Kelly Doering
Strainchamps enjoys the vibrant give-and-take of live radio.
The show's teetering on the brink of catastrophe, and the listeners have absolutely no idea.
First the phone system crashed -- on the one day the studio engineer is not on site -- and it could go out again at any moment. Rhonda Fanning, one of the show's two producers, is frantically trying to get today's guest, Albert Mazibuko of the South African choral group Ladysmith Black Mambazo, on the phone. Mazibuko was there a minute ago, but now his cell's mysteriously busy. His hotel phone goes to voicemail and, despite Fanning's firm insistence, the hotel staff refuse to ignore the "Do Not Disturb" sign on his doorknob.
Inside the broadcast booth at Wisconsin Public Radio, host Anne Strainchamps stretches out her questions with the band's manager and glances anxiously at Fanning.
And then, suddenly, Mazibuko's there. The interview sparkles, generating more call-ins than can fit on the air. There's one more interview segment -- this one with Dean Jensen, the Milwaukee-based author of a book about a doomed trapeze artist -- and then the show is over.
"God," Strainchamps says, stepping out of the studio and blowing her blond hair off her forehead. "That was the most insane show ever."
It isn't usually like this for the crew of 45 North, the live Friday-morning show WPR debuted in April. Most weeks, Strainchamps' Wisconsin-focused mix of arts, music and literature goes off smoothly, without so much as a technical hitch.
But today's slightly bumpy ride is nothing compared to larger tremors on the public radio landscape. The show's debut preceded a time of unusual upheaval for Wisconsin Public Radio. Last week, Talk of the Nation, a National Public Radio mainstay for more than a quarter-century, broadcast its final show, sending shockwaves through the normally stable public radio lineup. In the ensuing programming vacuum, everything, including 45 North, was subject to station review and possible elimination. The show got the stamp of approval; earlier this week, a second new show, Central Time, launched in the afternoon with hosts Veronica Rueckert and Rob Ferrett.
Some would see a time of uncertainty. Strainchamps sees a time of opportunity.
"It feels like a very creative time at the station. There's a lot of innovation going on," she says, relaxing in her Vilas Hall office after the show. "So as we were kind of moving things around, there was an opportunity to try something new."
In this case, "new" meant filling an underserved niche by focusing on the arts in Wisconsin. Strainchamps conceived the show as a counterpoint to the public-affairs and politics-heavy mix on WPR's Ideas Network (970 AM in Madison). If To the Best of Our Knowledge -- the show Strainchamps co-created and continues to helm with husband Steve Paulson -- is like an intimate dinner party, Strainchamps sees 45 North as the communal table in the trendy coffee shop. Because the show airs on Fridays, from 9 to 11 a.m. (repeating at 6 p.m.), she aims for a distinctive weekend feel.
Providing a showcase for Wisconsin's literary community is job one. Although the show launched with an interview with Garbage's Shirley Manson, it has featured national authors like Neil Gaiman and Khaled Hosseini. Cultural issues also crop up: During Madison's Bike to Work Week in May, Strainchamps brought in former Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz to talk about the relationship between bikes and vibrant cities.
Strainchamps imagines the show's core audience as people who live in Wisconsin: curious, imaginative, book-loving types.
"A big portion of the audience is people like me, people like my parents. But a lot of younger people are finding their way to public radio, too," Strainchamps says. "I think what we all have in common is a desire for a kind of literate shared conversation. And I think if people are finding their way to 45 North, they're interested in the cultural life of Wisconsin."
A sense of place
The show draws its name from a piece of Wisconsin esoterica that caught Strainchamps' eye: It turns out a latitude line called the 45th parallel runs straight through the center of the Badger State. It also happens to be the line that sits midway between the North Pole and the equator, connecting Wisconsin to the rest of the world.
