Our local radio station, WRKF, just sent out a member survey, and they've been asking people to fill it out and return it so they can have feedback on their programming. Overall, we're both very happy with what they carry, since we're NPR junkies and love the news and talk they play. One aspect that I've always had a problem with, which I know I've mentioned at least once before in my blog, is the guy who does the Night Music show, Bob Mooberry. He's not a bad person (he's really fun to listen to during pledge week!), but he's a slack announcer, so when he plays "classical" music, sometimes it's a whole CD of Bach's greatest hits or classical music from movies, stuff like that. He rarely announces exactly what he's playing; he might mention the name of the CD when it's over, but he doesn't go through all the tracks. One instance that sticks in my mind was when he played a whole CD of Gilbert and Sullivan overtures and reported at the end the title of the CD and the fact that it had contained the overtures from, "Let's see, Pirates of Penzance, Patience, uh, H.M.S. Pinafore..." He was obviously scanning the back of the CD case and giving us an abridged list. Basically, my problem with him is that he conceives of classical music as CDs, not works. So Jack and I were careful to expound upon that in our survey, using delicate language but suggesting very strongly that Bob should announce what he's playing and make a stronger effort to play good music (he's been known to let New Age or instrumental movie soundtracks creep into his playlist as well). Their Sunday Baroque guy does a really good job of giving background and full titles, and he's such a wannabe musicologist that once, he interrupted himself after he played several pieces to announce that he had forgotten to give us Telemann's dates. I chuckled. Anyway, back to the point: last night, when we were listening to the program, Bob announced the name of the symphony before AND after it played, and he named the composer and the full title, including opus number. This is a rare event at best. I turned to Jack in the car and proclaimed loudly, "We changed the world!!" Now, we're not sure if our survey really ushered in the change, but the wacky trend of announcing everything he plays has continued into tonight. He played an all-Ravel CD, but he did tell us, in order, all the pieces that were on it. I'm very pleased with myself.

The other thing we suggested relating to Night Music was that they put a "now playing" feature on their web site. WFDD in Winston-Salem has done this for years and years, and I was surprised to find out that WRKF doesn't. It seems like it'd be relatively easy to hook a media program like Windows Media Player or Real Player into a little box on their home page that constantly updates. I wouldn't be able to figure out how, but somebody with Jack's level of expertise could make it work, and surely they have a webmaster who could figure it out. Anyway, we'll keep our fingers crossed that it'll happen someday, and then we wouldn't have to wait to hear whether or not Bob tells us what he's playing; we could just look it up ourselves! It's important for me as a budding music professor to be able to identify what I hear, so I like guessing at the composers of works I don't know, and I like to be able to tell whether I'm correctly remembering the composer/title of something I should know already. Bob Mooberry could play such a significant role in that! I hope he keeps it up, because it really is a nice change.

Labels: listening miscellany, music

• posted by erica 7/21/2005 08:52:00 PM
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