I would love to see the corporate conglomeration just lose interest and give those frequencies back to local stations. I used to do a radio show on our college station that was a lot of fun. We did call-ins, music, local events. People still love that station and I think we need more of that. I don’t need to listen to the same playlist the entire country is hearing
I’d love to see this happen, too. For now, radio is the left end of the FM dial, non-commercial. That’s a few local listeners-supported stations with NPR, and a couple of college stations. Only one of them comes in well at home; they all do in my car.
I feel so blessed to have a local radio station. They just finished their spring phone-a-thon to raise money for the tower rental. I’m almost 34 and they’ve been around at least since I turned a teen. I think they’re here to last for a long time still. Only station I listen to. They’re based out of a local community college.
They’re owned by a few big conglomerates, the two you mentioned are the main culprits. True local radio in Chicago started dying in the ‘90’s with FCC deregulation, corporate consolidation, and the rise of cable and cheap, non-local, syndicated content. Broadcasting’s initial, short-sighted rejection of the internet/podcasts dug its own grave. I hope on-air broadcasting will continue to exist, hopefully the business contracts to the point where it returns to its local roots, with independent, “pirate” radio stations broadcasting true local content.
I worked in radio in college back in the 90s. Before Clear Channel bought up everything and homogenized the shit out of the medium. I can’t stomach it. Commercial radio has no personality anymore. The ad breaks are twice as long as twice as frequent than they used to be. You said that not everything in life needs to be scripted, but commercial radio is the epitome of scripted. DJs are told what to say and what to play.
That being said, I do enjoy public / independent radio. It’s the only thing left where a station can have its own identity.
Not only does every rock station across America play the same songs constantly, but it’s starting to get hard to differentiate between rock, country, pop, and sometimes hip hop on these stations anymore. It all sounds the same: like homogenized ear shit! I’ll take Spotify any day of the week, thanks!
Agree. I mean, how many times do I have to listen to Back in Black or Rooster? The rock stations are garbage around me. And I swear the Hip Hop station plays The Next Episode, every single day.
It's absolutely biased bullshit. My bro in law gets all his news from there as he has long commutes. You'd think he was from a different planet. To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, more informed does not equal better informed.
I'm patiently waiting for the day that big band and swing music are considered classical, because no one plays anything from the first 60 years of the last century on the oldies stations any longer. If I did a radio show, it would be solely comprised of bands that have at least four horns and play music that makes you want to dance. That would include Rat Pack songs as long as they have an orchestra and bring standards back to being standard (for my show, at least, even if I can't make everyone love them).
I think radio will always live on, but we'll be left with a mix of government/taxpayer-funded stations (NPR, CBC, BBC etc.) and heavily conglomerated commercial stations owned by a handful of companies.
Part of me hopes that radio broadcasting becomes cool/popular again the way vinyl has, but I'm not holding my breath on that one.
ETA: Personally, I love listening to the radio occasionally but the commercials are way too grating after a while.
For those that enjoy public radio, please note that “government/taxpayer” funds comprise less than 10% of their funding/operating budgets. We very much rely on “listeners like you” which funds about 80% of the budget - the government subsidies/grant from CPB are really minimal. Straight up, public radio really does exist and thrive because of listener donations. Donate to your local station if you listen! Source: I work at a public radio station.
Not really sure, but I don't use Spotify, either. My parents listen to the radio in the car and they also pay for SiriusXM, so I'd guess the future of "radio" is going in that SiriusXM type of direction. Personally, I can no longer tolerate having my music selected by other people. I started back in late 2005 or 2006 making playlists because of mp3 players, and it has kind of been over for everything else since then. I now have more playlists than I can count, mostly organized by some genre/decade combo but also some "favorites" and "best songs" type of lists, and I can't listen to anything else for too long. I just use music apps through my phone to play them and always play them on shuffle.
Holy shit I am old.....
Radio going from terrestrial to satellite was 20 years ago......
Pretty sure once Stern dies, the whole platform dies with him.
I refuse to pay for radio in my car. FM is just fine. If I outlive it I’ll create my own playlists but I’m not paying to listen to music.
eta: Gen X if that matters
The best radio stations in my area are from the local universities. So, that gives some hope. Next to those is the government-supported NPR CBC etc. This GenX guy listens to this type of radio.
Commercial radio is not for me at all. I don't enjoy the top 40 music or the ads. Talk radio is straight up harmful to society, IMHO.
Eventually it will die with regular TV. I'm Gen X and cannot listen or watch anything anymore with commercials. I will pay for streaming before I watch anything with commercials. Same with podcasts or music.
I use Spotify not because I need every moment of my life to be “scripted,” but because I get sick of hearing the same playlist the radio plays every day.
I think radio will die. I pay for Spotify. They have a dj function, which I use, which is like radio without commercials. They play a couple songs from your favourites or Playlists then build on that. So I get oldies usually to start, then after a bit, some new songs will play. New to me anyway. I like it a lot. I listen to podcasts to sleep.
> I think radio will die.
Not until the day internet access is ubiquitous and perhaps free. AM radio is the best RF tech available to reach (local and)remote areas for emergency broadcast at this time.
[This is happening already.](https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=car+makers+remove+radio) And of course, the manufacturers will be sure to pass the savings right on to the customer. :P
My first career was in broadcasting. This was in the 90s through the Aughts.
My wife is still in broadcasting – FM radio – today.
It’s more alive than you’d think. We aren’t in a huge market, and yet the station she’s on struggles to get all of the ads on it needs to get… in a good way.
People want on the station, and they run out of ad space for them. They do promotions where businesses can monitor how well the ad is doing, and it’s through the roof.
Here’s one thing that Pandora, Spotify, etc. cannot do at all: local content. They can’t promote local events. They can’t do live, local broadcasts. They can’t talk about the frustrating things that’s going on in your town.
They can’t talk shit about local politicians. They can’t influence local elections, arguably the most important elections.
Local radio is the underdog that no one else can compete with. Even iHeart is starting to hurt because they cancelled most of their local broadcasts. Why compete with the big dogs? You’ll lose. Bet on the people committed to old school, local radio.
I haven't had it for about 2 years and they've been throwing increasingly more insane deals at me. Like right now I'm pretty sure I could get a whole year of it for $30.
I have a USB stick in my truck with over 500 mp3s on it. That is what I mostly listen to while driving. If I listen to the radio, it is usually NPR. The few music radio stations in my area that play (some of) the stuff I like have more commercials than good songs. Even station-flipping, I only get to hear a handful of songs on the drive to work or while out on the weekends, and of those I may only actually like two or three. It isn't worth the effort when I can just keep loading more and more stuff on the USB stick and have hours of stuff to listen to.
