Remembering WQXR 96.3 FM

If you scan the NYC radio dial and hit 105.9 FM, you'll land on the city's only classical music station WQXR 105.9 FM. But for nearly 80 years its home was a little further down at 96.3 FM. Back in 2009, when this blog was about 2 1/2 years old, I chronicled the station's historic move up the dial due to its change in ownership.

Between 1944 and 2009 WQXR was owned by The New York Times as a commercial entity. Not only did the station play classical music but it was, as you might imagine, heavy with news. In between the sonatas and interludes, symphonies and overtures, concertos and chamber music -- the whole array of the classical music cannon -- there would be news delivered directly by Times reporters. The station was a high-class, uber-sophisticate mixture of beautiful music and substantive infotainment. 

My dad used to listen to this station all the time, and I was introduced to all sorts of great music that a kid my age might otherwise not be exposed to. The hosts were amazing as well: amongst them, Robert Sherman, June LaBelle, and the afternoon guy, a very funny man called Lloyd Moss stood out (he used to joke, during traffic reports, how there was always some overturned tractor trailer in the report that someone must be moving it around the city). There were also lots of special music programs like "First Hearing" (where original recordings of classical music would be played) or "Woody's Children" (which Sherman hosted and that played folk music) or live broadcasts from Symphony Space and the Metropolitan Operas on Saturday afternoons.  

As a commercial station, WQXR played ads but they were ads made especially for WQXR. They were very well-produced, and I remember ads for champagne like Veuve Cliquot or B. Smith's or Broadways shows like "Six Degrees of Seperation" or "On Borrowed Time" or high-class restaurants like the long-gone Le 1900. 

Then there was the news.

I remember that every morning before I went to school, my dad would be listening to the news on WQXR and there was a special segment called "The Washington Report", a phoned-in segment by R.W. Apple Jr., the Times' long-serving Washington correspondent. (I remember right after the 1992 election, Apple talking about how the Republicans now had "re-find" themselves after their defeat, much like the Democrats in the 1980s.) At 6 PM every night there was a 45-minute news show called "New York At 6" where there would be a 10 minute national report, a 10 minute "metropolitan report" (i.e. local report), and then various Times' critics would do reports on things like theater (Frank Rich), restaurants (Brian Miller), movies (Janet Maslin) and others. My mom would usually be making dinner during "New York At 6" so I'll always associate this program with the smells of cooking. I also remember that each program would start with the announcer stating very proudly, "THIS ... IS ... NEW YORK ... AT SIX!" followed by swelling and soaring music. At 9 PM each night a reporter would then read the headlines from the front page of the next day's Times, a few hours before the paper would hit the streets. Remember, this was before the Internet or social media so broadcasting the next's days headlines was actually a big deal. 

WQXR also had an AM station. During the week WQXR AM would split off and broadcast a cooking show, a story hour, and a odd comedy show form the BBC called "My Music." You can hear all about that here: 

 

The station was a real jewel.

But then, in 2009, as the financial crises and vagaries of the newspaper business bore down on the Times, the "paper of record" decided to sell WQXR. The powerhouse public radio station WNYC decided to buy it and then turned it into the non-commercial entity it is today, moving it up the dial to 105.9 FM. So the good news is that WQXR still exists and NYC has a thriving classical music station. But the old WQXR 96.3, the WQXR of my childhood that was so great, is long-gone. Here you can listen to its sign-off and remind yourself that, in NYC, everything always changes eventually.