- Courtesy of Dueling Critics
- Jonathan Abarbanel and Kelly Kleiman
Last June I told a melancholy tale of economic retrenchment at WBEZ. Because revenues were falling programming was being overhauled; the station was giving the brush-off to paid contributors who’d been rounded up for their expertise, and giving its audience—bright, engaged, and happy to contribute gratis—new opportunities to call in and sound off. Among the experts to bite the dust were WBEZ’s Dueling Critics, Kelly Kleiman and Jonathan Abarbanel, who’d been discussing theater for the station in one format or another—on air, podcasts, blogs—since 2007.
For that to happen, the Dueling Critics and Zidek will have to find a “sponsor,” says Kleiman, using a word public radio prefers to avoid, since there’s more dignity in underwriter, and endower, and the like. And if one turns up, she goes on, the Dueling Critics wouldn’t mind getting paid.