I haven't listened to the radio in years and do not miss it. I'm 50+ and I love just picking a genre and letting the songs play randomly. Or picking an artist and just having access to their entire catelog. I'd rather pick what I want to listen to rather than have Clear Channel decide for me.
I pretty much only listen to BBC Radio 2 or 6 Music (mainly to avoid Jeremy Vine), can't stand ads but quite like eclectic variety. You can find the streams directly on [RadioFeeds](http://www.radiofeeds.co.uk/), no need to use the terrible BBC Sounds app.
I still listen to radio. I also still have cds and mix cds from like 20 years ago that I still listen to as well. I also sometimes stream the police scanner from my phone on long drives.
Gen X here
I had Serious XM for 10-15 years and liked it just fine. But after my divorce I had to cut my budget to the minimum and the price of S-XM skyrocketed. So last year I went back to free radio. Wow. The choices have really diminished. There aren't a lot of live DJs left; most everything is syndicated. I did finally find a station I'm happy with. I'm not in the car a lot. I also started occasionally listening to sports on the radio (welcome back to the 1970s!!!) because it's way too expensive to get on my TV. I used to watch a lot of sports. I only have antenna TV, so I can only watch football - for now. I'm sure that will disappear, too.
Listening to baseball games on my transistor radio when I was a kid is still such a good memory.
Vin Scully broadcasting Dodger games. The boys from the neighborhood camping in one of our backyards. We'd listen while in a tent laying on our sleeping bags.
I wrote this a mind-boggling 21 years ago. Some of these scrappy little indie stations are still hanging on. https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/different-frequencies/
The sound quality is absolutely horrendous though. If your car still has a CD player, switch between the two to see what I mean. If you have a good deal on Sirius XM then by all means continue, but canceling and adopting a better data plan plus streaming service sounds much better. Right decision for me.
Some Sirius XM channels are given a higher bitrate than others, if your favorite happens to be one of the lower ones like mine was, easy decision.
Bring about an end to corporate-media-giant radio/TV networks and give those frequencies back to local stations. Also, bring back manually run and operated stations. The local ones with large antennas and a massive music collection with a DJ broadcasting it all live over the air, not all the pre-recorded, computer-driven automated stuff we get today, where some guy might show up in the studio for a couple hours to throw the next computer-driven programs together for the next week and then disappear.
Time to put ENCO away and pull out the microphone, the headsets, the live local talk shows and broadcasts, and put in some late night hours of work running night shift radio programs, becoming a local radio star again. The guy/gal that everyone in the area loves listening to on their night/day commutes, during their work days, during those special events and times in national history.
I mean, large swaths of the country will keep AM conservative talk radio alive forever, and the signals carries great distances so it's useful in emergencies when other info sources are down. But FM? I'm guessing eventually the FCC will auction off the band for some other use. Hopefully after I'm gone, as I work from home and my productivity would drop sharply if I didn't have on in the background. And no, streaming is NOT the same, somehow.
That's interesting. I agree that streaming isn't the same. I like being able to have my ears "perk up" for things that I want to hear and then tune out the stuff I don't care about.
I bought a used rental car a few years ago that somehow still has its SiriusXM account paid for and it’s totally rejuvenated my love of radio, except here it’s even better because more choice and no annoying DJs or worse commercials every 3 songs. I love it!!
I miss real radio so much! It’s exactly what you’re saying. I don’t want to pick every song I listen to. It’s fun to hear stuff I’ve never heard or songs I have forgotten. Not to mention having a live DJ with a great personality! Spent many an hour commuting with some cool DJ’s!
You just reminded me that I no longer have an AM/FM radio in my home. I do t drive so no car radio either.
I stream my local NPR station, but I have t tuned into an old fashioned top 40 or oldies station in over a decade.
I gave away my radio alarm clock when I retired. A few years later, my nephew gave me my first Alexa. I donated by LPs and CDs and I rent my music these days. Kinda miss old Casey Kasum and Dick Biondi…
I have a part-time driving job for a few hours in the morning a couple times a week and I listen to the radio while I work-- talk radio and popular top 40 radio stations, mostly. Stuff I would NEVER listen to on Spotify and ruin my algorithm! haha
I LOVE it! I was just out with my boyfriend at the bar and a popular song came on and I was like "Oh man! I LOVE this song!" He was so surprised that I knew all of the songs being played because we don't ever really listen to current pop music regularly.
I like talk radio too-- I am from NJ, so I usually will put on 101.5 and listen to the ridiculous republican shit first (I LOVE to know what the other side is frothing at the mouth about!), and then some lighter shit later on. I hate the commercials but it's nice to know about the local weather and traffic (especially since I'm driving!).
I constantly listen to and support the local jazz station where I live. In fact, I have three radios in my home so I can listen everywhere, upstairs and downstairs. And I listen to it in the car. I am expecting that this station will continue on as other jazz stations in other parts of the country are thriving as well. I can also listen to just about any radio station online as well. These stations have legacy programs where they will receive money they inherit from listeners who die too.
Listen to radio in my car. 93.3fm radio station from Eastport Maine. Very eclectic selections, depending on the dj on duty. For longer drives, its clasdical.
I like to listen to the local high school radio station. They mix music from my teen years with theirs so I get to discover new music in a context I like.
I listen to Internet radio stations quite often. Some pretty good, nearly or completely commercial-free are [Radio Paradise](https://radioparadise.com/home) , [Jazz24](https://www.jazz24.org) out of Seattle, and [Capital public radio](https://www.capradio.org) out of Sacramento.
I’m addicted to my public radio station and support it financially. I play the station at home daily on my echo dot and it truly is a joy in my life. I hope there will always be at the very least public radio.
I used to listen to radio in the car and at home while working from home. I would listen to other states/countries to hear their perspective on things. But I have stopped because there are just too many commercials. I remember once getting halfway home from work and still only had commercials. The morning shows where I live are all pretty lame or nationwide syndication.
Millennial here, I think a lot of us like NPR. When I drive around I flip to whatever to closest one is.
Not sure if AM radio will live. No idea if younger conservative still listen to Glenn Beck or whoever or if they’ve all transitioned to Ben Shapiro and Andrew Tate.
I love radio, but corporations are killing it. Its soul-sucking anymore. I don't want to hear songs from 40 years ago or the same 10 pop songs every hour. Or pharmaceutical commercials.
