Classical 96.3 FM

This is a communication sent to NEW 96.3 that brought no response.
Hello, I have been thinking of sending this message for some time as we finally decided to get rid of cable and I was no longer able to listen to the 94.5 PBS station from Buffalo. Now, with some expense and an outdoor antenna, it comes in loud and clear. I have spent six months listening on average, often background, six hours a day, to your station which you describe as new.
What aspect of this station is new?
The PBS station in Buffalo has occasionally pointed out that they have 32,000 titles in their collection.
And listening to your station, I would be surprised if you have more than 500 as it’s like listening to an expanded eight track tape, the same music being played over and over and the same ads coming at you the to point where it is in no way conducive to anything but the occasional drop by.
Your DJs must be completely bored out of their minds, if we could call them that. And what is with the idea of classical music beyond the year 1870 should rarely be played? As anyone acquainted with the classical genre would agree, there’s plenty of superb music that happened after that. You guys never play anything that is in the slightest provocative. Imagine, from the perspective of somebody who is relatively new to classical that they actually considered you folks to be authorities and came to the conclusion that this arena was no longer worthy of consideration.
Based on what you play, it would be an easy conclusion to come to.
I don’t need to tell you about some of the spectacular composers that imposed after 1870.
So let’s get back to the ads. How about the charming chappy that shows up around 8 AM flogging his Kensington market suits?
Tom is an abomination, just like your super irritating ad with the baby screaming and the sirens wailing and that one can probably push ahead 30– 40 times a day!
If you had better programming, you might discover that you could bring a more diverse collection of advertisers.
I’m sorry to have to write this, but there’s nothing new about your station that seems to cater almost exclusively to the 75 to 90-​year-​old set and if you spent a little bit of time listening to the PBS station, you would realize that you would better describe your station as docile music for insular people who would never want to be exposed to a crazy world.
Johnny 57
And not ready to get a custom pine box quite yet!

Very disappointed in this station. This is not classical music. They are playing insipid slightly elevated elevator music for old-​folks homes, which the old folks probably don’t like either. Too many hoakey movie soundtracks, too many bad-​taste arrangements, too much corn-​ball slurp. Where’s the Bach and Beethoven? You have to wade through so much junk to get to it. I used to love to listen to the BBC in the UK. Yes, they blended in some off-​beat stuff, gaelic music, and all kinds of bizarre and interesting music blended in with repertoire-​expanding classical choices. It was educational and very entertaining. 96.3 is just utterly insipid. It makes me feel lame to be a classical music listener.

I was privileged to live in Chicago for 28 years. It had (has?) a real classical station, WFMT. They played mostly true classical music and only very occassionally dipped into «crossover», musicals (usually vintage) and other such stuff. When they played a work, they played the whole thing, including entire operas and Bruckner and Mahler symphonies. Of course, if I found the particular piece boring, I turned to something else, usually an educational channel. The audience was probably mostly over fifty but also affluent and educated. The snootier ads (always read, never with jingles or music) were for financial advice for «wealth preservation» but they also advertised lots of stuff having to do with music and culture.
Contrast that with 96.3. Znaimer’s Zoomer rag seems to cater to wealth but not education or refinement. His classical station, however, seems mostly for house-​bound little old ladies. Only single movement of multiple movement pieces are played and the selection is very limited. Lots of the content is not classical at all but includes non-​classical religious music and drippy pop. The recorded requests by listeners seem to display an audience who might once in a lifetime buy a CD called «Classical Music to Take a Dump By» or some such other silly name and maybe attend a pop music concert. These are the kind of people who might call a work «pretty» but not get into much more depth than that.
They are not culture-​hating Philistines or anti-​intellectuals, but rather people whose cultural knowledge is somewhat limited, despite some moderate enthusiasm. As Karl, says the ads are largely aimed at seniors and include lots of ones for retirement homes.
Of course, a radio station must have advertising to exist, and advertsing must cater to a market. It took me a while to think about why WFMT’s format would not market in Canada but I think I might have a guess: Canadians have a much higher basic educational level than Anericans, but when it comes to advanced education, the rate of graduate degrrees and even university degrees here is somewhat less. Chicago has an institution — U. of. C. — which has produced many Nobel laureates. The same can be said of Boston and LA. Classical music appreciation — at least in the West — seems to correlate with advanced education.
What I find a bit sad is that if the only large enough audience for classical music in Toronto to generate a predictable ad market is seniors, what will happen when the folks here now who are over 55 or so are completely dead within the next 50 years. One hope is the large number of immigrants in Toronto from Russia, Korea, and China, countries which have populations interested in classical music. (My own theory about classical music composition is that it will gradually shift in culture from Western to Eastern and both Western tonality and atonality will be merged or replaced with more Eastern systems of tonality as well as rhythm).
Moses Z., if you read this, tell me if my guess is correct!

CBC used to play classical music through the day. Oh how I used to love Jurgen Goth’s voice carrying me through another work day. But then CBC decided to shift their FM format to crap. How’s that working out for you, CBC?
Luckily a city as big as Toronto can support at least one commercial classical station and even maybe a commercial jazz station. Maybe. 96.3 can probably do it better but it’s about all we got. The Zoomer shtick is both good and bad. Lots of the ads and editorial don’t speak to me, dealing with health issues of adult diaper wearer generation. From what I can tell, most of the health reporting and advice is based on good science. None of this SCAM (supplements, complimentary, and alternative medicine) witchcraft that seems to be pervading media ever since they laid off their trained science reporters and gave the health beat to the lifestyles section. The health ads though are total woo. Homeopathic cream for vertigo? Say, that could be an actual tumor in your inner ear. A placebo cream won’t cure your cancer. Then for a while there was this horrible run of «detox» commercials that claimed your intestines and colon are lined with some gunk like spackle. Oddly, no autopsy has ever found this mythical spackle. (Hint, the noxious substance you imbibe turns your stool into the «spackle».)
The music itself does tend to run the «top 40» of classical. But then you don’t listen to classical to hear contemporary music. You tune in to hear old favorites. Really old favorites. And sometimes A Short Ride on a Fast Machine (which makes the most effective use of the woodblock since The Who’s Live at Leeds «Magic Bus»).

I used to listen to Classical 96 on a regular basis, back before it was bought out by a post-​Citytv Moses Znaimer last year. After a while, my interest faded a bit, since it seemed to be drifting into the kind of lighter, mincier stuff that’s not good for driving (when I do most of my radio listening).
But the «new» Classical 96 seems a bit more varied to me, or maybe it’s just nice to come back after a bit of a hiatus. There’s still a fair amount of chamber music, but it’s not without the more elaborate pieces I’d prefer to hear (such as an excerpt from Don Giovanni the other day). The rather frequent commercials are pitching the same high-​falootin’ stuff (diamonds, etc.) as before, and the constant soft selling almost makes me wish they’d throw in an ad or two for monster truck rallies just for a change of tone.