Re: W-H-RB on the Internet

[Mark Shneyder <bostonradio@yahoo.com>]

--- "A. Joseph Ross" <lawyer@world.std.com> wrote:
> One of the things I've never understood about WCRB is how they can believe 
> their statistics which supposedly show the audience doesn't like choral 
> works when Beethoven's 9th symphony always ends up somewhere near the top 
> of their Top 40 survey.

You have to consider the audience backround and cultural
factors behind the national "lite/Top40 classical" trend.
This will come as a shock to some of you, but the
money demographic today is not the baby boomers(and certainly
not the GenXers :). It's the folks in between, in the 35-44 bracket. Raised on
rock music, in school systems whose music programs
began to fall away in the late 1960s and early 1970s, many of these folks
have about the same comfort level with classical music
that the most of average people have with astrophysics.

Those 40-something listeners are usually parents, and
maybe even parents of young teenagers. No wonder they
are looking for something soothing/light in the background -
a particular variety of classical music that often gets
called "sonic Valium"(aka Lite/Top40/dumbed down classical)
Classical stations ask their target demo what they want
to hear(and they ask them regularly and often), the 
answer is almost always -- calm and soothing music. 
Choral pieces,operas or chants hardly qualify and test
extremely low.

Where other stations around the country may be seeing
a downturn, that's not the case with WCRB-FM. Their
audience demographic has been unchanged for years
and the audience [mostly people in their 40s] hasn't
declined in any way. Some of this relates to the fact
that Boston has an active and involved classical-music
community, so the demand for classical music on
the radio in this market is relatively high.(WCRB, WGBH,
WHRB all find very strong P-1's). Based from my frequent
business travels in the past couple years, classical CD
sections at Tower Records(BackBay) and HMV(Harvard Sq) are probably
the best in the country and the world.

I also don't appreciate Laurence's shot at "rockers".
No need to get carried away in this forum and insult/take
shots at others for their musical tastes or distastes.

And that's my final answer, Reg,

Mark
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