The Boston Symphony Orchestra is increasing its radio reach, not only with Saturday night and Sunday afternoon broadcasts on WGBH (Classical New England) but now expanding to western Massachusetts on 88.5 WFCR-FM (New England Public Radio). The coverage area includes Amherst/Springfield at 88.5, Adams/North Adams at 101.1, Great Barrington at 98.7, Lee at 98.3, Pittsfield at 106.1, and Williamstown at 96.3, plus streaming live at nepr.net.
You can read more on masslive.com.
On Sunday, March 4, the station will begin airing Boston Symphony Orchestra concerts as part of its Sunday classical music program … hosted by Walter Carroll. The weekly broadcasts will air from 1 to 3 p.m.
“To be able to bring our listeners the BSO’s Symphony Hall concerts, on such a timely basis – this is really great, and fits in perfectly with the station’s efforts to keep its music programming fresh and local,” said New England Public Radio’s music director, John Montanari. “And a pretty good first couple of months too, with the Missa Solemnis, the German Requiem, Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Violin Concerto and the Midsummer Night’s Dream. This is a real boon for area music lovers.”
The BSO doesn’t have national broadcasts, but it can now be heard in the Boston area, western Mass., Vermont, Maine, and New York through a collaboration with stations in those areas. The broadcasts are produced by Brian Bell, engineered by James Donahue and hosted by Ron Della Chiesa.
Great news. Congrats to all our friends at the BSO and to WFCR.
Subscribe Via Email
Enter your email address to subscribe to Scanning the Dial and receive notifications of new posts by email.
Thank you for subscribing.
Something went wrong.
Boston always interest me. When WQXR was going through the pangs of being ingested by New York Public Radio (NYPR), there was great consternation about the loss of the New Music tilt of WNYC. WQXR saw then need in the traditional FM broadcast and its web stream to continue to appeal to the traditional audience. So there was lots of debate in the web site’s Comments pages.
Along comes a guy from Boston, in an outside blog, and he blasts us for our disputation.
So, I went into the WGBH web site looking for dirt to throw back. I sure enough found plenty. Without publicly acknowledging it, WGBH, which similarly ingested WCRB, was renting a majority of their music programming from “Classical 24”. These are nice guys and they aim to please; but they aim at the lowest common denominator in their music programming. Worst, WGBH was not declaring what time block and hosts represented the “Classical 24” material. Many PubRadio outlets in smaller markets use the service to good advantage to bring something of Classical Music to their coverage areas.
Boston deserved better than that. The station had no Comments page utility like those at NYPR, but I found some independent forums and blogs on which to call them out. Suffice it to say, there was much consternation and vituperation. Despite its much smaller size, Boston is every bit the cultural mecca that is New York City. Ben Roe is the newish Classical Services Director. It looks like things have gotten way better, I only see the “Classical 24” hosts on theri overnight schedule.