KBYU-FM "CLASSICAL 89" BROADCASTS EXCESSIVE RELIGIOUS CAROLS

During the whole month of December, KBYU-FM, owned and operated by Brigham Young University, has been broadcasting Christmas religious music.  And it seems this week, KBYU airs such music non-stop from 6 AM to 6 PM.

KBYU calls itself "Classical 89," but as Christmas approaches, a listener would be taxed to find any classical music among the excesses of Christmas religious carols and church hymns.

I don't object to all Christmas music on KBYU, only to those mushy saccharine religious hymns that promote management's concept of orthodox belief.

For example, I welcome hearing works such as Gian Carlo Menotti's Amahl and the Night Visitors, or Saint-Saens Christmas Concerto, or the medieval Play of Herod.  But I do object to the constant broadcast of Silent Night, It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, and the like.  I find these hymns excessively broadcast and inappropriate.  It almost seems that KBYU's management uses these hymns as a form of proselytization over-the-air.

Officially, not only does KBYU claim it plays classical music, it also promotes itself as a "public" radio station, this during frequent bouts of fund-raising on-air.

If KBYU is indeed a genuine "public" station, it has no business promoting Christmas as a religious holiday or using Christmas carols to foster management's idea of what listeners should believe.  A true public station should not promote one religious belief over another or even use its format to bless a particular religion.

Therefore I say to Marcus Smith, KBYU's general manager, and to Eric Glissmeyer, KBYU's program selector, stop the religious Christmas music.  It has no place on a public station that defines itself and its format as "classical."