Restore Music in Cedar Key

Dear Editor,

There are many Cedar Key residents who would very much like the music/talk mix of the former Classic 89 to be restored to WUFT-FM`s high-power analog station.

Classic 89, with its mix of musical genres and news/talk, was a tremendous cultural asset for the community. The very limited and problematic HD2 and online streaming of classical music is far from an adequate replacement. Cedar Key does not lie within the roughly 10-miles-from-Gainesville range of the HD2 stream, therefore, island listeners do not receive the HD2 signal at all. Also, the classical-only format of the online and HD2 streaming does not provide the rich and varied mixture of classical music, jazz, blues, folk, world music, and soul, along with news and talk programming, which Classic 89 provided. The Classic 89 format reached out to a diverse audience, providing an extremely valuable cultural and educational service to the community. Further, though news and talk is readily available in our media (newspapers, the internet, TV, radio), the musical genres represented in the former Classic 89 format are not available elsewhere in the local media serving Cedar Key.

If you are concerned about this issue, there is a large community group centered in Gainesville that is working to restore the music/talk mix on the high-power analog station. We care very much about the areas of North Florida, including Cedar Key, that are not served by the HD2 stream. We can be reached through our website at www.classicgvl.org. On this website, you will find an online petition that you can sign, leaving comments if you wish. You may join our group for emails providing news of our meetings and activities through our website as well.

We appreciate all those in Cedar Key who will lend your support to our efforts!

Sue Yelton