One of my recurring themes here at tumbledry is the stunning, underutilized power of corporate/industrial money to subsidize fine works of art. Here, I continue to crystallize and extend this idea.

The GE Building (also known as the namesake of the show 30 Rock) houses, among many other things, NBC studio 8H. If you think carefully, you’re sure to recognize 8H as the studio from which Saturday Night Live goes out. If your grandparents think carefully, however, they’ll likely have a rather different memory.

This space didn’t always contain television studios: NBC Studio 8H is the former home of the largest radio studio in the world. It was over 10,000 square feet with 30 foot high ceilings… and, when it opened, was widely considered an “acoustical disaster.” While my left brain is distracted by the shortcomings of sound engineering, my right brain is quite intrigued by a group called the NBC Symphony Orchestra.

For 17 years, from 1937 to 1954, the orchestra performed first in studio 8H, then in Carnegie Hall under the direction of the legendary Arturo Toscanini. It wasn’t just an orchestra. It was the orchestra. The group produced fantastic, sometimes definitive, recordings of a huge variety of classical artists. How did this happen? How did an orchestra command weekly studio time to put out a network show featuring… classical music?

There is speculation, as outlined in the Wikipedia article, that the orchestra was assembled to “deflect a Congressional inquiry into broadcasting standards.” This may be true. I highly doubt, however, that NBC dedicated 17 years to dodging broadcast standards. Something about this Symphony program seized the public’s attention.

I think audiences are drawn to simplification: a limited scope, brilliantly executed. What’s that? You don’t like classical music? What if one of the best orchestras in the world went out live to you, for free, on a weekly basis? Would you listen? Would you care?

In the past, the answer to those questions was “yes.” Has the status quo shifted?

It makes me sad that the visceral thrill of live television is sequestered within the testosterone-driven box of the action packed (and golf). Viewing something live, knowing that others are simultaneously watching and, somewhere, the event is taking place right now, should be possible for more events. Unfortunately, classical music programming is relegated to the quasi-obscurity of prerecorded public broadcasts (not to disparage public broadcasting — I love PBS/NPR — but I’m looking for corporate-sponsored cultural touchstones here). If networks are supposed to tell people what to like, why don’t they tell people to dare to try something (anything!) different? “It wouldn’t sell,” they’d say. Really? Seemed to work pretty well before. Perhaps it wouldn’t sell because any attempt at replicating the success of the NBC Symphony Orchestra would be a sad caricature of music: tanned 20-somethings would appear on an overlit, chilled, cramped soundstage somewhere on the west coast, competing to play in “America’s Top Orchestra.”

Nobody would watch that.

Sure, that reality format sometimes works and it is entertaining. But I don’t understand why content is so imbalanced — must we all be constantly bombarded by the lowest common denominator? Why can’t the banal and transient subsidize the sophisticated and enduring?

Television averages a cut every 7 seconds. I don’t know if this is a good or a bad thing, but I do know that you can’t air an orchestra with a cut every 7 seconds. I think the vast majority of arts, humanities, logic, and reason have fled television, beaten out by smooth skin and sound bites. The internet is our next, best hope for bringing people together around the bright bonfire of artistic expression.

I’m hopeful.

• Music
• Classical
• NBC
• Arturo Toscanini
• Media

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