"Something seems kind of mystical and magical about that," Strainchamps says. "The other thing I like about it is that it makes the show sound like a place, because I think about it that way. I also like that it connects us to where we are. I really have come to believe in the value of being rooted in this specific place."
That's a good thing, given that Strainchamps has spent most of her career in Madison and at Wisconsin Public Radio. She's best known for the nationally syndicated To the Best of Our Knowledge, and has filled in hosting live radio for Jean Feraca and Kathleen Dunn, but she's never had a live show of her own. To the Best of Our Knowledge and Wisconsin Life, the show she started in 2011, feature edited and pre-produced segments.
45 North is just the latest evolution in Strainchamps' radio career, with each stop featuring something that was missing in the last. To the Best of Our Knowledge is entirely studio based, so she created Wisconsin Life to get out into the field and actually meet people. While Wisconsin Life relegated her to three-minute segments, the new show gives her up to half an hour to interview guests, time she can use to draw her subjects out.
Not surprisingly, 45 North is informed by To the Best of Our Knowledge. In some cases, it serves as the value-added outlet where listeners can hear the 30-minute version of the eight-minute segment.
The energy of live
"The best stories are the ones they haven't told 40 times," Strainchamps says. "If you can find one of those, the interview can really take off."
Or even spellbind the host. During the show featuring Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Strainchamps also interviewed Dale M. Kushner, the local author of a new novel called The Conditions of Love. The book touches on the concept of how to nurture a creative life. At one point, Strainchamps became so engaged in one of Kushner's responses that she didn't realize she was pondering over dead air. She gasped and quickly reached for her script.
It's all part of the 45 North vibe.
"This is more of a listening show," says Marika Suval, the show's other producer. Suval's a soft-spoken South African who came to Madison after working in TV and video production in New York. "What Anne brings to the show is a depth of exploration. We try to think of plumbing a little deeper, taking it a little slower."
Strainchamps cites a May appearance by singer-songwriter Katie Dahl as the show's high-water mark. Dahl came to the studio to play and talk about the sense of place she experiences in Door County.
"There was a woman who called from Iowa, and she was talking about the cornfields, and it nearly made me cry," Strainchamps says. "The fact that [the musicians] were in the studio, it was everything live radio should be. It was sound-rich because we had her wonderful music; it was intimate because it was an interview; and it had the energy of live."
Strainchamps makes a distinction between what's happening nationally with public radio formats and her personal tastes as an interviewer and producer.
"I think there is a place for very politically driven, very populist-sounding radio, where the goal is to get a lot of voices in, hear from a whole range of people, maybe more polemical arguments where people are debating issues together," she says. "There's a place for that; I'm not interested in it. That's not what I listen to, and I feel we have more than enough of that in our culture right now."
An explosion of content
While others are talking about public radio's political and financial pressures and the decline of radio as a media platform, Strainchamps has a different topic on her mind. She's interested in the content opportunities and audiences the podcast revolution has created.
She cites WPR's general manager, Mike Crane, who's fond of saying that radio isn't going away but rather going everywhere.
"If you can't find a local audience for your particular radio product, you may find a niche market made up of people all around the country who will find you through a podcast and support you," Strainchamps says.
She notes, with an ironic smile, that newly popular crowd-sourcing models like Kickstarter look an awful lot like the fundraising model public radio's been using for, like, forever. "There has never been a better time to be a radio producer."
45 North is still honing its voice, and Strainchamps and her producers know they likely have the benefit of a historically patient environment. Twenty years ago, WPR developed To the Best of Our Knowledge in the face of critics who claimed it was too academic. They're hoping 45 North receives the same kind of latitude.
"WPR has sometimes been faulted for not changing the program schedule more often, but I think the managers have understood that good things take a while to incubate," Strainchamps says.
And if 45 North doesn't take off?
"Radio is a rich medium. I have faith that there's just no end to the number of wonderful things that can be done in public radio. So if I try one thing and people don't like it or my managers don't like it, okay. It's on to the next thing."
