The New QXR

When The New York Times Company divested itself of its long-held classical music station WQXR by selling it to NPR's WNYC this past September, we were deprived of our area's only classical music station as the puny 600 watts at which WNYC operates the station at its new location on the FM dial (105.9) is a far cry from the 6000 watts at which it was operated at its previous FM dial location which permitted us to receive the station's signal quite well albeit not in stereo as even at 6000 watts we're located just barely within the signal's fringe reach. And so now, when we want to listen to QXR, we have to listen via our computer and the Web.

Not exactly the best of all possible worlds.

The above notwithstanding, the transfer of QXR into the hands of WNYC is perhaps the best thing that could have happened for QXR. For the past five years at least, the Times has considered the station a sort of problematic stepchild, and this was reflected in its presence on the Web which in the Times's hands was a decidedly, let us say, slapdash affair.

Not so in the hands of WNYC. Now QXR's website and Web presence are veritable paragons of the type, and the station's programming just what it ought to be for a general interest classical music radio station. One could quibble with some of WNYC's decisions in bringing over staff from the old station (we've, however, more than a quibble with WNYC's decision to bypass Clayelle Dalferes in favor of Midge Woolsey whose bourgeois sensibilities are on display front and center in both her playlists and her commentary on the new QXR just as they were on the old), but, by and large, the new QXR's host lineup is more than satisfactory as is its general-interest classical music programming, and as is the host lineup and less-often-played- and new-classical-music programming on the newly created, 24/7, online-only WQXR Q2 radio stream which we lately find ourself listening to far more often than to QXR itself despite such stuff as Terry Riley's for-some-reason-famous In C, a performance of which we've been listening to determinedly for the past gazillion hours or so — or, rather, so it seems — and which is perhaps the most tedious, mindless piece of music it's ever been our displeasure to hear.

Now if we could only convince WNYC to petition the FCC to permit it to boost QXR's wattage just a teensy-weensy, piddling, ten-times bit....