When my wife and I first arrived in Maine, we soon discovered WMEH and its affiliated Maine stations. In those days we had Robert J. Lurtsema, but for whatever reason, he was relegated to Sunday morning and finally banned forever.

While we missed his program, the station continued in the same classical format. That is until a couple of years ago when the Saturday morning programming dropped the classical music for more talk, talk, talk.

Then the morning program shortened its classical music to realistically 2 1/2 hours so we could enjoy more talk, talk, talk. The afternoon segment was shortened to two hours to accommodate more talk.

The worse came when the station dropped the Sunday morning music for more talk. This destroyed our Sunday mornings when we could drink a cup of coffee, read The Boston Globe and listen to marvelous classical music, including the Bach cantatas.

Maine Public Radio is attempting to make us the most informed group of radio listeners. We now know more than perhaps any segment of any state in the union. We are accosted by hours of the Bush-Gore Florida dilemma, the problems in the Middle East and all sorts of other major news stories from around the globe. How much does one need to know?

So now we are able to listen to just a couple of hours of morning classical music and perhaps some evening symphony. So much for balanced programming.

Well, count us out. Fortunately, we have a significant inventory of classical music on compact discs, so the radio is about to be turned off and the CDs turned on. With it will go our membership to Maine Public Radio. Peter A. Sonderegger Holden

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I wish that I could say that when I opened the “new” Airplay this month and saw that the afternoon music and Saturday opera programs had been gutted I was surprised. Sadly, I wasn’t.

The past months have revealed a distressing commercialization of Maine Public Radio and made me wonder just how long it was going to take for the programming to reflect the pressures of commercial interests instead of those of its listeners. Not long at all, as it turns out.

I call on all afternoon MPR music devotees and especially those who have enjoyed the Met and other Saturday opera broadcasts to forcefully express their displeasure to the Board of Trustees and to end their financial support of MPR. William Chenoweth Albion