Fairbanks WKLB/WCLB & WCRB

[Doug Drown]

I am a classical music fan, and I always listen to WCRB when I reach
southern Maine enroute to Massachusetts from my home Down East.

I wasn't aware of the complaints about the station's programming, though I
would have been sympathetic.  During my college and early professional
years in the late '60s to mid '70s, before I moved to Maine, WCRB was a
Boston institution --- considered one of the greatest classical radio
stations in the country, and enjoying Arbitron ratings that were in eastern
Massachusetts' top tier, just below WHDH and WRKO.  Given its format, the
station had an astonishingly large listenership.  By the end of the
century, the playlist had become annoyingly tight, degenerating into what
was, in my estimation, the classical music equivalent of a standard light
rock station --- the same "best-known" symphonic and solo pieces
("classical lite," as they're somewhat derisively called) --- played over
and over again.  If I heard Horowitz play "Polonaise" on Tuesday morning, I
could predict that I would hear it again that night, the next day, and the
day following.  All of that has blessedly changed under WGBH's ownership,

The same thing was true on Maine's W-BACH stations for quite some time
until Bill Binnie bought them.  The playlist has improved considerably
since.  To his credit, Binnie seems to take his ownership of the stations
seriously.