I'm so glad you mentioned this. The classical programming on WGBH and WHRB is fantastic, but it is limited mostly to daylight hours. Losing WCRB is regrettable if only because we'll lose BSO broadcasts from Tanglewood. The rest can be replaced with one of those "World's Most Relaxing Classical" CDs.

Absolutely agree. If you want to understand the devolution of classical radio in this country, look no further than the same programming malady that has swept the rest of the radio industry.

I can't help but think that programming outside the 18th-19th century box--early music, Shostakovich, Ives, any living composer--during prime listening hours could only broaden the audience. Hell, look at the surprise classical bestsellers of the last decade or so: Chant, Gorecki's Third Symphony with Dawn Upshaw, Arvo Part's Te Deum. All outside the mainstream (yes, of course, because they're surprises they are outside the mainstream by definition. Work with me).

Great editorial on this topic, Drawing the Classical Line, that I can't recommend highly enough.

Losing WCRB is really no great loss. Losing the bulk of quality NPR and local programming on WBUR a few years ago was pretty bad. Mo more Tony Cennamo, Marion McPartland, Mountain Stage, Steve Elman's Spaces -- now all we get is BBC World News, over and over and over. Might as well be 100% evangelicalism for all the cultural good it contributes to this community. BOOOOR-ANG. And the same goes for CRB. See ya.

Chowderhead

Regarding the claims of "Anonymous" that WCRB states that its focus group results indicate that listeners don't want long pieces and want composers like Mozart and Bach, I would like to provide some historical perspective. I lived in Boston from 1975 through 1987 and then again from 1994-97 and listened to WCRB literally every day all day except for brief excursions to WBUR (which broadcast classical music at the time), WGBH, and WHRB. From 1975 through 1987, WCRB broadcast long works on a daily basis, regularly playing relatively common symphonies by Mahler and Bruckner, along with rare ones like Furtwangler's Second. So the claim that the Boston audience doesn't want long pieces and familiar works by Mozart, etc., is, or at least was, false. Moreover, the station did not have the practice--all too common now--of having hourly blocks in which to fit compositions, so it had a time format permitting the playing of 90-minute symphonies. The station also regularly played obscure and lesser-known works, both short and long, by composers like Bax and Hanson. By the time I returned to Boston in 1994, the station had hired Mario Mazza, who decimated the classical programming at WNCN in New York City, and who proceeded to do the same at WCRB. The station that many of you who are posting here are describing is not the WCRB of 1975-87; it is a dumbed-down travesty, content to play the same overly familiar "warhorses" and cheerful minor works, all because Mazza's reign pandered to corporate greed and sought to increase revenues by sacrificing quality and depth in favor of superficiality. This policy destroyed WNCN, and has done the same to WCRB. The Boston audience may now no longer want longer works, as Anonymous says, but that may be because the audience hasn't been exposed to a wide range of longer works. (The audience would have to listen to WHRB for that.) As for WCRB's reliance on focus groups, they didn't even exist during WCRB's glory years. The station valued quality and a small but loyal audience, along with the relatively small but stable profits that that audience made possible. When compared to this former WCRB of the period I described, the WCRB of today is scarcely worth preserving. I'm saddened by its imminent loss, but the fatal blow was already inflicted when Mazza was hired.