of academia. But hang in there, fellow YPR addicts: Marvin is coming back!



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