DC classical saga

For anyone who’s been following my sporadic reports on the struggle to maintain classical radio in our nation’s capital, here’s some good news: the public station WETA, as rumoured, has returned to an all-classical format. There’s life in the old corpse yet. Congratulations to WETA’s management on making an enlightened decision. Paul Farhi explains the rather unusual deal in a Washington Post article: WETA-FM will assume the call letters of the now defunct commercial classical station WGMS as well as much of its staff. As ionarts observes, it’s not the ideal outcome, but probably the best that could be hoped for. The new station is already up and running with a web broadcast and a blog, where a comments war has broken out between people celebrating the return of classical programming and people lamenting the loss of Car Talk.

Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise: DC classical saga.