This is really quite depressing news. I had hoped things wouldn't go as badly. Why can't the folks at NPR get it through their heads that there is really something unique and important about what they're doing? Why dump it for the kind of pap that spews from any number of radio stations. A local station here is having it's membership drive, and I'm giving serious thought to giving them no more money -along with a nice explanation.

"As it turns out, the axe dropped about a month ago in the most tortuous of ways. “Performance Today,” a two-hour program of reportage, commentary and great live performances from around the country, isn’t being cancelled. It’s being modified. Stripped nude and forced to prance about in public like the village idiot...NPR is branching out. Covering the West coast more, to seem less East-coast centric. Ranting about pop artists, many of whom don’t deserve the time of day. Trying to be too many things to too many people."

Click here for Complete Article

A sad article, very telling in describing what has been happening to classical music in this country the past 10 or 20 years. Now everything has to be packaged, made palatable to the "average" listener, or simply dumb-downed. The hallmark of classical music or for that matter all great art is the demand it makes on one's entire being - emotion, intellect, spirituality. Of course, in this society if something is not "easy" to digest then it really won't be profitable. To understand and appreciate classical music requires time and effort. I guess 2 hours of "Performance Today" is way too much time for NPR to devote to classical music.

Here in Denver after the former pure classical station folded permanently NPR opened a second station to replace the demised classical channel. Presently as a result, we have two NPR stations in town. That's a welcome step to the ever dwindling classical community. Just wonder how long that will last...

In my opinion all the publicly funded media outlets have lost their sights. I've bowed out of public tv because they've gone commercial. Why should I send them a measly little check now that they have corporate sponsors? I turn on our local public tv station now-a-days and think I've accidently tuned into some other commercial station; car commercials everywhere (I hate cars!). I think all government funding of these stations should cease. They've lost their mission.