Westchester County residents will be able to get WQXR again.
From the NY Times (by Elizabeth Jensen):
Over-the-air broadcasts of the classical music radio station WQXR are being restored for some Westchester County residents. The station’s parent company, New York Public Radio, on Monday bought the small Ossining radio station WDFH-FM, at 90.3.
Residents of the area lost access to the WQXR signal in 2009, when New York Public Radio bought the station from The New York Times Company and moved the programming to a weaker signal on the FM band…
New York Public Radio said it paid $400,000 for WDFH, with help from a $300,000 Ford Foundation grant.
From Tom Taylor Now:
As for the hemmed-in 53-watt signal at 475 feet, there’s now a construction permit for 250 watts of power, which the buyer says will help put the signal over the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts in Katonah. Seller in this deal was Hudson Valley Community Radio. And now 90.3 is doing classical, mostly simulcasting New York Public Radio’s WQXR Newark (105.9).
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In New Mexico, a translator at 102.9 fm that was carrying Classical KHFM is now being repurposed as a rock format. American General Media upgraded the translator to a full-power signal and is calling it Area 102.9, “New Mexico’s Modern Rock.” They claim the station will play 10,000 songs in a row.
I believe that means KFHM is losing part of its coverage. Hey New Mexico, was 102.9 still covering Pecos? Does KHFM’s main signal cover any of what will be lost? It’s been a while since I’ve been there and I couldn’t find much info online.
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Online, Pandora is expanding its classical offerings. You can read about it on Ann Midgette’s Washington Post blog.
The result: three new classical stations, available as of today, with a Goldilocks array of choices: a light one for the casual listener, a more serious one, and one that focuses exclusively on complete performances — as people who love classical music generally expect.
Pandora, like iTunes, has observed the growth of its classical listenership — in June 2013, it was up 27% over the previous year — and has been working to respond to that. The new stations have been “hypercurated,” says Ron Nenni, Pandora’s director of music programming, with “handcrafted” categories, as opposed to some of the broader stations in other genres. “We wanted to make sure we were offering a good balance of classical periods.” And rather than being offering generic recordings, says Michael Addicott, head of Pandora’s curation team, “We were carefully picking which performance of which particular work or movement by a composer.”
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