Hallowed New York City classical radio station WQXR’s “Q2” channel is now well over three years old. I am a big fan of the service. It is one of the few places in the classical music radiosphere in the United States where you can consistently listen to a high quality stream of contemporary classical music […]
After reading our story about the end of a commercial classical music radio station in North Carolina, Fred Krock sent us this reflection on his career working in radio. I began working for a major market commercial classical music station in 1953. All major markets and many smaller markets had a commercial classical music station […]
Another one bites the dust. Wilmington North Carolina’s Star News reports that Wilmington Bach radio at 95.9 FM and 1180 FM is no more. Those frequencies will now stream Port City Radio news until a new format is unveiled later this month. The Star article quotes Wilmington public radio station WHQR FM manager Cleve Callison saying […]
On Thursday, Culture Map Houston broke the news that Houston classical public radio station KUHA had laid off 8 full-time staffers and was replacing local programming with syndicated classical music content from Classical 24. Culture Map speculates that the University of Houston-licensed station is struggling after its purchase of the 91.7 FM license from Rice […]
Santa Barbara, California’s eight decades old classical radio signal KDB 93.7 FM is up for auction. The Santa Barbara Foundation, which owns the license, has voted to sell it off. The Foundation’s principals say that the operation has run up big deficits that the non-profit cannot afford. “Unfortunately, despite the on-air pleas we made during […]
A lengthy article on The Deal Pipeline outlines some of the recent public radio transactions involving classical music radio stations in particular. For those of us who have monitored the deals mentioned in the piece, it’s a fascinating overview of what seems like increasing consolidation in public radio. Of interest to me, since I have […]
Many years ago I invented a phrase for a peculiar kind of radio format: “Hybrid Highbrow.” I cooked up the term to describe listener supported KPFA in Berkeley, California, which in the 1950s broadcast classical music, opera, jazz, and folk music in the spirit with which Matthew Arnold understood “culture” in his book Culture and […]
I am always happy when a classical music radio station goes live again. The Kansas City Star reports that Radio Bach returns on July 4 as a streaming Internet service for a chunk of Northeastern Kansas. If you go to the new Radio Bach website, the outlet describes itself as a 24/7, 365 days a […]
One of the great concert pianists of the twentieth century has departed. Van Cliburn died this morning at the age of 78. He is best remembered as the winner of the 1958 International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow—a victory that contributed to the “thaw” of the Cold War in late 1950s and early 1960s. Van Cliburn […]
My colleague Paul Riismandel has been warming up to the Spotify music service, of late, and gave it a pretty decent review in a recent post. Paul also mentioned to me that Spotify has been advertising itself as a “goldmine” for a wide variety of formats, including classical music. This aroused my attention, since I […]
