April 15, 2005

Radio Ruminations

I’ve been thinking alot about how radio is changing. I think with my antenna on the fritz in my car, I’ve decided it’s a waste of time to even try to listen to it the old way and thus lately I’ve been listening to it on streaming audio via the web. I didn’t realize I was a junkie until recently the other day I got angry that my real player wasn’t working. This is just like getting a bad signal during a good program: you just want to hit the dashboard. At least I do because I’m a violent person. 🙂 Anyway, with podcasts and streaming audio, the old transistor is probably going to die. Yes, I’ll repeat it, DIE. But that’s ok because it doesn’t mean radio’s relevance is dead. Quite the contrary, I hold it quite dear as a resource that not only informs me on the daily news, but gives me music reccomendations and gets me up to date on every topic I could ever need. Put succinctly: content is more important than the vehicle of said content. Bring on the digital man, it only makes for better choices.

FYI: if your interested in what I listen to daily I’ll give you a brief rundown. I start my day around 9:30. By 10 AM I listen to the Al Franken Show on Air America. At around noon I feel like music usually so I go to Minnesota Public Radio’s INCREDIBLE 89.3 The Current. After that I usually spend the afternoon listening to either my local KCRW station or if I’m bored with that I go to Wisconsin’s Idea Network. Yes, I’m an NPR fan. Deal. Oh yeah and I don’t forget Adam Curry’s mainstay Podcast, The Daily Sourcecode.