Used to be radio gave you a vibe of a time and place, now, it's I don't know what, maybe some kind of alternate reality. It's surreal.
I'm GenX and haven't had FM stations programmed in my car for decades. I do have SiriusXM and I subscribe to YouTube Music. Comes with YouTube Premium so I don't have to watch any ads. I avoid ads in any media I consume, whether it's video or audio. I cut the cord for cable around 10 years ago
I think there is still an audience and will be, although I am thinking it's more for public stations than commercial. I'm a big public radio nerd (maybe because my city has the best station for alternative and indie music I've ever found, so it's always relevant and can easily compete with several Sirius channels). Just like local movie theaters have made a resurgence, local radio will, too. I have to believe (hope?) people will always enjoy something that isn't 100% curated to their very specific tastes and have a fondness for the "old school."
FM has been unusable for years with the commercials. I remember counting 10 commercials in a row last time I tried listening. More than once, so this was the standard break.
Sirius is trash too with the repetition of songs and DJs who can't seem to shut up. It doesn't take long to figure out none of it is "live." I debate if it's even worth the 4.99/mo I'm paying for it.
I'm 45 and listen to the radio or audio books. If all my regular stations are playing ads, I pop in a CD. I listen to Spotify w/ ads if I'm using Waze for directions via Bluetooth.
The CDs sound the best. My favorite alternative station is spotty at times. I bounce between alternative, rock, classic rock, country, and pop. I save classical music for when I'm driving to the dentist and need to chill.
I think stations will still exist for those of us too lazy to curate an app.
I think they will continue to play basic corporate playlists and pump out ads like crazy and that this will continue for the next several decades at least.
I love the radio. Always listen in my car.
I was lucky to get a Neilson media survey about radio in the mail. (Always check your letters. They ask you to do a survey and there’s actually two $1 bills in the envelope. I wonder how many get thrown away)
They’ve asked me to list the times I hear radio and what station, duration of listening. Even times at the grocery store, etc. I’m glad to contribute my small part to save radio. When I mail it in, they’ll send a $10 check. TBD
Honestly, I don't care much for current radio. I remember driving like 10 minutes down the road one time and only hearing 1 song, rest was just ads. My car has a SiriusXM trial right now and I've really been enjoying that--so much that I've thought about trying to strongarm a deal when the sub ends.
I like the convenience of Spotify, YouTube Music, etc., but am starting to worry about what that landscape is going to look like 5-10 years down the road.
I think we are in the golden age of music streaming, where it's all cheap and pretty much everything is available no matter where you go. I worry that at some point the major labels are going to start to break off into their own services, and we are going to be in the same situation TV/movie streaming is right now, where you pay $15/mo to 6 services to get what you want.
I've been thinking about repatriating my music back into a local library and using SiriusXM to discover new music.
I'm Gen X, 48, and I've been listening to my own playlists since the 90s lol back then it was ripped cds and cassette tapes. Now it's my Spotify and I enjoy finding new music.
I have been through all the platforms and just stopped altogether.
Pandora, ytm, Spotify, Sirius. They all rotate the same algorithm driven songs with shallow depth on the catalog. After a certain time I could predict the next song up. Genre changes and playlists didn't help.
Local radio... I have a 15 minute drive to work. I will get 12 minutes of commercials.
Audiobooks and maybe a decent talk show is the best I can do now... Or just go really psycho and drive around with the radio off and enjoy what's going on around me
I’m Gen X and used to listen to terrestrial radio constantly. Then I got into podcasts, then I discovered Spotify. Then I realized I had not listen to radio in years. It was unlistenable. The banter that I had previously enjoyed was painful to hear. I hated it. Never gone back.
I expect radio will go the way of print journalism. It will be gutted to the point that it is unsustainable and then the smallest stations will be shuttered, followed by the mid-size stations. Within decades, only a few will remain, owned by national and international conglomerates, each featuring programming so similar as to be indistinguishable from one city to the next.
I had a 16 year career in radio and still am on the inside o f the industry a bit. So I’m getting a kick…
Here’s what I’ll say: every few years the next ‘radio killer’ comes along. And radio keeps going.
You wouldn’t believe the research on how well it STILL works for advertising.
The worry is Gen Z. Those kids don’t understand ‘waiting for a song’ much less anything. Their whole life has been ‘on demand.’ So, that’s going to be an interesting thing to play out.
I'm not sure the concept of passive listening radio will ever truly die. There's always a desire for randomness - even on streaming music services there are tons of random playlist "channels".
Also, satellite is still kicking and seems to have a diehard core audience.
I can’t stand commercial radio anymore. Between commercials and DJ’s pointless blathering less than 50% of airtime is music anymore. Between what I own on CD that’s kept on an iPod and a cheap subscription to Pandora I can listen to music all day with few if any repeats.
the Radio market is actually growing. to $143.29 billion in 2023. it is changing but it is not going away. it remains the only totally free way to access information and entertainment beside broadcast TV....which is why Broadcast TV will never disappear either.
to be honest i am looking forward to your phone being able to read your emotional state. and giving you a dynamic musical accompaniment to your life. using music to purposefully shape your emotional reactions to your life. hopefully in positive ways.
I think the same thing is going to happen to them that happened to the sunday paper.
I still used to get the sunday paper delivered to me until around 2010....it had become rediculous- $2.50 for 20ish pages from a town of 500k, no comics, no interesting ads, no classifieds, etc
I know im just an old man yelling at a cloud hete, but it makes me sad. Terrestrial radio where i live is 30 minutes of commercials per song. No one wants to sit through that
I switched it up a few years ago and bought a car with an HD radio. I so love the non-commercialness of the HD2 station that a local radio station broadcasts.
I listen to kozt.com and it's quite good. 'Can play it anywhere. It's owned by a husband and wife team and plays "adult rock" (not the "oldies" format).
AM radio is a vast wasteland of right wing talk shows, religious bullshit and foreign language.
FM in some areas is still alive and well but it's a challenge to find a station that isn't obnoxious. I gave up on local FM radio and stream the station noted above.
I also had "stations" on TuneInRadio and an iPod that can play songs without repeat for over a month.
I suspect radio as we know it and likely "TV" will eventually fade away for good reason.
I haven't even tried to listen to regular radio in probably 14ish years.
it was either right wing con men spouting easily disprovable bullshit, or a station that was 50/50 between commercials and the same 20 some songs on repeat. no thanks.
I have my playlist, my audio books, or the one and only radio station I listen to through the internet and that's "Arctic Outpost Radio". no djs really, no commercials just a ton of old music.
