Brahms to Bop

Boston's classical-music station WBMS this week decided to abandon Brahms for bop. After three years' experience, disillusioned Vice President George Lasker concluded that "all of the classical-music enthusiasts in Boston would just about fill the Boston Garden [capacity: 13,000]."

The audience was not only small, it was perverse. Complained Lasker: "Listeners resented the commercials and even threatened boycotts because their esthetic tastes were offended. The advertisers, therefore, would not support the station."

After the contract of WBMS's Disc Jockey Arthur Fiedler, conductor of the Boston "Pops" Orchestra, runs out this month, Lasker will carry "absolutely no classical music of any kind." This week, though five music students were protesting the station's new policy with a picket line, most Bostonians accepted the switchover calmly. Said one: "Rather than listen to high-pressure, ear-jarring sales talk, I, like other Bostonians, will take my recordings at home without commercials."

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