The oldest American commercial classical station is commercial no more, but it will remain classical. WQXR will be sold by The New York Times to public radio station WNYC and Univision.
The call letters and the classical music will move across the dial from 96.3 to a weaker signal at 105.9, while Univision’s Spanish-language WCAA will move to 96.3.
Here’s more from The New York Times: “The Times Agrees to Sell WQXR Radio.”
Marty reported rumors of a WQXR sale on Scanning the Dial back in January. As Mike pointed out then, WQXR has been seen as a source of “lite” classical music. Now that they will be a public classical station their sound should change drastically. No more ads with jingles! The change could also affect their approach to programming music.
The NY Times article reports that WNYC has to raise the money to pay for the purchase. Pianist Emanuel Ax will co-chair
a campaign to raise $15 million to cover the purchase price and some transition and operating costs, and the Jerome L. Greene Foundation has committed $5 million.
Reactions? Speculation? Memories of WQXR? Let’s discuss it in the comments.
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I can only hope that the progress made in unique musical programming at WNYC, the work done by George Preston and Brad Cresswell on wnyc2, it’s influence on “Evening Music”, and the advent of Terrance McKnight at “Evening Music” will all be retained, as Classical Music moves to 105.9FM.
This post presents an interesting perspective for me, as I come from a country where there are no commercial classical stations at all. We have a fine national public broadcaster with a dedicated classical station in its lineup, and a handful of volunteer-run “MBS” (Music Broadcasting Society) stations around the country. Growing up in this environment I perceived only benefits in hearing classical music on non-commercial stations: no paid advertising, for example (but no endless on-air fundraising drives either). But from the other side of the fence, working for a concert presenter, I see the frustration my marketing colleagues experience not being able to place paid advertising on the very radio stations that we know many of our “target market” listen to. When I worked in the US it was quite a novelty for me to be able to include the local (commercial) classical radio station in a marketing campaign!
Yvonne, where do you live? Do the classical stations there carry underwriting announcements like they do in the states? (These are basically ads, but they must follow Federal Communications Commission guidelines that keep them from sounding like ads on commercial radio.) In the U.S., concert presenters would have the option of buying underwriting spots on public stations.
Yvonne-
You came to the right place. This weblog is the best for promoting Classical Music on radio and the internet.
Where ever you live, since you have internet, you can access http://www.publicradiofan.com . There you will find a huge database of PubRadio outlets in the USA and some from other countries.
You can also access http://www.shoutcast.com which is a huge compendium of broadcasters with terrestrial radio and streaming audio. On Shoutcast, you will find the URL’s so that you can visit a station’s web site.
These two above sites are both free.
For a small subscription fee, you can access http://www.live365.com. These are streamers who stream a huge variety of music. Here, my favorites are five streams from Innova.mu (American Composers Forum, St. Paul, Minnesota), Counterstream, Iridian, and, if he is still streaming, PostClassic. Now, all of these are pretty much New Music and late 20th century. But, you can find more traditional streams in Classical Music also.
If you try any of these, please come back and let us know your response to them. We are trying only to provide positive experiences, and everyone’s taste is different.
Please visit my weblog, “Whither Public Radio and serious music”, http://richardmitnick.wordpress.com