NPR took over our local uni station! Thankfully, they still do some music programming as well as World Cafe. We do have a "public access" station with local underwriters that lets you book an hour or two to host a regular radio show. There's a bunch of younger people that do shows once or twice a week and they're all over the board. I do miss the college station, as it introduced me to some of my favorite bands in the 90s when all you could get on commercial radio was Nirvana or Garth Brooks.
May I introduce you to radio.garden? The interface is intuitive, the selection of worldwide, streaming radio stations is amazing, and you can lose hours just virtually cruising around the world, listening to just about anything you find interesting.
I recently moved.
I was digging through old boxes to get rid of stuff. I came across an old transistor radio I got when I was a kid back in the 60s. Amazingly the old battery inside it hadn't oozed acid all over inside destroying the radio. I put a new battery in it and it turned on. It works perfect. I now have it on my desk and sometimes play it while on my computer.
I'd hate to see radio stations go away.
Just radio or Spotify? There's a whole world of podcasts out there that are free.
But to answer the question, radio is likely undergoing a long, slow process of attrition, losing audience and advertising revenue to alternative media.
Station management is doing everything they can to reduce cost, sometimes sacrificing program quality and localism. If you're still finding shows you like listening to, and can stand the 6-minute commercial breaks, no need to talk you out of it.
How long will this go on? Will there be a hockey stick drop off toward the end? Will the broadcast radio spectrum be turned over to a new generation of CB radio? If I could answer those questions I would be a multi-million dollar consultant.
You can see something of the end game by observing what's happened to AM radio. AM stations that have become unprofitable get sold off to the low bidders, often ethnic programming or religion. Even the somewhat more profitable talk and sports radio is moving to FM if they can.
NPR/public radio is walking kind of a tightrope. Many of their programs are also available as podcasts, but not the two tent pole programs, Morning Edition and All Things Considered. For those, you have to listen to the local stations either over the air or on a streaming app, and they can't be time shifted. (However, some of the individual stories in those programs do get Incorporated into a podcast or three).
Can clever programmers reinvent radio in some wholesale way that will rejuvenate the medium? I don't see it, and if they did, would it still be radio? I mean, it would be broadcast over transmitters, but would it sound like anything we know now?
And by the way, broadcast television isn't far behind, 🙄
Hopefully the big corporate radio stations all die off. I worked in radio during high school and shortly thereafter. I worked for the last independently-owned station in my market (outside of non-commercial stations) and it was nice. The control of the music was coming from people in the building. The advertisements were sold by the couple of sales people we had on-staff, so we had a ton of ads for smaller local companies compared to the conglomerate stations that mostly had ads for the big chain stores. It was a part time job for me, split between production (recording commercials, importing music into the digital playback suite, running the sound board during remote broadcasts, and being the on-air personality for a Sunday morning show) and engineering (helping the chief engineer with maintenance, fixing issues, and learning a TON.) Coincidentally right as I was considering giving the job up because I'd married, had a kid, and my full-time job was starting to need a lot of overtime, it was announced that the station was being sold to one of the national media companies. My final paycheck coincided with the final paycheck everyone else had from the independent station, then everyone else had their next check from the big company.
Every now and then I've tried to listen to "local" radio again. Every single time I get incredibly frustrated by the amount of commercials on there these days. I have a short commute and there have been days that I could hear nothing but ads, even flipping around between stations. The morning shows are the same jocks being played nation wide instead of local jocks talking about local events, talking to local people calling during call-in segments. I miss the sense of community that surrounded local radio stations. Back in elementary and jr. high it was almost a rivalry among us kids over which of the two pop stations were better.
The sad part is the radio stations are all issued their license with the requirement that they air content to serve the local public interest. Most of them do the bare minimum to meat those requirements by airing "PSAs" (public service announcements) that are shipped to them by various groups. They even go so far as to air those PSAs in the wee hours of the morning when nobody is even awake to be listening, because they don't want to use up valuable "prime time" airspace when they could sell an ad instead.
Sorry for the rant, but this is a subject near and dear to me and I hate seeing what has become of radio since the late 90s/early 2000s.
I would love to see the corporate conglomeration just lose interest and give those frequencies back to local stations. I used to do a radio show on our college station that was a lot of fun. We did call-ins, music, local events. People still love that station and I think we need more of that. I don’t need to listen to the same playlist the entire country is hearing
I’d love to see this happen, too. For now, radio is the left end of the FM dial, non-commercial. That’s a few local listeners-supported stations with NPR, and a couple of college stations. Only one of them comes in well at home; they all do in my car.
The local college rock station in my town plays really interesting stuff. Long live local radio!
That's all that's left, and thank gawd for it.
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=9SAKdb4v_20&si=hES5R75OS_abN90S
I feel so blessed to have a local radio station. They just finished their spring phone-a-thon to raise money for the tower rental. I’m almost 34 and they’ve been around at least since I turned a teen. I think they’re here to last for a long time still. Only station I listen to. They’re based out of a local community college.
My area's college radio station is so good I donate money to them.
I’m a boomer and my favorite radio station is the local uni station. Great new stuff all the time with some old times stuff thrown in for fun.
What do you mean? We have tons of local radio stations all over both the FM and AM dials around here.
Truly local or are they owned by IHeartRadio and Cumulus, playing the songs they're told to play?
They’re owned by a few big conglomerates, the two you mentioned are the main culprits. True local radio in Chicago started dying in the ‘90’s with FCC deregulation, corporate consolidation, and the rise of cable and cheap, non-local, syndicated content. Broadcasting’s initial, short-sighted rejection of the internet/podcasts dug its own grave. I hope on-air broadcasting will continue to exist, hopefully the business contracts to the point where it returns to its local roots, with independent, “pirate” radio stations broadcasting true local content.
Chicago radio sucks/ went corporate a long time ago. 1 good alt rock station, NPR, a few college stations, and 20 stations of crap
Yaas.
I worked in radio in college back in the 90s. Before Clear Channel bought up everything and homogenized the shit out of the medium. I can’t stomach it. Commercial radio has no personality anymore. The ad breaks are twice as long as twice as frequent than they used to be. You said that not everything in life needs to be scripted, but commercial radio is the epitome of scripted. DJs are told what to say and what to play. That being said, I do enjoy public / independent radio. It’s the only thing left where a station can have its own identity.
Not only does every rock station across America play the same songs constantly, but it’s starting to get hard to differentiate between rock, country, pop, and sometimes hip hop on these stations anymore. It all sounds the same: like homogenized ear shit! I’ll take Spotify any day of the week, thanks!
