Ain't It Cool News

Radio stations with what you could call high culture programing are an ever more endangered species. Things have gotten so bad recently that it's rumored that the New York Times Company may sell WQXR-FM, New York's only full time classical music station. But sometimes there's good news, green shoots of growth as Ben Bernanke might call them. One of them is a new web radio station dedicated to the arts that was announced on Thursday by Alanna Heiss, the former director of P.S. 1, the contemporary arts affiliate of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Art International Radio — A.I.R. — is already streaming and you can download it easily at www.ARTonAIR.org.

Sound quality is excellent, all of the arts are represented — visual art, literature, music and film — in the archive there's an interview from 2004 with the Michel Gondry, director of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind — and programs are archived for on demand listening.

Be afraid Beyoncé. Be very afraid.