The Pittsburgh Symphony may end its fiscal year with a deficit of a half million dollars, with the promise of much more red ink to come next season, when the musicians will be due a $17,000 salary increase. Such money woes, combined with falling ticket sales, have convinced one of the city’s daily newspapers that it might be time for the PSO to throw in the towel and stop trying to compete with other major American orchestras. “The harsh reality is that a metropolitan area barely ranked among the top 25 in population does not have pockets deep enough to support [an orchestra] the way New York and Chicago support theirs.”