Catching up (2)

I wish them luck. This sounds a lot like the "good music of all types"
approach that failed so miserably for KUSC in LA 15-20 years ago. They are a traditional classical station now, and doing very well.

Such diverse (some would say "chaotic") programs can work, but they require an enormous amount of effort and staff time to assemble. They often take years to build an audience.

The only radio station I know of doing this successfully on a large scale is KUNC in Greely Colorado. Their mix includes only very small amounts of classical music, and mostly familiar and traditional classical at that.

So a failure two decades ago means something vaguely similar will fail now? Times have changed. And New York isn't LA (which isn't to say that in 2008 a program like this couldn't succeed in LA, too).

WNYC is doing this without much staff time. The audience seems to be there. Why judge this effort from a distance, without information, and by using comparisons 20 years old?

Hey Greg,

It seems like while the McKnight's programming is infinitely better than what one hears on stations like WQXR, there's a heavy bias on a certain school of contemporary American music. The European composers on the playlist are also part of that "large-orchestral"-offend the least amount of people type. (Much like I'm not blaming Alex Ross for fashioning his book after his own tastes)

I like a lot of this music, but it would be really nice to get some European names or even some Americans usually off the standard orchestral-commissioning radar.

Again, it's Terrance's show and he could play whatever he wants, but I feel there's already a big disconnect between American and European musical scenes and it'll be great to have someone try to bridge that gap. (Instead of using Ligeti [whom I love] as the standard and token member of the European avant garde) What about Grisey, and Murail (who teaches in NYC by the way) for starters?

Hi, Eric. This is the kind of debate I'd like to see! Not, "why is their programming so lame." But rather, "Listen, it's fine, but I'd like it more this way." In other words, what they're doing is serious enough to be worth arguing about.

I don't agree with this sort of buckshot musical programming. Reminds me of the BBC Radio 3's "Through the Night" or whatever they call it now. Something for everybody.

What has Ellington to do with Brahms?

This program seems totally unfocused and random. There's nothing that I could find linking any of the pieces together. Just an attempt to hook someone on one work and hope that they'll then stay around for the next.

There are no surprises here, just the same stuff jumbled together.

I don't get it. This is not the future of classical radio. It's the end.

One mistake you make is thinking that the various programming strands here -- new music, standard rep, jazz, other things -- are aimed at different people. Not so. They're aimed at people who are presumed to want to hear everything that's programmed. So far, the results show that these people exist, in vociferous multitudes.

As for things being unrelated, first that's a very subjective judgment. Have you heard the program? McKnight is, in fact, very good at creating both overt and subliminal connections. On his first night, several pieces had something of a toccata feel to them, which created an unspoken thread.

As for this being the end of classical radio, if indeed this is the future -- if the classical radio audience of the future really wants to hear programming like this -- then, yes, it's the end of classical radio as we've known it. Many people will mourn that, you included, or so I'd guess. I wouldn't be unhappy, at least not on personal grounds. I can't listen to standard classical radio, but I'll happily listen to Terrance McKnight. (And now somebody's going to say I hate classical music!)

Dear Mr. Sandow,

You might well be right about the future, yet surely it might be possible to remind people that a movement from a work is a distortion of the experience, except if you already know the entire piece and are listening for some special nuance to be found in a particular performance. This kind of programing is ubiquitous in England and Ireland, and I'm not alone in my dismay: what we're hearing are bleeding hunks of music, no more representative of the composer's intention than a Reader's Digest version might be of "Anna Karenina." It's a different species, true, but it doesn't help if young people are encouraged to think only in bleeps and sound bytes, rather than in whole paragraphs -- and beyond. This isn't the place to examine the consequences of so much unconcentrated thought, but I hope you're not surrendering to corporate forms of salesmanship, thus abandoning your own sensibility.

Corporate forms of salesmanship? You can't possibly have heard this program.

I also don't think it's possible to "encourage" young people to hear only bleeps and bytes. They form their own ideas, and they're way ahead of us.

I don't mind the occasional single movement. What's wrong with that? Doesn't bother me at all. Especially if it contributes to some larger flow. But in any case there aren't many of them on these broadcasts. Doesn't it also matter that he plays the entire John Adams Violin Concerto? All three movements?

Catching up indeed. Minnesota Public Radio has an entire station dedicated to mixxing it up being the "norm." The Current as it's called has been going strong for at least 2 or 3 years and has contributed the largest jump in donors to the MPR group that they've seen in years.

Sorry if I missed something obvious, or well known! I'll look at it. And I'm glad they're so successful.

I was referring to New York public radio catching up, not you. You are always ahead of the pack. :)

Aw, thanks! Sounds like I missed the boat on this one, though.

Richard Friedman above is thinking of the BBC Radio 3 program "Late Junction;" "Through the Night", the overnight show, remains fully conservative in its musical selections.

"Late Junction" has been mixing up a blend of world music, jazz, folk, and classical for about eight years now. It's the first thing I thought of when I saw your piece on Terrence McKnight's show. Late Junction has had the unintended effect of steering me back to a lot more classical music, since I came to the show from a folk/world music base.

I'd love to listen to Mr. McKnight's show, but those are awkward hours for me in streaming-audio terms -- US radio stations are far behind the BBC in listener convenience.

I love "Late Junction" -- I usually claim it is the greatest radio show on the planet -- but I also like more traditional classical radio, such as BBC's "Through The Night" and CBC Radio 2's programming. CBC 2 from Canada is going whack much of its classical music, particularly the drive-time blocks, this year. I live near the border, and CBC Radio has been a valuable resource for years.