WQRS RIP

Nov 20 12:41 UTC 1997

It's been announced that WQRS will be changing its format from
classical music to light pop.  I hardly ever listened to WQRS,
and when I did I hated its short-attention-span format, cretinous
continuity, blaring commercials and news, weather and traffic
spots.  Will anyone miss it?  Is its disappearance part of a
trend?

response 2 of 25:

Nov 20 19:00 UTC 1997

Absolutely, I'll miss not having at least the *option* of dialing in classical
music on demand.  And WQRS' variety was enough so that I got to hear lotza
stuff I'd never heard before, while regularly hearing things I knew.  Sigh...

response 4 of 25:

Nov 21 11:28 UTC 1997

Um, yes, I forgot to say that.  The all-to-frequent commercials on a
for-profit station are very irritating to me, but combining them all into a
couple of weeks a year, nonstop, is even worse (for those couple of weeks).

response 6 of 25:

Nov 24 11:46 UTC 1997

WQRS is now One O Five Dot One -- The Edge.  The music is sort of
"alternative through the ages."  

I don't think this is a case of southeast Michigan getting what it
deserves.  WQRS was the only game in town, so they had a big audience.
Sounds like the owners (some east coast outfit) thought they could
make even more money with the new format.  I hope they succeed, and
I also hope some enterprising broadcasters set up a new and better
classical station soon.  

response 8 of 25:

Nov 25 16:15 UTC 1997

An anecdote:  I was heading home from work Friday just before 5pm when *it*
happened:  The last classical piece finished on WQRS.  At 5pm some man began
speaking (station manager?) saying how the decision to change from classical
was not made lightly, etc., that WQRS would keep its classical library for
some other station to use some day, blah-blah-blah.  I had no idea yet that
*that* was the moment.  Then an operatic piece began.  After a few moments
there was a repetitious fuzz heard, which I thought to myself "that sounds
like a scratch on a record, surely they can hear that, can't they?"  After
a bit the operatic music faded, and the repetitive fuzz became clear as the
percussion track on some weird-ass rock-something tune fading in, and a voice
mentioning that WQRS classical would not be forgotten or something like that.
It was a strange experience, being there at the moment of truth, not having
know ahead of time it was about to happen.

Meanwhile, I've seen in other items about a Detroit-area possibility for
classical music:  89.9 in Windsor?  Besides that & WCAR in Lansing & WUOM in
Ann Arbor, any other alternatives?

response 10 of 25:

Nov 26 15:38 UTC 1997

89.9 Windsor is good, but plays a much broader mix than most classical
stations.  Often you get traditional folk or light jazz, etc., just mixed in.
No commercials.  The Canadian news is often a refreshing change, too.  Some
tilt toward Canadian content.  I listen to this quite a lot when I can.

WKAR (90.5) East Lansing, yes.  WUOM doesn't do music during most of the hours
in which I'd listen to the radio - no longer much of a choice.  The local
classical public station you don't mention is WGTE in Toledo, 91.3 (right next
to UOM).

response 12 of 25:

Nov 27 14:45 UTC 1997

Re 11: Rane, read resp 10 again.  I think it showed up earlier as "WCAR", too.
WKAR is what I actually listen to most of the time, since I have reception
troubles (noise) at work for my other choices, & their programming's fine.
Personally I also like Bob Blackman's Sunday evening folk show, too.

response 14 of 25:

Dec 1 00:17 UTC 1997

I will miss WQRS too. They were here when I came to Ann Arbor in 1966, 
and I thought of them as a fixture. It is hard to realize that they are 
gone. I updated the HVCN media information center with this info. 
(http://www.hvcn.org/info/mia.html) 

I found this article about the transition in the Detroit News
http://detnews.com/1997/accent/9711/23/11220020.htm

I never listened to 89.9 in Windsor much, but I have been listening to 
it lately and I am not disappointed. It is embarrassing to have to rely 
on another country's government-supported radio station to get something 
decent to listen to.

response 16 of 25:

Dec 9 00:19 UTC 1997

The Ann Arbor Public Library has a large selection of recordable CDs.  On most
of them some helpful borrower has added up the total performance times so that
it is easy to tape them.  Another option is to use a mono reel-to-reel tape
player to record up to 3 hours of the canned music played from midnight to
6 a. m. by all the NPR stations, with absolutely no commercials.  Or you can
record up to 6 hours on a VCR, with poor quality, if you have one that does
not require a video signal at the same time to record, or can record audio
from the radio and video from the TV.  Or to record in stereo set up several
cassette recorders in a row with timers?  Or record onto two mono reel-to-reel
types at the same time and hope you can synchronize R and L channels?  We have
pretty much given up listening to the radio now, too much modern stuff on the
public stations, movie music, jazz, failed experiments.
There is talk about digital radio opening up many more slots, and perhaps they
will become cheap enough that somebody somewhere can afford to broadcast
classical music without commercials.  I personally am hoping for cable radio,
but the local cable company will not sell radio without the TV part of it,
which means about $30/month for two not very good classical 'stations'.  

response 18 of 25:

Feb 26 22:20 UTC 1998

I was wondering if anyone wanted to comment on the article in the March 
Ann Arbor Observer.  The article is about WUOM, the University of Michigan's
public radio station.  The article claims that as an all-classical station, 
WUOM's ratings were so low that they were on the verge of losing 
their subsidy from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
So WUOM jettisoned daytime classical music as a survival move, and the 
results in ratings and in listener donations have been overwhelmingly
positive.  WUOM now pulls twice the listenership of the jazz station
on WEMU, and donations are up by something like 50%.
 
(Mmm, there is no shortage of "Classical Music Crisis" items in which 
to place this response.  :/   )

response 20 of 25:

Feb 27 18:55 UTC 1998

For some new places to get classical radio music, see Radio 203 (which someone
might want to link here).  Is there any chance that some new stations might
appear on Internet radio which don't broadcast, and thus keep expenses down
(I think - how does this work) and could thus appeal to a much smaller
audience, and survive on donations?  What does it cost to send Internet radio?
Does anyone know about what sort of classical music is available through the
local cable TV company?  We went once and listened to their two channels and
decided they were not worth the cost of cable TV (about $30/mo) plus $8.

response 22 of 25:

Feb 27 21:28 UTC 1998

Is less classical music actually being sold, or less listened to on the radio?
Maybe CD's are so easy to use that nobody bothers with radio now?

response 24 of 25:

Feb 27 23:15 UTC 1998

University sponsored public radio used to be strongly supported by
the university - as part of their educational mission. However U of M
has been cutting back on budgeted support for WUOM for many years, until
we reached this pass. I think the U of M has lost sight of the purpose of
having a radio station.