Ray Bayless wrote:

>I think a "Top 40" would be just awful.

My friend Ray is probably right.  To take centuries of music and reduce it
to a "top anything" for programming just sounds so limiting.

Overall, music on the radio has one big disadvantage - you have to listen
to what somebody else wants you to hear.  So, I can turn on the local
classical station and listen to the constant sounds of wallpaper music,
movie music, crossover music, baroque music on modern strings, etc., or I
can throw something like Bach's WTC or a Zemlinsky string quartet into the
cd player and listen to some of the best music in the world.  The choice is
an easy one for me.

I do think it would be a good idea for classical stations to have a
regularly scheduled program of historical recordings.  I remember back
to my days working part-time in a classical music store when buyers would
routinely want to return historical recordings because they didn't like the
sound quality.  These buyers really thought that the historical recordings
should sound as good as new ones since they were all on cd.  When I would
remind the buyer that the historical recording was made in 1933, the usual
response was something like - "I thought that cd technology would take care
of all that".  It is a nice fantasy.

Don Satz
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