Haas began his radio program,
Adventures in Good Music, on
WJR in
Detroit, Michigan in 1959. Syndicated broadcasts of the show across the
United States began in 1970 on
WCLV, a radio station in
Cleveland,
Ohio. The show was eventually syndicated to commercial and public radio stations around the world and became the world's most widely heard
classical music radio program. The
theme music for
Adventures in Good Music was the second movement from
Beethoven's
"Pathétique" Sonata (Sonata No. 8 in C minor), performed by Haas live for each program. He started every show with his trademark greeting "Hello everyone", and later entitled a track of his CD with those words. For several years the program had the most listeners of any classical music radio show in the world. President
George H. W. Bush presented the award to him at the
White House. Haas also twice won the
George Foster Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting. Haas did not produce any new episodes of the show in the last two years of his life. WCLV continued to syndicate recordings of his previous shows until June 2007. That month, WCLV announced "with great regret" that it would broadcast and syndicate its last
Adventures in Good Music program on June 29, 2007. The announcement explained that the number of stations that carried the show had dropped from more than 400 to fewer than 20, which made it unfeasible to continue the program's national distribution. Most episodes of
Adventures in Good Music are not available publicly because of copyright, which is closely held by his family, although three cassettes/CDs have been issued featuring Haas and his commentary:
The Romantic Piano,
The Story of the Bells, and
Song and Dance. In the 1960s Columbia Records released a Karl Haas commercial LP, "How to Listen to a Symphony," on their Columbia Special Products label. ==Death==