COPY OF EMAIL SENT TO PROF. WRIGHT

COPY OF EMAIL SENT TO PROF. WRIGHT

Dear Professor Wright:

In the more than 12 years that I have lived in Gainesville, both my home and car radios have never been set to any station other than WUFT-FM. Although my wife and I were very upset with the announced dropping of all classical music, I felt I had to listen to WUFT-FM for several weeks to really judge the affect this change would have on me.

I am a lover of classical music and jazz (and I enjoy most other music except hard rock and rap). I am also a news junkie. I welcomed the earlier addition of Terry Gross. She is an excellent interviewer and most, but not all, of her guests are interesting. My wife enjoys, in addition the regular classical music, Opera and the folk music on Saturday.

I enjoyed all of the music on the old WUFT but I was especially fond of “Exploring Music with Bill Mclaughlin”. Although I have a large collection of classical Cd's, one of the joys of the old WUFT was being introduced to a composition or composer that I was not familiar with or being re-introduced to something I had not heard in years. I also enjoyed the belief that some people who might never have had the opportunity of hear classical music might be introduced to it on WUFT-FM.

On a recent trip to South Florida we passed through four different NPR stations. How Sweet it Was - a sensible mix of news and classical music on each station.

Prof. Wright, I was particularly upset with your cavalier attitude in the way you responded to the early complaints. You like classical music? Go out and buy a couple of HD radios for your car and home. Or, “we noticed a drop-off of listening after 9:00am” (when the music started). Did you ever think that the fact that most people had started their jobs by that time might have been a factor?

I have given the WUFT over four weeks of listening to the new format and while I may be a news junkie I really miss my old WUFT-FM.

At the very least Prof. Wright, you could have presented a compromise. Instead of an additional fourth hour of the same news (from 6:00am to10:00am), you could have retained the previous three hours of news followed by a mix of two hours of classical music and a one hour call-in show (Do we really need two hours of Diane Rehm?) leading up to Terry Gross. Then another two hours of classical music followed by “All Things Considered”. On Saturday certainly you could have had an hour of opera arias instead of that really dumb “Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me”. And please don’t insult your audience’s intelligence by trying to appease us with a “Classics for Insomniacs” after midnight.

My present position is “NO MUSIC – NO MONEY”. My wife and I will no longer provide any financial support for WUFT as long as classical music is missing from the daytime programming.

Yours truly,
James Hamon

P.S. During the last fund drive was the announcer correct when he said the this station belonged to the listeners and this was one of the most successful WUFT-FM fund drives? Of course, there was no mention of the new format prior to or during the fund drive. Was that just an oversight?