Hello Karen and Vocalisters:
Most public radio stations in the US play classical music as their calling
card.
The definition of a public radio station is one that subscribes to National
Public Radio (NPR) and NPR's programs from its roots in Washington, DC.
NPR is funded by the federal government via special grants that are
continually being evaluated by congress. The balance of the monies to fund
each station is raised through semi-annual fund raising ventures that
become, at best, a pain.
In short. these station survive on a balance of federal funding (now reduced
by our Republican friends, as per our Gingrich crew) and local support and
do not run commercial advertising. However, recently these stations have
been allowed to speak about the business matters of their commercial
supporters.
It is these stations, which are supposed to reflect an unbiased and
wholeistic world music message, that have begun to restrict severely the
playing of any kind of vocal music. In this respect they are becoming a
determining influence on the music tastes of the American public and this
is, by their own definition of their calling, a defamation of their of
function.
All public radio stations in the United States need to be strongly
reprimanded for their public stance on this matter of programming vocal
music as a functional portion of their daily public broadcast.
In a short version, there are many public radio stations and they are all
playing a substantial portion of their broadcast time within the realm of
classical instrumental music. But they are, by choice and plan,
restricting the amount of vocal music they program and they are basing this
restriction on the results of polls they have conducted on the American
public
In my opinion these polls are fatally flawed and are giving the public radio
station a false message. Time will tell.
Regards
--
Lloyd W. Hanson, DMA
Professor of Voice, Vocal Pedagogy
School of Performing Arts
Northern Arizona University
Flagstaff, AZ 86011
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