GLENVIEW–In comparison to the “good old days” at WFMT, Alan Artner’s sledgehammer attack (“Fiddling While WFMT Burns,” Feb. 23) alleges “devastation of content” under current management. I will leave it to others far more capable of defending the station’s output to respond in detail to Artner’s charge of a sinister plot to change programming “gradually . . . so that no one would notice.”
Mr. Artner complains, among other points, that the percentage of “folk music and jazz” (horrors!) has increased as compared to “opera and song.” WMFT evidently subscribes, and happily so, for my tastes, to the late Duke Ellington’s view, and I paraphrase –“forget about categories, there is only good music and bad music.” Mr. Artner, I would venture, would disregard the opinions of a musician of Mr. Ellington’s type of accomplishments. I would quote another notable American composer, Irving Berlin, on the subject of critics — “It’s a good thing they don’t write the shows and only write about them!”
I can only add that hopefully Chicagoans and WFMT’s worldwide audience will be saved from those such as Mr. Artner who pontificate about the errors of giving “listeners what they want instead of what they need.”
— Bill Sheldon
