“New Sounds,” which has been hosted since its beginning by John Schaefer, eked out a distinctive place on the dial with programming that was truly eclectic.

It was one of the first, if not the very first, radio program to play Philip Glass’s 1984 opera “Akhnaten,” which is coming to the Metropolitan Opera this season. It featured the Bang on a Can collective in its early days. (“They were barbarians at the gate, and now two are Pulitzer Prize winners,” Mr. Schaefer said in a telephone interview.) It drew Brian Eno and the Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan to its studio, and on any given night might feature Balinese gamelan music, country, avant-garde jazz or all of the above.

“What I set out to do was to give a home on the radio to music that was, I guess, homeless — that didn’t fit into any of the neatly defined categories back in the days of the record store,” Mr. Schaefer said. “I thought there were lots of people out there like me, who are just curious — and would like something if you just gave them the chance to hear it.”

The show’s disappearance comes as radio is changing dramatically, both nationally — where stations that play classical music and noncommercial genres are being eliminated in many markets — and locally, where public radio stations have been going through significant upheaval.