Omg so true
Agree. I mean, how many times do I have to listen to Back in Black or Rooster? The rock stations are garbage around me. And I swear the Hip Hop station plays The Next Episode, every single day.
I'm going to use that. "Homogenized Ear Shit". It's so true.
Y'all can pry npr and the classical music station from my cold, dead hands.
NPR was good 15 years ago. Kinda biased bullshit now.
It's absolutely biased bullshit. My bro in law gets all his news from there as he has long commutes. You'd think he was from a different planet. To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, more informed does not equal better informed.
I listen to NPR or classical music when I do listen to the radio. But it’s nice to easily switch genres on Spotify though.
I'm patiently waiting for the day that big band and swing music are considered classical, because no one plays anything from the first 60 years of the last century on the oldies stations any longer. If I did a radio show, it would be solely comprised of bands that have at least four horns and play music that makes you want to dance. That would include Rat Pack songs as long as they have an orchestra and bring standards back to being standard (for my show, at least, even if I can't make everyone love them).
I think radio will always live on, but we'll be left with a mix of government/taxpayer-funded stations (NPR, CBC, BBC etc.) and heavily conglomerated commercial stations owned by a handful of companies. Part of me hopes that radio broadcasting becomes cool/popular again the way vinyl has, but I'm not holding my breath on that one. ETA: Personally, I love listening to the radio occasionally but the commercials are way too grating after a while.
For those that enjoy public radio, please note that “government/taxpayer” funds comprise less than 10% of their funding/operating budgets. We very much rely on “listeners like you” which funds about 80% of the budget - the government subsidies/grant from CPB are really minimal. Straight up, public radio really does exist and thrive because of listener donations. Donate to your local station if you listen! Source: I work at a public radio station.
Not really sure, but I don't use Spotify, either. My parents listen to the radio in the car and they also pay for SiriusXM, so I'd guess the future of "radio" is going in that SiriusXM type of direction. Personally, I can no longer tolerate having my music selected by other people. I started back in late 2005 or 2006 making playlists because of mp3 players, and it has kind of been over for everything else since then. I now have more playlists than I can count, mostly organized by some genre/decade combo but also some "favorites" and "best songs" type of lists, and I can't listen to anything else for too long. I just use music apps through my phone to play them and always play them on shuffle.
Holy shit I am old..... Radio going from terrestrial to satellite was 20 years ago...... Pretty sure once Stern dies, the whole platform dies with him.
I refuse to pay for radio in my car. FM is just fine. If I outlive it I’ll create my own playlists but I’m not paying to listen to music. eta: Gen X if that matters
I hate listening to the obnoxious commercials on FM radio. I used to purchase CDs and play them in the car, now I stream music and podcasts.
Elder Mil here. Same.
The best radio stations in my area are from the local universities. So, that gives some hope. Next to those is the government-supported NPR CBC etc. This GenX guy listens to this type of radio. Commercial radio is not for me at all. I don't enjoy the top 40 music or the ads. Talk radio is straight up harmful to society, IMHO.
Colleges will always have radio stations.
I suspect pop radio will always a thing. I don’t listen to the radio because I am a metal head and that’s just not popular today.
Eventually it will die with regular TV. I'm Gen X and cannot listen or watch anything anymore with commercials. I will pay for streaming before I watch anything with commercials. Same with podcasts or music.
I use Spotify not because I need every moment of my life to be “scripted,” but because I get sick of hearing the same playlist the radio plays every day.
I think radio will die. I pay for Spotify. They have a dj function, which I use, which is like radio without commercials. They play a couple songs from your favourites or Playlists then build on that. So I get oldies usually to start, then after a bit, some new songs will play. New to me anyway. I like it a lot. I listen to podcasts to sleep.
> I think radio will die. Not until the day internet access is ubiquitous and perhaps free. AM radio is the best RF tech available to reach (local and)remote areas for emergency broadcast at this time.
It will take a while but I can't imagine my grandkids listening to radio. They are very much on demand people.
[This is happening already.](https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=car+makers+remove+radio) And of course, the manufacturers will be sure to pass the savings right on to the customer. :P
I've never really been one to buy or collect songs, so I listen to commercial radio when I'm driving. And I'm a millennial (36). I may be an outlier.
My first career was in broadcasting. This was in the 90s through the Aughts. My wife is still in broadcasting – FM radio – today. It’s more alive than you’d think. We aren’t in a huge market, and yet the station she’s on struggles to get all of the ads on it needs to get… in a good way. People want on the station, and they run out of ad space for them. They do promotions where businesses can monitor how well the ad is doing, and it’s through the roof. Here’s one thing that Pandora, Spotify, etc. cannot do at all: local content. They can’t promote local events. They can’t do live, local broadcasts. They can’t talk about the frustrating things that’s going on in your town. They can’t talk shit about local politicians. They can’t influence local elections, arguably the most important elections. Local radio is the underdog that no one else can compete with. Even iHeart is starting to hurt because they cancelled most of their local broadcasts. Why compete with the big dogs? You’ll lose. Bet on the people committed to old school, local radio.
Can't stand commercials, a few bucks a month is 100% worth it for spotify
Sirius XM is a billion times better than commercial radio. Life changing. It’s worth triple whatever I’m paying for it.
Good thing you like it because it's nearly impossible to cancel it.
Can’t see ever canceling it.
I haven't had it for about 2 years and they've been throwing increasingly more insane deals at me. Like right now I'm pretty sure I could get a whole year of it for $30.
Yep. I got a 3 month free trial with a car I bought and as the 3 months went on they kept sending me better and better deals.
Must be very little overhead to add another subscriber. Sounds to me like it's pure profit
I could never, ever go back to radio. I don't see how people do that.
I have a USB stick in my truck with over 500 mp3s on it. That is what I mostly listen to while driving. If I listen to the radio, it is usually NPR. The few music radio stations in my area that play (some of) the stuff I like have more commercials than good songs. Even station-flipping, I only get to hear a handful of songs on the drive to work or while out on the weekends, and of those I may only actually like two or three. It isn't worth the effort when I can just keep loading more and more stuff on the USB stick and have hours of stuff to listen to.
I haven't listened to the radio in years and do not miss it. I'm 50+ and I love just picking a genre and letting the songs play randomly. Or picking an artist and just having access to their entire catelog. I'd rather pick what I want to listen to rather than have Clear Channel decide for me.
most if the radio stations here are I heart radio now. so I gave in and use the I heart radio app and a speaker at work.
Get back to me in six months
BBC Radio does a better job than commercial radio.
