Profit and the arts

I wrote a few days ago about health care being incompatible with the profit motive. I thought of another issue with the same problem: the Arts. First, there is a difference between art and entertainment, and I'll use a simplistic way of highlighting that difference. Entertainment makes money, art needs subsidies (though not always from a government). Both art and entertainment can uplift the human spirit but art does it in a way that can be hugely expensive and that seems to appeal to a limited audience (though the National Opera doing a simulcast on the Jumbotron in RFK Stadium is trying to change that -- alas, no link).

I love classical music, especially written for orchestra. I've loved it since before I was a teenager. I remember putting on classical music and moving the speakers of the record player (yup, I still have lots of LPs) so they faced each other with enough for me to lie down and put my head between them for the full stereo effect. One of my lifetime goals is to have one of my own compositions performed by a competent orchestra.

Here's an example of the profit motive at work: When I moved to Detroit in the late 70s there were four stations that played exclusively classical music. Since then all four have disappeared. WDET switched to world music in the mid 80s (I don't know if this is switching from one niche market to another, so I'll let it pass). WQRS, a commercial station, decided in the mid 90s that while it was making a profit, it could make more profit by switching to alternative rock. Just a few years after that WUOM, an NPR station, decided it could get more donations from more listeners by switching to talk. And just this week, CBC Radio 2 (out of Windsor), dropped to 4 hours of classical music a day (after spending a few years at 13 hours a day) because they hope that by appealing to more listeners they will get a larger subsidy from the Canadian government. Detroit classical music lovers despaired for many years after WQRS changed format. It was only a few years ago that they welcomed WRCJ, a public radio station, but even they have 11 hours of jazz overnight.

Note that in 3 out of the 4 cases the switch wasn't because the station didn't have enough to work with, it was because the station could get more money by changing formats. Perhaps these stations are trying to emulate big business -- the bigger the better. Too bad if you want a niche product.

Yeah, it is possible to live-stream classical music from a wide variety of sources -- even from Australia. Alas, those streams aren't received by my clock radio nor my car.