Why is there so little classical music played on the classical stations on
weekends?  What do they think the listeners are doing instead then?

23 responses total.

Weekends are devoted to jazz. Its a marketing thing. Classical listeners
turn to their tapes and CDs. 

Friday and Saturday were jazz.  Canada plays rock concerts on Saturday. 
Tonight all three stations had new age.  Please explain how this is a
marketing thing, and why the same listeners would want different music, or
why different listeners would listen to the same stations on weekends.  WQRS
used to play classical every day, and they were probably the most dependent
on the market.

I think the clientele shifts. First, if they weren't classical stations
at all, they would have a bigger audience. They do have a mission, however,
so it is a balancing act between doing what their mission is and what
attracts a larger audience. I've tried to put myself in their shoes, and
asked myself when I would go "pop" without alienating too many of the
classical listeners. Weekend evenings seems logical, when the "pop"
listeners might be tuning around the most. During the week during the day
the majority of listeners would be work-at-home people, forming their
major audience for their mission......anyway, that's the kind of thinking
that goes on, I think.

I suspect that quite a lot of the classical stations' regular listeners like
jazz in limited amounts.

Having said that, the public stations are no less dependent on the market than
are commercial stations.  But they're dependent in a *different* way.  On a
commercial station, advertisers care about market share overall (or at least
at the time *their* ads run); they're looking to have lots of listeners hear
their ad.  Public stations have to broaden their base of people who listen
enough to contribute.  They do this in part by having special programming in
the hopes of attracting listeners to *that one segment*, as long as a bunch
of them will contribute.  Yes, they also have to avoid alienating their
bread-and-butter listeners, but when they have fundraisers you can bet they
add up the dollars of all contributors who say they like the jazz programming
(or who call during those programs).

Would this somehow also explain the Windsor stations policy of mixing genres
from 3-6 p. m., a bit of classical, a bit of jazz, old musicals...?

They also do this at other times.  I think their reasons are somewhat
different.  Personally, I mostly like their mix myself.  At least one motive
they clearly have is legal requirements for a certain percentage of Canadian
content in broadcasting; this is quite hard to maintain in classical
broadcasting.  (I've heard one of their hosts talk about that.  A Canadian
violinist playing a violin concerto, say, with a US orchestra isn't Canadian
enough to count, if I recall.)  Beyond that I'm not sure, except that (as I
say) they are my first choice for listening when I can - which is *mostly*
during Disk Drive (3-6+) and Stereo Morning, which have that kind of mix. 
Quite possibly the mix pleases lots of others, too.

CBC, if I understand it correctly, is charged with fostering Canadian 
culture of all sorts, not just classical music.  They do a lot of 
"alternative rock" programming on weekend evenings; they had a long 
tradition of shows which ran a mix from rock through jazz & folk to 
new age in the midnight-0500 block, but I don't know what they are doing 
in that time slot now.
 
In general I love the CBC mixed-form shows and I wish such programming
were done in America.

In America, all the marginal musics are getting squeezed into fewer 
and fewer stations.  I don't know why folk shows end up on weekends on 
public radio stations, but they certainly seem to.  WKAR/East Lansing 
has a four hour folk block on Sunday night; WETA in Washington has a 
famous folk show which runs 4 hours Saturday night.  Philadelphia had 
a famous Saturday night folk show until it was killed when the public
radio station shut down all its music programming and went to
talk/news.

I work at home and listen to music while typing.  How can people work while
listening to talk?  I could understand WUOM playing music from 9-5 and talk
in the evening.  I had no idea other stations were following the same pattern.

Also, there's an unfortunate tendency for classical or jazz programs to become
'wallpaper' programs - on some stations at least.

'wallpaper'?  Qu'est-ce que c'est?

Think _Pachelbel's Cannon_ and smooth jazz.

Which classical stations are you referring to?  I recently got some nice
classical music on the Detroit Public Schools station, in between Lansing and
Toledo stations, I wonder if this is new.  One weekday eve around 7-8.
I don't understand 'wallpaper' either.

Oh, I'm not impuning any station in particular.  In my experience classical
radio tends to range from wallpaper at worst to stunning at best.

wallpaper = Muzak?  I read that Muzak screens out high notes, low notes,
volume shifts and even most minor chords.  'The result is aproduct unique in
musical annals:  a harmonized sound sequence entirely without musical content.
It is even transmitted in mono to enhance the screened-out simplicity....
Teenagers especially dislike it' (and it was used to rid a 7-Eleven store
of them, wonder if it would work on rats).

Muzak used to consist mainly of Burt Bacharach instrumentals years
ago, meaning endless strings of minor sevenths.  Used to drive
me nuts.

Yes, but they're neutered minor sevenths.  I mean, there's nothing 'bluesy'
about wallpaper music.

Right.  Those chords are French-sounding, at least to my ears, not 
bluesy.  (I meant "minor chords with added sevenths," not the interval
of the minor seventh.  Burt Bacharach practically wore them out.)

(That, and supporting a C major chord with an F in the bass, sort
of thing.)

I had no idea there was such complexity to Muzak!

yeah, muzak should go down in the "anals" all right...  ;-)

There was a interview program on public radio about "airport music",
which apparently is a moaning kind of synthesized music. Someone has
analyzed it and composed a score of "airport music" to be played by
an ensemble. The original music was prepared by an individual on
a synthesizer and never written down as music. It was therefore quite
a challenge to convert it. It turned out to be much more complex than
the person writing it for instruments first assumed.

What sorts of music are played by the different restaurants around town?  And
stores?  Dinersty is the only quiet one I can think of offhand.  And Kiwanis
and the library are pretty quiet.

I just found a new source of classical music on the radio, second evening that
WDTR has played a medley of classical favorites, started about 7 p.m. and went
until the station went off the air at 8:38.  Lots of opera, some themes from
Fantasia.  90.9, Detroit Public Schools, since 1948,  a weak station like
Toledo but ok in mono.  WDET may play classical Sunday 10 a.m.  Radio
conference item 203 is a discussion of internet radio, but the only classical
station seems to be King FM in Seattle.  Rane will be giving us a demo
Thursday eve, anyone else interested? (Hope it was okay to mention this Rane).

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