Here’s where I’m coming from. Internet streaming allows me to hear how well public-service broadcasting is done over there. Market forces seem hardly to count at all. Another thing — national pride, together with an un-American regard for the life of the mind, play a part in keeping it going as well. I think of the “Hands Off Auntie” campaigns that always spring up whenever the BBC comes under fire.

Several years back Andrew Porter made a crack in the New Yorker about the vulgarity of our “cultural” radio. (His quotes.) He had a point. By European standards, classical music radio in the U.S. has been … well, supply your own pejoratives.

Even if all the vexations with funding and transmitters and so on were to vanish overnight, that wouldn’t necessarily bring any improvement. To begin with, there’s no tradition here to call upon. Could it actually be that Americans just don’t know any better? You have to ask?

With Internet streaming I can take my business elsewhere. That’s the gist of it.

There are indeed streaming-only stations. Have you listened to them? With some honorable exceptions, for the most part they are execrable imitations of the old WCRB (you read that right), in the Great Square Inches of Music tradition. No, thanks. We need to keep this old technology viable, and demand that programming fit for educated adults be part of it, which means holding WGBH’s feet to the fire till the smoke comes out of John Voci’s and his directors’ ears.

As a teaser, the cable company is giving us a free 30 days preview of the premium channels.

One of these is channel 80, called “Mezzo.” They broadcast recent video films of classical music performances. I just caught the last 20 minutes of Haydn’s “Orlando Palladino,” from the little Unter den Linden opera house in Berlin, directed by René Jacobs. What excellent music, and totally unknown to me prior to this. Now there’s a Haydn quartet on, and in 35 minutes it’s Mahler #8, in toto, with Eschenbach.

Now most of what’s on French TV is garbage, just like in red, white and blue America. Ack, those game shows… But there ARE these other choices on the tube, just as on the radio there is, besides the usual bad and ugly, ALSO programming aimed at people who love good music. Genuine art is part of the mix, part of what is going on.

I read in the paper that our American bridges are rusting and falling down. I am even more concerned that the American mind is also rusting and falling down, gradually being emptied out of any content other than that which our corporate overlords wish us to consume.

In terms of music on the radio, Boston, alas, is Podunk, with (the saving grace) a little non-Podunky suburb called Cambridge that houses WHRB.

And D.C. is Podunk, too, unless there is an onair alternative there to the depressing WETA playlist posted here a few days back.

Since the demise of WGBH, we listen, when at home in Amesbury, MA, to the France Musique stream over the internet. There are many ways to find good programming online, Lee, not all of them requiring a PhD in computer science. Let Buell’s prophetic cry be heard, yea unto the gates of the antedeluvian station management in Brighton: “Glub glub.”

Across the Channel from France Musique — which Joel Cohen rightly praises — you hear such offerings as BBC Radio 3’s CD Review, whose regular Building a Library feature amounts to a vivid critical discography in sound. Whose recording, say, of Schumann’s Kerner Lieder is THE one to have? One Saturday morning a few months back that wonderful writer Hilary Finch (of Gramophone and the Times) was on hand (and for an hour!) to go through the whole lot of available recordings.

There is nothing remotely like this on U.S. radio stations, and to the best of my knowledge there never has been. I’m streaming the latest program as I write, and at the top of the screen I see: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00qn1lr. This week it’s David Nice and Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet.” Stop press — Kitaenko has been caught out using a corrupt Soviet text!

My point is that WGBH, WCRB, and the rest are all wedded to a dying technology — blub blub down they go — and that we shouldn’t be sad about this. Thanks to audio streaming, we’re no longer reduced to having to be grateful for small favors.

VERY small favors if you ask me. Don’t get me going on the “presentation” by local “personalities” — the quotation marks are essential — who can’t hear themselves, are often unprepared, and have an infuriating way of getting in the way of the music. I make exceptions for Cathy Fuller and Doug Briscoe. (What ever happened to him?) As to the rest, the ducking stool would be too good for them.

When the old WGBH was busy documenting Boston’s busy concert life — the very events you read about in the Boston Musical Intelligencer — they had me on their side, faults and all. Ditto for the live BSO broadcasts on WCRB, which I gather have been taking place over their corporate dead body but so what. WHRB is a story in itself and quite apart from the WGBH/WCRB market forces kerfuffle. For this, endless praise is due David Elliott, their resident eminence grise, but for whom I wouldn’t always be coming across something I haven’t heard before, or don’t know as well as I should, and otherwise filling up gaps in my education. The station is — can I say this? — fun. And that’s about it.

At the Old South meeting it was pointed out — from the floor I think — that it’s only a matter of time before — patience everyone — the future arrives and streaming at last becomes a portable thing.

As to what’s out there right now — see http://www.publicradiofan.com/cgibin/statsearch.pl?format=classical&lang=, http://www.operacast.com/opstations.htm, http://theairthisweek.blogspot.com/ (I’m hoping these work.)

As the Globe and BMI have observed, Collage New Music’s concert last Monday was no end enlivening, especially the Steven Mackey. Now why couldn’t we be hearing THAT on the radio? After all, this is not Podunk. Or is it?

There are two important things about the ratings, I think.

One has to do with serving the public. If station A broadcasts classical music and reaches 230,000 people (about 5% of the population its signal can reach) and station H broadcasts classical music and reaches 39,000 people (under 1% of the people its signal reaches), I think a valid argument can be made that A is providing more of a service to the general public. You can’t educate and inform people who aren’t listening. There is a trade-off, and it is a judgment call, perhaps. But I think it is important to retain and gradually bring along the listener who is coming to classical music for the first time, and I am alarmed by the drop in audience for WCRB since the purchase (= since the programming improved slightly?).

The second point is that somebody has to pay the costs. It remains to be seen how well the public will fund WCRB. The smaller the audience, the less the funding — even though the connoisseurs are likely to give more than the newbies. A station that gets 39,000 listeners won’t be able to raise as much as one that gets 123,000; and one that gets 123,000 won’t be able to raise as much as one that gets 230,000.

I want WCRB to get that 14% of its audience back. I see that as part of the ‘GBH mission. And if, as ought to happen, the classical programming goes back to WGBH, I’d hope to see an increase from the 123,000 proportionate to the expanded coverage. Realistically, of course that won’t happen unless they go WETA, and I really don’t want to see that happen. But I think drive time and daytime programming has to be mostly “Classical Music 101,” and the “Classical Music 311″ has to be mostly in the evenings if the station is to fulfill its mission to the general public.

And I think it is counterproductive in the long run if contributors walk away because WCRB doesn’t give 24 hours of the best of what WGBH gave during 7 hours. I hope people realize that what we have now is better than WETA and better than what WCRB used to be. It could be better still, especially between 7:00 p.m. and midnight, but let’s not drive away the newbies in the process of improving.

Yesterday I caught a bit of the Song of Songs segment. Sunday after Sunday, they are going through the Bible text, chapter by chapter, verse by verse, and playing recorded performances by Western composers. The music I heard by Palestrina was first rate, the interpretations less so in my view. But a great topic.

The 2 hours around Mozart compared and discussed different recorded versions. I believe this “Tribune” is the most popular single feature on the station, it has been running on Sundays, with various tweaks to the format, and varying levels of perspicacity, at least since the 1970’s.

The coverage area of France Musique, a national, public station, is virtually all of France, plus bits of Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, and Italy. I believe indeed that there are ratings for the various French radio stations, including France Musique, but do not know at this point how to find them.

My personal position is that ratings, while interesting to track and consider, are only part of the picture. They should not be the determining programming factor for a public service broadcaster. The underlying mission is the main concern.