From the December 1940 WQXR Program Guide:
Mr. Sanger is Executive Vice-President ol WQXR. This article is condensed from a talk he gave recently over New York's municipal station, WNYC.
We at WQXR make no systematic effort to educate our listeners to love good music. If we have succeeded in making people like it and want more of if, it is because we have not made them conscious of the fact that listening to good music is necessarily educational.
Our policy at WQXR has been to avoid what has often been a stigma on radio programs: the "educational” label. We have found that, just as "good wine needs no bush," so good music needs no label. The plan of WQXR has been to broadcast all kinds of good music...reproduced as faithfully as modern radio science makes possible, and without too much comment.
Our experience has been that, if you expose people to good music, they either like it or they don’t. Telling them it is wonderful music and is good for them is of little value in creating real music lovers. Beethoven speaks for himself in his music far better and with far more appeal than anything which might be said about him.
Children, young people, and adults who have had no previous musical experience go through an evolutionary development in their musical appreciation. In the realm of classical music they begin first to appreciate Tchaikowsky and from there they roam quite naturally into the earlier symphonies of Beethoven, which in turn seem to condition them for Brahms and Bach.
Music is the easiest and most effective thing to present educationally on the air. And if our experience at WQXR means anything, it points to the fact that good music does an educational job in itself. Everybody cannot be made to enjoy and appreciate good music, but there is a very large part of the radio audience which can. The best way to educate those people musically is to let them listen to music. They will enjoy it and be mentally stimulated by it. As for the others, there is very little one can do, because they will not like music just because they are told it is good for them.
On November 1st WQXR put on the air its new 5,000-watt transmitter, which increases its power five-fold and practically doubles the area which it serves. We shall soon know whether our programs have as much appeal in more sparsely settled territory as they have in the metropolitan area. As we reach out into less cosmopolitan districts, we shall find out whether that ground is as fertile for the growth of a love of music as is New York.
It has been said that the American public is not so receptive to classical music as the European public. I doubt it. I believe the good taste of the American public is very much underestimated. The broadcasting of such fine musical programs as the opera, the Philharmonic, and the Toscanini concerts have done much to increase love of great music throughout the country. People who used to shudder at the very thought of listening to a Brahms symphony know now that Toscanini, in his great concerts, gives them something which they cannot get from the usual run of radio programs. That does not apply to all people. But I believe that a surprisingly large part of the American public, because it has been increasingly exposed to good music, is becoming more appreciative of the masters.
Great music differs from inferior music in that it wears well. Once you like it, you cannot listen to it too often. I don't believe anyone ever complained about hearing the Beethoven Eroica Symphony too many times. The great educational value in broadcasting the best in music is that each time a person hears a composition he gets a different impression from it, hears new things in it, and goes through a spontaneous musical education. If listening to great music impels him to look into the stories behind the music and the composers, so much the better. Some people will react in that way; others will be content with the music alone.
In other words, music is, in itself, the end to be achieved. I believe that one cannot place too much emphasis upon the importance of music in our lives. The works of the masters can well become an increasingly strong bond among all the elements in American life. Good music is so universal in its appeal that a love for it binds together many divergent elements in our population. If there is anything in our culture which is international, and which can break down nationalistic barriers, it is surely great music. When people listen to a masterpiece, they do not consider whether the composer is English, French, German, Russian or Scandinavian.
There is no question that radio has done much to promote American culture and to emphasize the American way of life. Particularly in the realm of music, the radio has performed and will continue to perform increasingly greater service in emphasizing the best in our cultural heritage.