Is a Disaster Brewing in Music on Public Radio in New York City?

There’s been quite a bit of coverage concerning the acquisition of WQXR, one of the last commercial classical radio stations in America, by the local public radio station, WNYC. WQXR is being sold by The New York Times. It was for many years “The Radio Station of The New York Times.”

I won’t bother to go over the details as reported, but there is one thing that gives me great, great pause, that somehow or another has gone unreported.

According to everything I’ve read, it appears that WNYC’s Evening Music is going to disappear.

Many years ago, I was once a fan, a big fan of WQXR. I grew up listening to it, along with WNCN and WNYC. New York had three great classical radio station, not to mention WKCR, the radio station of Columbia University. Not to digress, but if you want to hear truly great and inspired radio programming, WKCR has a twice yearly festival of Bach. That’s all they play for something like a week. It’s revelation.

I stopped listening to WQXR years ago, because it became one of the many classical stations that provides classical wallpaper music. The music is designed to fill up space in the background of restaurants, dentist offices, etc., with benign, short, classical music that works well while you are getting a post and crown done at the prosthodontist. Yes, there are a few live concerts that to me are the exceptions that prove the rule.

WNYC’s evening music took on a new host about a year and a half ago: Terrance McKnight. The programming on his show makes sense to me, in how it blends genres, how it is allowed to play a wide range of music; a fair amount of it new, some of it pop, even while still being part of the umbrella of what is now known as “classical music” in America.

As corny is it sounds, Evening Music restored my faith in classical music on public radio.

Around the time I stopped listening to WQXR, it dawned upon me that much of the music they played was music that I had never heard, nor was interested in: obscure composers from 17th-19th centuries. But hey, let’s not forget, I have two music degrees from Juilliard, and I hadn’t heard of these people. Okay, call me elitist. But isn’t elitism a good part of what classical music is all about?

While everyone is apparently happy about the rescue of WQXR, and a group of big named artists have banded together to help raise money to pay for the cost of all this, perhaps they should ask a few questions about what is played on WQXR, what is played on WNYC, and what exactly is going to be lost and gained?

It’s just possible, that if these artists listen to WQXR for a just moment, that they won’t be so happy with what appears to be the answer.