Today's LTAR

["'A. Joseph Ross'" <lawyer@world.std.com>]

Bob and Donna mentioned WCRB today, and Bob said that they play only parts
of symphonies, not the whole thing.  That was what they used to do a few
years ago, when they changed their format, but it isn't what they do now.

Several years ago, I used to hear things like the first movement of
Beethoven's 8th symphony just about every afternoon.  Just the first
movement, not the rest of the symphony.  Apparently, they got a lot of
complaints.  In a promo for their "listener line," they mentioned that
"You told us you wanted to hear whole works and more variety, and we've
done that."  Indeed, they did go back to playing entire symphonies.  As
for more variety, that's still a big problem.  It seemed to me at the time
that they went from playing the first movement of Beethoven's 8th every
afternoon to playing the entire symphony every afternoon.

Then I didn't hear the 8th symphony at all for a couple of years. 
Recently, they've begun playing it again.  I surmise that the system over
there is to have a short playlist, playing things until the audience is
sick of them, then giving them a rest and rotating other things into the
playlist.  I remain unconvinced that making the audience sick and tired of
what you're playing is the secret of success in classical radio. 

However, there is something to be said for some central control over the
playlist and some use of audience research to determine what gets played.
As much as I gripe about WCRB, when I am in my car and try WGBH or WHRB
or, when I can receive it, WBOQ, I often find that WCRB seems to be more
likely than the others to be playing something I like.  WHRB is more
likely to play some good choral music, but they also tend to play an hour
of gregorian chants or some atonal monstrosity.  WBOQ sometimes gets into
playing show tunes or other things that I don't consider classical.  WGBH
is probably the next most likely to have something I want to hear.

And, of course, the main advantage of WCRB for me is that it is always
there and always plays classical music (at least in between the hard-rock
commercials).  WGBH and WHRB have other programming for much of the day,
and WBOQ is difficult to listen to around Boston, particularly in a moving
vehicle.

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 A. Joseph Ross, J.D.                                         617.367.0468
 15 Court Square                                      lawyer@world.std.com
 Boston, MA 02108-2503                       http://world.std.com/~lawyer/
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