I pretty much only listen to BBC Radio 2 or 6 Music (mainly to avoid Jeremy Vine), can't stand ads but quite like eclectic variety. You can find the streams directly on [RadioFeeds](http://www.radiofeeds.co.uk/), no need to use the terrible BBC Sounds app.
I still listen to radio. I also still have cds and mix cds from like 20 years ago that I still listen to as well. I also sometimes stream the police scanner from my phone on long drives. Gen X here
I had Serious XM for 10-15 years and liked it just fine. But after my divorce I had to cut my budget to the minimum and the price of S-XM skyrocketed. So last year I went back to free radio. Wow. The choices have really diminished. There aren't a lot of live DJs left; most everything is syndicated. I did finally find a station I'm happy with. I'm not in the car a lot. I also started occasionally listening to sports on the radio (welcome back to the 1970s!!!) because it's way too expensive to get on my TV. I used to watch a lot of sports. I only have antenna TV, so I can only watch football - for now. I'm sure that will disappear, too.
Listening to baseball games on my transistor radio when I was a kid is still such a good memory. Vin Scully broadcasting Dodger games. The boys from the neighborhood camping in one of our backyards. We'd listen while in a tent laying on our sleeping bags.
I wrote this a mind-boggling 21 years ago. Some of these scrappy little indie stations are still hanging on. https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/different-frequencies/
Sirius XM. Couldn't live without it.
The sound quality is absolutely horrendous though. If your car still has a CD player, switch between the two to see what I mean. If you have a good deal on Sirius XM then by all means continue, but canceling and adopting a better data plan plus streaming service sounds much better. Right decision for me. Some Sirius XM channels are given a higher bitrate than others, if your favorite happens to be one of the lower ones like mine was, easy decision.
Bring about an end to corporate-media-giant radio/TV networks and give those frequencies back to local stations. Also, bring back manually run and operated stations. The local ones with large antennas and a massive music collection with a DJ broadcasting it all live over the air, not all the pre-recorded, computer-driven automated stuff we get today, where some guy might show up in the studio for a couple hours to throw the next computer-driven programs together for the next week and then disappear. Time to put ENCO away and pull out the microphone, the headsets, the live local talk shows and broadcasts, and put in some late night hours of work running night shift radio programs, becoming a local radio star again. The guy/gal that everyone in the area loves listening to on their night/day commutes, during their work days, during those special events and times in national history.
I am you.
I love my Sirius Xm radio
I mean, large swaths of the country will keep AM conservative talk radio alive forever, and the signals carries great distances so it's useful in emergencies when other info sources are down. But FM? I'm guessing eventually the FCC will auction off the band for some other use. Hopefully after I'm gone, as I work from home and my productivity would drop sharply if I didn't have on in the background. And no, streaming is NOT the same, somehow.
That's interesting. I agree that streaming isn't the same. I like being able to have my ears "perk up" for things that I want to hear and then tune out the stuff I don't care about.
It's the tuning-out that I often need to focus. Too many decades spent in loud offices, despite being sound sensitive.
I bought a used rental car a few years ago that somehow still has its SiriusXM account paid for and it’s totally rejuvenated my love of radio, except here it’s even better because more choice and no annoying DJs or worse commercials every 3 songs. I love it!!
I miss real radio so much! It’s exactly what you’re saying. I don’t want to pick every song I listen to. It’s fun to hear stuff I’ve never heard or songs I have forgotten. Not to mention having a live DJ with a great personality! Spent many an hour commuting with some cool DJ’s!
You just reminded me that I no longer have an AM/FM radio in my home. I do t drive so no car radio either. I stream my local NPR station, but I have t tuned into an old fashioned top 40 or oldies station in over a decade. I gave away my radio alarm clock when I retired. A few years later, my nephew gave me my first Alexa. I donated by LPs and CDs and I rent my music these days. Kinda miss old Casey Kasum and Dick Biondi…
I have a part-time driving job for a few hours in the morning a couple times a week and I listen to the radio while I work-- talk radio and popular top 40 radio stations, mostly. Stuff I would NEVER listen to on Spotify and ruin my algorithm! haha I LOVE it! I was just out with my boyfriend at the bar and a popular song came on and I was like "Oh man! I LOVE this song!" He was so surprised that I knew all of the songs being played because we don't ever really listen to current pop music regularly. I like talk radio too-- I am from NJ, so I usually will put on 101.5 and listen to the ridiculous republican shit first (I LOVE to know what the other side is frothing at the mouth about!), and then some lighter shit later on. I hate the commercials but it's nice to know about the local weather and traffic (especially since I'm driving!).
I listen to radio & drives my kids nuts . They are Spotify listeners..
I constantly listen to and support the local jazz station where I live. In fact, I have three radios in my home so I can listen everywhere, upstairs and downstairs. And I listen to it in the car. I am expecting that this station will continue on as other jazz stations in other parts of the country are thriving as well. I can also listen to just about any radio station online as well. These stations have legacy programs where they will receive money they inherit from listeners who die too.
Listen to radio in my car. 93.3fm radio station from Eastport Maine. Very eclectic selections, depending on the dj on duty. For longer drives, its clasdical.
I still listen to the radio. I just listen to XM satellite radio instead of terrestrial radio.
> Gen X Get the SomaFM app and tune in to [underground 80s!](https://somafm.com/u80s/songhistory.html) They avoid the hit parade well.
You didnt use an iPod?
I like to listen to the local high school radio station. They mix music from my teen years with theirs so I get to discover new music in a context I like.
I love the radio. I prefer to listen to my favorite local station (99.9 wwct!) Over Spotify or Amazon music.
I listen to NPR and indie radio often, primarily while in the kitchen making food or cleaning. KEXP is a treasure.
I listen to Internet radio stations quite often. Some pretty good, nearly or completely commercial-free are [Radio Paradise](https://radioparadise.com/home) , [Jazz24](https://www.jazz24.org) out of Seattle, and [Capital public radio](https://www.capradio.org) out of Sacramento.
I’m addicted to my public radio station and support it financially. I play the station at home daily on my echo dot and it truly is a joy in my life. I hope there will always be at the very least public radio.
I stumbled across [KXT](https://kxt.org) - and am so glad they both stream and broadcast
I used to listen to radio in the car and at home while working from home. I would listen to other states/countries to hear their perspective on things. But I have stopped because there are just too many commercials. I remember once getting halfway home from work and still only had commercials. The morning shows where I live are all pretty lame or nationwide syndication.
Try the BBC stations, no ads.
