Changes at VPR

If you haven't heard yet, starting Monday, classical music is dead! OK. It isn't dead. It's just be shuttling off to exile island or in this case, VPR Classical; it's own station.

VPR Classical has actually been around for a while. However, they couldn't completely knock classical music out of the programming line-up on the main station until they had a signal for VPR Classical in the Burlington area. Well, last month, they completed the purchase of a station that will now host VPR Classical. That opens the door for lots of new programming. Here's the blurb from VPR's site:

You wake up to VPR and Morning Edition...then catch up with All Things Considered in the afternoon. But what about the middle of the day? VPR's new line-up features midday news and information programs from 9am to 3pm to spark your curiosity and expand your understanding of issues affecting our community and our world. They're programs VPRhas consistently heard requests for, including On Point, The Story and BBC Newshour each day at 9am as well as VPR's daily regional news magazine Vermont Edition with Jane Lindholm at noon.

Weekends will include even more of your public radio favorites, including Selected Shorts, World Café and The Splendid Table. Your weekend mainstays - A Prairie Home Companion, Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me, Car Talk and This American Life - remain here on VPR. Locally-produced favorites My Place with Joel Najman and All the Traditionswith Robert Resnik are still here too. And we've expanded our locally-produced jazz programming with George Thomas to every weeknight.

You can see the new full schedule for the main VPR station here.

As a member of the VPR Community Forum and frequent whiner about the endless amount of classical music programming on VPR, I wish I could take credit in any small way for these changes. However, the staff at VPR has desired these changes and had them in place for a long time.

Now, we just have to push for music programs that feature artists that aren't dead (jazz), dying (oldies) or hippies (folk, world beat).