Programming gets less interesting, audiences fall off, and classical music exits the radio dial. “Public radio, following the commercial lead, adopted similar ‘lite’ strategies to attract daytime audiences. But there’s an obvious paradox. ‘The more it sounds like background, the less people will be committed to your station. After all, you’re encouraging them to not pay attention to it; then you ask them to pay for it at fund-raising time. It’s a Catch-22. If your strategy is to be as uninteresting as possible, how can you ask for support?”