Bert Bailey responds to my kvetching about my local NPR station:

>>What's left behind is music in performances I've heard several times
>>over.  Since I have an adequate collection myself - and furthermore one
>>which ideally fits my likes and dislikes (coincidence? I don't think so) -
>>I've given up listening to classical radio.
>
>I reckon you'd agree that this is regrettable, no matter how broad one's
>musical exposure or collection.

True.

>The chance for one to hear something new by accident is simply cut off,
>aside from the huge implications for CM gaining a broader audience.

Well, in my case, it's not cut off.  For one thing, the Internet has become
my chief source of info about new works and new recordings -- this list,
several web sites, and so on.  However, I have a bit of a foundation in
classical music already.  I'm not confronting a sea of new, unfamiliar
work.

>From where I sit -- having always had access to plenty of it in Peru,
>England, Spain and Canada -- radio's the only real way to provide
>exposure to CM for most people who don't live in musical households.
>I mean especially youngsters, of course:  aside from a record or two
>in my house as a kid, radio was central to my musical education, and
>it continues to be ('though I now have a sizeable collection of what I
>like).  Music libraries come second to radio, although live performances
>(re-)played on the radio are irreplaceable as incentives to people new
>to CM.  Their absence would be, IMO, especially regrettable.

No question.  I learned a lot of music through the radio myself (a
privately-owned CM station, still in business).  However, I must say that
even where there are CM stations, many seem to be stations that play only
the well-worn.  I've heard exceptions in relatively out-of-the-way places
like Austin, TX, and Toledo, OH, but I remember them because they strike me
as exceptions.  I'm not even talking about, say, works by Rihm or Feldman
on a regular basis, but such obscurities as Holst (other than The Planets),
Sibelius, Grieg, Berlioz (other than the S.  f.), and so on.  If we really
want to be daring, how about some Hummel, Vorisek, Victoria, Byrd, Cowell,
Obrecht, maybe a Rimsky opera, Holmboe, Pettersson, etc.? I know I can't
get today the kind of education CM stations used to give me.

Steve Schwartz