Nick Perovich wrote: >It would be interesting to see some research on this. While it doesn't >count as research, I can remember how amazed I was, when browsing through >middlebrow magazines (e.g., TIME) from the 1950's: the amount of space >devoted to covering classical music was astonishing. There was clearly >a period, and it was only half a century ago, when magazines for the >general reader assumed that one of the areas said reader wanted to be >kept abreast of was classical music. It is hard for me to believe that >the drastically diminished coverage classical music receives today in >the same magazines does not result from a change in the interests and >level of knowledge of the average educated reader. Maybe things were >always the same as today, but, if so, they were making some very peculiar >editorial decisions half a century ago. I wonder if there is a inverse correlation between listening to television and listening to classical music? (As well as other things, such as listening to general news magazines, a genre which never really existed in the United Kingdom). It would seem that the heyday of classical music was when radio was the driving force (1930s and 1940s); certainly, in my opinion, it would seem that those who promote classical music have never really understood a more visual age and that has led to its present difficulties. (For example, the television coverage of the BBC Proms has barely changed from 20 or 25 years ago; there is only so much one can do with shots, from various angles and in unchanged lighting, of orchestra players dressed in black). Alastair