Classical music fans are seeing red after an announcement by Capital Public Radio that it will replace a popular evening classical broadcast with jazz.

On Tuesday, CPR will migrate its "Excellence In Jazz" program from the news and jazz station KXJZ (90.9 FM) to sister classical music station KXPR (88.9 FM). The jazz program will be broadcast Monday through Friday on KXPR from 7 to 11 p.m., a slot normally given to broadcasting classical music.

The move not only marks the incursion of jazz programming on a classical music station, it sets in motion the disappearance of jazz programming at KXJZ during the workweek. Former evening jazz offerings have been replaced with repurposed news programming like "Fresh Air" from earlier in the day.

Gone are jazz shows like "Jazz with Bob Parlocha" in the late evening through early morning hours, as well as Sunday's "Excellence in Jazz" between 2 and 5 p.m., and "Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz" Sundays from 7 to 8 p.m.

Many classical music lovers feel they have been left in the lurch during their prime listening time at home.

"The reason I subscribed to Capital Public Radio is for classical music," said subscriber Michael Hill-Weld. "I always listen in the evening, particularly since I have a young son that I'm trying to expose to classical music."

Weld, who lives in Nevada City and an is an ex-public radio broadcaster, believes CPR has not done its due diligence by asking subscribers and listeners what they want or how they feel about programming changes.

"I'm feeling disenfranchised. This is a major change to go to a 24/7 news station. That may be the right way to go, but it bothers me that I was not given an opportunity to comment to decision makers."

Rich Eytcheson, Capital Public Radio general manager and president, feels the station knows what the public wants.

"We get ratings and we can tell – hour by hour – what people are listening to," Eytcheson said. And what they are listening to most is news radio, he said.

Currently weekly audience numbers hover around more than 400,000 for news, and at around 130,000 for classical, and 60,000 for jazz, Eytcheson said.

He said classical listenership declines significantly after 6 or 7 p.m. and "Excellence in Jazz" performs better than classical does between 7 and 11 p.m.

However, research done on classical music's share of public radio listening in 2010 by Arbitron found that the biggest boost in ratings for classical music happened Monday through Friday between 7 p.m. and midnight.

Eytcheson said there is a trend toward people wanting more news, and that the programming change has been in the works for over a year.

"This is not anything we're trying to force on anyone; it's a reflection of what the market wants," he said.

In Sacramento, CPR's ratings are tabulated by Arbitron with a method call PPM, or portable people meters. This involves select individuals wearing a monitor that captures everything the wearer listens to, voluntarily or involuntarily. The method replaces a former listener diary method.

But the PPM method has detractors. The Radio InSights blog by Harker Research states that the method doesn't track listenership as much as track exposure to whatever is broadcast nearby and that "radio has not been served by blind acceptance of Arbitron's PPM."

To classical fans the belief remains that a public radio station is beholden to its member community, and should act as a form of public service.

"The mission of public radio is to enrich and educate the community," said Gabrielle Callison, wife of former CPR Insight host Jeffrey Callison, and a former KXPR radio host.

"Looking at rating numbers – this is just not right for public radio," she said. "I think they're shooting themselves in the foot because they're going to lose listeners like me. And once we're gone, we're not coming back."

Eytcheson says classical and jazz fans have many options. He points to CPR's recently launched 24-hour online jazz service and a growing classical streaming portal as options for fans of both. Many fans are irked at having to go online given that they access classical music solely from home receivers and tuners.

"I don't do the streaming," said longtime CPR subscriber Philip Sonnichsen. "I'm not real big on that. If I lived in Timbuktu or Anchorage – maybe I would because there was no alternative."

Sonnichsen is also not keen on the all-news format during the week at KXJZ.

"I'm really tired of hearing people talk," he said.

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