The problem with the darn radio.

Now, we live in a really hyper-connected world these days. Youtube and Spotify and Soundcloud and TikTok, oh my, there's music and all sorts of great content out there and most of the time it's free or cheap enough that the cost is negligible.

I grew up on radio, though, even into the time when just about everyone had computers and internet to go with it. The first entertainment appliance I had of my very own was a radio and I promise you flat panel TVs were pretty common by that point. Loved my radio, though. A couple D-cell batteries and I was taken care of. If I couldn't get batteries, I plugged it into the wall. I listened to the weather and the news that way. Seemed like I had the broad strokes even if I lacked the details. I mean, what school-aged kid regularly reads the newspapers? I still got radios, too. I've a lovely old vintage Radio Shack box with a bent antenna that still picks up alright and my actual favorite is one of those storm radios with the crank and solar panel that picks up NOAA. Bought it to be practical because we get a lot of power outages here and it still managed to sneak into my daily life.

This is kind of a rant in the making, but I feel like radio isn't just dead, it's on life support. I'm lucky if I go more than two songs between commercials, there are more commercials in the spots than ever, and there's even meta-advertisement in the ads where they're telling me to check out their online presence. The absolute best radio out there right now is probably satellite radio but that almost starts to feel less like radio and more like Spotify with extra steps.

Even when you get past the format decaying, radio feels less and less like a living medium and more...corporate, for lack of a better word. The big scenes like Nashville have been formulaic for decades, but it feels more and more sterile these days. The same ten or fifteen songs make the rounds and the commercials keep hammering away at you and then the songs repeat and it starts again. Maybe it's just me, though. I can't really say that radio hasn't been like this my entire life, it just feels worse now. It probably isn't, I'm probably just getting older and turning into that guy who complains about things being different than I remember.

I still love my radios, I'll play them until they stop broadcasting the signals like they did with VHF and UHF TV. I can't help but feel it still has so much potential but it's becoming an ignored medium.

 

I agree so much with what you are saying about the radio. It seems as though the favorite past-time of tuning in to your favorite local station and just letting it play all night is a thing of the past. There are so many commercials it is hard to hear the music past the catchy jingles and the overwhelming amount of information they try to cram into those commercials. If you're like me I have about six channels saved in my car and when one is on a commercial I try to skip and go to another station to see if they are playing anything else good. The problem with that is that almost 100%of the time all the stations are on a commercial at the same time! It is infuriating!
Another problem is the lack of content. I mean people have been making music for hundreds of years and no matter which station or genre you try to listen to there is a revolving list of the same songs played over and over and over again. There is so much material out there you would think that stations would be more inclusive and have more of a desire to mix it up. It definitely feels like a very "corporate" type of takeover. One more frustrating thing, locally for me there are times when I am trying to find a good song on the radio to cruise to and the same song will be playing on more than one station at the same exact time. Come on, can't they do better than that?!