Jon Gallant wrote:


>I live in Sweden or France (as I do part of the time), I am fortunately able
>to listen to classical music on the public FM stations.  They broadcast
>standard repertoire, of course, but also broadcast a fair amount of
>pre-baroque music, modern music, and contemporary music.  Why, on the
>European public stations, I sometimes hear music I have not heard before,
>a danger from which American commercial stations protect me 99.99% of the
>time over here.

As a former Chicagoan who moved to San Francisco in 1975, I have witnessed
the sad demise of classical FM here.  There used to be 3-4 full-time
classical stations out here.  One has switched to commercial-free jazz,
which at least is tolerable, and now that it's the sole source of broadcast
jazz (the real stuff, not "smooth",) it's actually one of my favorite
stations.  The other public radio station switched to all talk, one of the
two commercial classical stations (KKHI) was sold off and is now doing some
form of pop or rock, and the one remaining commercial station, KDFC, is a
disgrace to the idea of classical.  However, when I visit Chicago, there
are still WFMT and WNIB, both of which occasionally play something new to
my ears.  I belkieve th4ey are both listene3r-subsidized, but I could be
wrong about that.  Evidently they are owned by people who truly love the
classics and see themselves as missionaries of the form.

dave wolf
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