WHAT CLASSICAL RADIO CRISIS?
posted by James Reel
The Hartford Courant is running an interesting article surveying the wide availability of classical music (not just wall-to-wall Vivaldi) on the Connecticut airwaves, and wondering why people are wringing their hands about the sad state of classical radio. One of the story’s sources is Bob Goldfarb, that rare radio consultant who understands and likes classical music, and has his head affixed to the proper end of his body. (I’d often encounter him at concerts when he lived in Tucson, briefly, about 15 years ago.) Says Goldfarb, who has worked for Teldec and run the commercial classical station in Seattle and should know what he’s talking about:
"There is a belief in the public-radio station system that growth is good, and total revenue is more important than net revenue. By those measures, classical music doesn't stack up well. … But one of the things that has been remarkable is that when public radio and TV was conceived in the late '60s, it was understood that being a public service meant filling in gaps of conventional programming. Public service now has morphed into reaching to more listeners."In other words, many of the people who run public radio stations, in pursuit of bigger and bigger audience-fundraising goals, have abandoned their mandated audience. The true crisis in classical radio is this betrayal of the American public.
