Thursday, March 25, 2010

Harmonic Convergence

I listen to both of Miami’s public radio stations; WLRN, which is the NPR outlet and broadcasts mostly news and chat during the day and jazz and an overnight program during the week called Sounds of the Caribbean, which is everything from calypso to reggae to ska and everything else (and is great to wake up to); and WKCP, which is the all-classical music station and is a repeater for Minnesota Public Radio’s classical channel. (The DJ’s try to make it sound like they’re local by inserting weather and events news, but occasionally the CD player with the pre-programmed material slips up and we get a station ID and weather forecast for the Twin Cities.)

Being public stations they naturally have to hold fund-raisers, and it turns out that both of them do them in March. WLRN started last week and is still going on, and WKCP started yesterday. So for at least two days, both stations are overlapping in their begging soliciting. That means I’m finding other sources of audio entertainment. At work I’m listening to CBC Radio 2‘s classical feed, which is basically Muzak; no intro, no outro, and once in while someone popping in to remind me that I’m tuned in to the CBC.

I support public broadcasting and donate what I can when I can. So that means on the first day of the fund-raiser I send it in and then switch them off. I hope both stations reach their goals and more, and I wish they would send out a notice when regular programming resumes and the guilt trip has come to a complete stop.