Comments from the petition: Page 33

i will no longer be contributing my $$$ to wuft--unless we get our music back!
i miss "the old guys".

I should point out that in the over 12 years 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.
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 CDs, 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 hadn’t played in years.
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 of
them.
I was particularly upset with the cavalier attitude of Prof. Wright of the
Journalism Department in the way he 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 he ever think that the fact that most people had started their jobs by that
time might have been a factor?
At the very least Prof. Wright could have presented a compromise. Instead of an
additional fourth hour of the same news (from 6:00am to10:00am!), why not
continue with the previous three hours of news followed by two hours of
classical music (Do we really need two hours of Diane Rehm?) and a call-in show
leading up to Terry Gross. Then another two hours of classical music followed by
“All Things Considered”. And on Saturday certainly they could have had an
hour of opera arias instead of that 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.
I have given WUFT four weeks of listening to the new format and while I may be a
news junkie I really miss my old WUFT-FM.
Our present attitude 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.

I think the one thing about the format change that angers me the most is the
disregard for the station's listeners who, over the life of the station, has
been one of the most SUPPORTIVE, FINANCIALLY AND ACTION ORIENTED, group in the
country!!!! I want my station format back. Along with all of the other
faithful listeners over central Florida I demand action on this problem. Why
can't the all talk be on HD?

I will never pledge again to UF, not because they changed the format so much as
they did not ask us, the pledging public, about what we thought and if we had
any alternatives to their list of changes. I've bought several hd radios
including one for my car and channel 2 and 3 are very dissappointing. HD2 for
the classical station is always being interrupted by dead air when I listen to
any of the classical selections and HD3 is really nice but they have no
background material to go with the old time shows. They also do not run the
serials through each plot but only give one or maybe two episodes of any given
run. If they would run the serials on each night at the same time or even each
week like they did in the originals then I could keep up with them and the plot.
The dean of journalism did not think very hard about this change and his
insufferable way of presenting it to the public who has faithfully listened and
donated for years shows a terrible lack of professionalism and public service
skills. As for keeping up with the times, most companies will not let their
employees stream Pandora or any type of music because it uses so much bandwidth
it slows the system down. (As seen in the rules for county, city and state
offices. Every office I've visited has an office rule about not streaming music
on the companies time and/or computers) I've worked for the state and the county
and that was and is their rules. The employees are allowed to play a cd on the
computer but not stream. If other people want talk so much UF should have put it
on HD2 and then the dead air time would not affect the listening so much. I have
several friends who listen to the Jacksonville station just fine and then they
had the choice to listen to varied classical on the UF station. They liked the
ability to have both. If it is so easy to stream why don't they stream the
Jacksonville station and let classical 98 continue its fine history of bringing
culture to an era of me-ness and shock attitude. Hip-hop, rap , heavy metal rock
and the other modern music has its place in the world, why can't classical
"dead" composers music be allowed its time also? Are we so jaded that we have to
have 24/7 news buffeting us to feel that we are alive? Instant news is not all
that it is cracked up to be.

The wonderful mixed auditory schedule that made up Gaineville's public radio
schedule has been a source of great loss for our family. One of the things that
we miss the most is that it bridged generations. When I would pick up our 10yo
daughter from JJ Finley Elementary School, one important way for us to
communicate without her feeling drilled for information was to discuss what was
on the radio. I would inquire as to what instrument was playing and this would
lead to some very insightful statements on her part. She is a quiet child and I
truly miss this major way for her and I to begin our afternoon communications.
THis week when I experimented with the radio vocal content at the time that I
was to park my car to pick her up, one day the topic was waterboarding, another
day it was the foster care system. Both of these topics are important, but not
as a way to transition a child from school to home.

I purchased one of the "recommended" HD radios when WUFT-FM first started to
broadcast HD signal. The sound from the radio is very poor - suitable "talk
radio" but not for music. Reviews of most of the current HD table radios
available indicate that poor sound quality is standard. Listening to the
WUFT-FM classic music via internet is also compromised since this signal is
sent in a compressed format. Certainly this is not the CD quality sound hyped
by the UF administration during the change over

Please restore WUFT-FM's music-based format. We've listened to Classic 89 since
the very beginning. We no longer wish to support the station as it presently
exists.

I have lived in Gainesville since 1978 and have long considered the public radio
affiliate Classic 89 to be one of our local treasures. I think the funding cuts
and drastic changes in programming at the station have created a blight on our
cultural landscape. I do like to listen to talk radio from time to time and
enjoy informative news analysis as well- but not ALL THE TIME! Let the
programming for OUR public radio station reflect the diversity of this
community. We the people want a station that reflects the variety of tastes
that ARE Gainesville. The University of Florida is making its mark as a major
research institution, but it would do well to remember that the Humanities and
Communications are a significant part of what makes our species unique on the
planet. Bring back the music!!

My house is silent; my car is silent. I don't like the silence, but I refuse to
fill it with conversation 24/7. An hour in the morning and one in the evening
is sufficient. There is no adequate substitute on the AM or the FM dial. My
life is not compatible with sitting at the computer with earphones to hear
classical music. After sending this station my pledge, am I now expected to go
buy CDs?

Though I disagreed with the decision to abandon the classics, I gave $365 during
the pledge drive for the HD radio so I could at least get the classical music I
wanted on the alternate HD channel. Silly me! I'm in Melrose and the signal
doesn't carry this far, so all I have is an expensive extra radio that sits
unused. I won't be supporting WUFT in the future unless the classics return.
(Meanwhile, I've found some classical radio stations and Pandora on the web.)