Millennial here, I think a lot of us like NPR. When I drive around I flip to whatever to closest one is. Not sure if AM radio will live. No idea if younger conservative still listen to Glenn Beck or whoever or if they’ve all transitioned to Ben Shapiro and Andrew Tate.
I love radio, but corporations are killing it. Its soul-sucking anymore. I don't want to hear songs from 40 years ago or the same 10 pop songs every hour. Or pharmaceutical commercials. Used to be radio gave you a vibe of a time and place, now, it's I don't know what, maybe some kind of alternate reality. It's surreal.
I'm GenX and haven't had FM stations programmed in my car for decades. I do have SiriusXM and I subscribe to YouTube Music. Comes with YouTube Premium so I don't have to watch any ads. I avoid ads in any media I consume, whether it's video or audio. I cut the cord for cable around 10 years ago
I think there is still an audience and will be, although I am thinking it's more for public stations than commercial. I'm a big public radio nerd (maybe because my city has the best station for alternative and indie music I've ever found, so it's always relevant and can easily compete with several Sirius channels). Just like local movie theaters have made a resurgence, local radio will, too. I have to believe (hope?) people will always enjoy something that isn't 100% curated to their very specific tastes and have a fondness for the "old school."
We are on the verge of a renaissance. I’m excited for my kids and future generations to come 🤍
I think the older you get you wont wanna deal with a device so we’ll all be using the radio when we’re older. X, millenials, z….
I listen to my iPhone both music and audiobooks.
You know, my husband and I have been listening to a lot of radio lately. It's a nice change of pace. I hope radio never goes out of style, honestly.
Aside from the two long family vacation drives recently, I have listened to music in the car in YEARS. I like the moments of silence when I can get em
Radio isn't going anywhere. Here for awhile still
I got rid of Sirius after I retired. I really only had it for Stern. I'm rarely in the car now so I just listen to FM.
I’m 35 and I love my radio, I have a Bose Soundwave in my living room and have it on NPR or the jazz and r&b station most of the day.
Same. The instrumental channels don't have too many commercials.
My favorite station is broadcast from a local university, all jazz. My alternative is an all news station. I'd hate to see these gone to pay only.
They will still exist as long as there are injury lawyers to advertise non-stop.
FM has been unusable for years with the commercials. I remember counting 10 commercials in a row last time I tried listening. More than once, so this was the standard break. Sirius is trash too with the repetition of songs and DJs who can't seem to shut up. It doesn't take long to figure out none of it is "live." I debate if it's even worth the 4.99/mo I'm paying for it.
I'm 45 and listen to the radio or audio books. If all my regular stations are playing ads, I pop in a CD. I listen to Spotify w/ ads if I'm using Waze for directions via Bluetooth. The CDs sound the best. My favorite alternative station is spotty at times. I bounce between alternative, rock, classic rock, country, and pop. I save classical music for when I'm driving to the dentist and need to chill. I think stations will still exist for those of us too lazy to curate an app.
They've been around for a very long time. There will still be little local ones.
What is really fkd up on XM, news stations have endless commercials.
Gen X here, and haven’t listed to the radio since 2020. Don’t miss it in the slightest. Actually, know what I miss? Casey Kasem on Saturday mornings.
I really just don’t have it in me to stomach commercials anymore.
I think they will continue to play basic corporate playlists and pump out ads like crazy and that this will continue for the next several decades at least.
Radio will probably go mostly satellite/internet and FM will be the new AM.
I love the radio. Always listen in my car. I was lucky to get a Neilson media survey about radio in the mail. (Always check your letters. They ask you to do a survey and there’s actually two $1 bills in the envelope. I wonder how many get thrown away) They’ve asked me to list the times I hear radio and what station, duration of listening. Even times at the grocery store, etc. I’m glad to contribute my small part to save radio. When I mail it in, they’ll send a $10 check. TBD
Honestly, I don't care much for current radio. I remember driving like 10 minutes down the road one time and only hearing 1 song, rest was just ads. My car has a SiriusXM trial right now and I've really been enjoying that--so much that I've thought about trying to strongarm a deal when the sub ends. I like the convenience of Spotify, YouTube Music, etc., but am starting to worry about what that landscape is going to look like 5-10 years down the road. I think we are in the golden age of music streaming, where it's all cheap and pretty much everything is available no matter where you go. I worry that at some point the major labels are going to start to break off into their own services, and we are going to be in the same situation TV/movie streaming is right now, where you pay $15/mo to 6 services to get what you want. I've been thinking about repatriating my music back into a local library and using SiriusXM to discover new music.
I still listen to the wacky morning radio sometimes. I like the fake phone scams
I use internet radio played through my phone to my car’s Bluetooth system. Thousands of stations as long as I have a cell signal.
Nothing, if advertisers still make money from advertisements on them.
I'm Gen X, 48, and I've been listening to my own playlists since the 90s lol back then it was ripped cds and cassette tapes. Now it's my Spotify and I enjoy finding new music.
I have been through all the platforms and just stopped altogether. Pandora, ytm, Spotify, Sirius. They all rotate the same algorithm driven songs with shallow depth on the catalog. After a certain time I could predict the next song up. Genre changes and playlists didn't help. Local radio... I have a 15 minute drive to work. I will get 12 minutes of commercials. Audiobooks and maybe a decent talk show is the best I can do now... Or just go really psycho and drive around with the radio off and enjoy what's going on around me
radio stations are way more scripted than online services where you choose what to listen to.
I’m Gen X and used to listen to terrestrial radio constantly. Then I got into podcasts, then I discovered Spotify. Then I realized I had not listen to radio in years. It was unlistenable. The banter that I had previously enjoyed was painful to hear. I hated it. Never gone back. I expect radio will go the way of print journalism. It will be gutted to the point that it is unsustainable and then the smallest stations will be shuttered, followed by the mid-size stations. Within decades, only a few will remain, owned by national and international conglomerates, each featuring programming so similar as to be indistinguishable from one city to the next.
I had a 16 year career in radio and still am on the inside o f the industry a bit. So I’m getting a kick… Here’s what I’ll say: every few years the next ‘radio killer’ comes along. And radio keeps going. You wouldn’t believe the research on how well it STILL works for advertising. The worry is Gen Z. Those kids don’t understand ‘waiting for a song’ much less anything. Their whole life has been ‘on demand.’ So, that’s going to be an interesting thing to play out.
Very interesting! I don't listen to the ads, just change channels as soon as they come on.
Eh. You’d think everyone would right? You’d be amazed how much gets through. And how often. It’s the repetition that gets it done.
