Gratitude Monday: Multiple media

Today I’m grateful for web alternatives to radio.

Because the Bay Area’s only classical radio station, KDFC, is in a fund-raising drive, and they’re reverting to their old, pre-public radio habits.

When I first arrived here in the Valley they Call Silicon, KDFC was a commercial station, possibly about the last one in the US devoted to classical music. Although listening to them for any increment longer than five minutes made me refer to them as “classics lite”, because they never played an entire piece. The most you got was a movement from a concerto or a symphony or a sonata before a commercial came on.

But evidently even that ratio of ads-to-content wasn’t paying off, because in 2011 the station was sold to the University of Southern California, which operates KUSC as a classics-format station for LA.

Ergo the pledge breaks.

Well, fair enough.

But since they started their fall fundraiser last week, they haven’t played more than a movement from a concerto or a symphony or a sonata before they slam you with four or five minutes of pledge hype.

But they jumped the shark, in my opinion, yesterday, when they interrupted “The Heavens Are Telling” twice to ask for money.

Honest-to-Bach—how crass can you get?

Well, no—I shouldn’t ask that sort of thing. They’ll show me soon enough.

Meanwhile, I’ve got Pandora, and my own playlists that will get me through this drive just fine. So, once again—God bless the Internet.