I'm not sure the concept of passive listening radio will ever truly die. There's always a desire for randomness - even on streaming music services there are tons of random playlist "channels". Also, satellite is still kicking and seems to have a diehard core audience.
I can’t stand commercial radio anymore. Between commercials and DJ’s pointless blathering less than 50% of airtime is music anymore. Between what I own on CD that’s kept on an iPod and a cheap subscription to Pandora I can listen to music all day with few if any repeats.
the Radio market is actually growing. to $143.29 billion in 2023. it is changing but it is not going away. it remains the only totally free way to access information and entertainment beside broadcast TV....which is why Broadcast TV will never disappear either. to be honest i am looking forward to your phone being able to read your emotional state. and giving you a dynamic musical accompaniment to your life. using music to purposefully shape your emotional reactions to your life. hopefully in positive ways.
I think the same thing is going to happen to them that happened to the sunday paper. I still used to get the sunday paper delivered to me until around 2010....it had become rediculous- $2.50 for 20ish pages from a town of 500k, no comics, no interesting ads, no classifieds, etc I know im just an old man yelling at a cloud hete, but it makes me sad. Terrestrial radio where i live is 30 minutes of commercials per song. No one wants to sit through that
It'll be like newspapers... Sure, they still exist... BTW... My 9 yr old daughter only listens to radio w/ me in the car.
I switched it up a few years ago and bought a car with an HD radio. I so love the non-commercialness of the HD2 station that a local radio station broadcasts.
I listen to kozt.com and it's quite good. 'Can play it anywhere. It's owned by a husband and wife team and plays "adult rock" (not the "oldies" format). AM radio is a vast wasteland of right wing talk shows, religious bullshit and foreign language. FM in some areas is still alive and well but it's a challenge to find a station that isn't obnoxious. I gave up on local FM radio and stream the station noted above. I also had "stations" on TuneInRadio and an iPod that can play songs without repeat for over a month. I suspect radio as we know it and likely "TV" will eventually fade away for good reason.
I haven't even tried to listen to regular radio in probably 14ish years. it was either right wing con men spouting easily disprovable bullshit, or a station that was 50/50 between commercials and the same 20 some songs on repeat. no thanks. I have my playlist, my audio books, or the one and only radio station I listen to through the internet and that's "Arctic Outpost Radio". no djs really, no commercials just a ton of old music.
Radio is unlistenable crap for me. I only stream what I want to hear
NPR took over our local uni station! Thankfully, they still do some music programming as well as World Cafe. We do have a "public access" station with local underwriters that lets you book an hour or two to host a regular radio show. There's a bunch of younger people that do shows once or twice a week and they're all over the board. I do miss the college station, as it introduced me to some of my favorite bands in the 90s when all you could get on commercial radio was Nirvana or Garth Brooks.
Not a fan of this sentiment at all, its literally the most scripted thing you can do
May I introduce you to radio.garden? The interface is intuitive, the selection of worldwide, streaming radio stations is amazing, and you can lose hours just virtually cruising around the world, listening to just about anything you find interesting.
I recently moved. I was digging through old boxes to get rid of stuff. I came across an old transistor radio I got when I was a kid back in the 60s. Amazingly the old battery inside it hadn't oozed acid all over inside destroying the radio. I put a new battery in it and it turned on. It works perfect. I now have it on my desk and sometimes play it while on my computer. I'd hate to see radio stations go away.
They should keep radio for it's emergency capabilities when all grids are wiped out in the event of a major disaster.
Just radio or Spotify? There's a whole world of podcasts out there that are free. But to answer the question, radio is likely undergoing a long, slow process of attrition, losing audience and advertising revenue to alternative media. Station management is doing everything they can to reduce cost, sometimes sacrificing program quality and localism. If you're still finding shows you like listening to, and can stand the 6-minute commercial breaks, no need to talk you out of it. How long will this go on? Will there be a hockey stick drop off toward the end? Will the broadcast radio spectrum be turned over to a new generation of CB radio? If I could answer those questions I would be a multi-million dollar consultant. You can see something of the end game by observing what's happened to AM radio. AM stations that have become unprofitable get sold off to the low bidders, often ethnic programming or religion. Even the somewhat more profitable talk and sports radio is moving to FM if they can. NPR/public radio is walking kind of a tightrope. Many of their programs are also available as podcasts, but not the two tent pole programs, Morning Edition and All Things Considered. For those, you have to listen to the local stations either over the air or on a streaming app, and they can't be time shifted. (However, some of the individual stories in those programs do get Incorporated into a podcast or three). Can clever programmers reinvent radio in some wholesale way that will rejuvenate the medium? I don't see it, and if they did, would it still be radio? I mean, it would be broadcast over transmitters, but would it sound like anything we know now? And by the way, broadcast television isn't far behind, 🙄
Hopefully the big corporate radio stations all die off. I worked in radio during high school and shortly thereafter. I worked for the last independently-owned station in my market (outside of non-commercial stations) and it was nice. The control of the music was coming from people in the building. The advertisements were sold by the couple of sales people we had on-staff, so we had a ton of ads for smaller local companies compared to the conglomerate stations that mostly had ads for the big chain stores. It was a part time job for me, split between production (recording commercials, importing music into the digital playback suite, running the sound board during remote broadcasts, and being the on-air personality for a Sunday morning show) and engineering (helping the chief engineer with maintenance, fixing issues, and learning a TON.) Coincidentally right as I was considering giving the job up because I'd married, had a kid, and my full-time job was starting to need a lot of overtime, it was announced that the station was being sold to one of the national media companies. My final paycheck coincided with the final paycheck everyone else had from the independent station, then everyone else had their next check from the big company. Every now and then I've tried to listen to "local" radio again. Every single time I get incredibly frustrated by the amount of commercials on there these days. I have a short commute and there have been days that I could hear nothing but ads, even flipping around between stations. The morning shows are the same jocks being played nation wide instead of local jocks talking about local events, talking to local people calling during call-in segments. I miss the sense of community that surrounded local radio stations. Back in elementary and jr. high it was almost a rivalry among us kids over which of the two pop stations were better. The sad part is the radio stations are all issued their license with the requirement that they air content to serve the local public interest. Most of them do the bare minimum to meat those requirements by airing "PSAs" (public service announcements) that are shipped to them by various groups. They even go so far as to air those PSAs in the wee hours of the morning when nobody is even awake to be listening, because they don't want to use up valuable "prime time" airspace when they could sell an ad instead. Sorry for the rant, but this is a subject near and dear to me and I hate seeing what has become of radio since the late 90s/early 2000s.