No, not the over the top entertainer, rather the idea Queen set forth in their song of the same name. Radio was once a hub of entertainment the world worshiped but sadly seems to have died. IOW, everything that song warned against came true didn't it? Most shows that once made us laugh have gone off to satellite radio and left us with a rather safe and boring counterpart. Every station now has a regular same old 40 song rotation, oddly even the ones that aren't top 40.
Personally I have no clue how anyone can listen to it. I served as an on-air DJ for about 5 years parttime. I NEVER got how someone could honestly call up and request Stairway To Heaven or Freebird back then not to mention now. I currently have XM which offers up some good song rotation. My wife and I both agreed we probably wouldn't want to go back to free radio simply because of the reason I listened to above. If I had the choice between XM and no radio, I'd choose "no radio". At work I tend to keep youtube up so I can choose my own songs or I either use my I-Pod.
Do you listen to the radio? If so which format (free or satellite)? When do you usually listen to? How often do you listen?
I have a satellite radio because I drive a LOT for work. But at home, I';m very lucky. Portland, Oregon has some great radio for the types of music I like. There are 2-3 stations all doing really good stuff. But I'm aware thats rare.
-Ed
I never listen to the radio at all. Haven't for years. At home I mostly download stuff I like and transfer it to my PS3 and then play it on my stereo. Our cable TV provider has a whole bunch of music channels, and sometime I'll listen to one of those. They're okay, but they get repetitive fast. We listen to Pandora internet radio sometimes too - just type in a song or several and it creates a radio station based on your tastes.
I don't listen to terrestrial radio much anymore except for talk, mainly because I am so utterly bored by what the music stations do anymore. I don't have XM. I listen to music and whatever podcasts I like on my iPod in the car.
I grew up listening to radio, and no, it's nothing like it was. Once rock and roll hit the scene, and coincidentally at the same time that radios in cars became common, an amazing thing happened. From the 50's to the 70's, radio DJ's were akin to rock stars in their area. Young people attributed as much status to their local DJ as they did to their favorite artist. The 80's had some of that, but by that time the rockstar status of the DJ was starting to go away, partly due to the coming of the music video age, in which artists were "made" from their videos and not as much from their radio airplay. Quite appropriately, "video killed the radio star."
Another thing that the music video age destroyed: rock magazines. Before music videos made artists faces easily seen by everyone, people could only see what their favorite rockstars looked like by going to the newsstand and buying Rolling Stone, Cream, Hit Parade, and a host of other magazines. Rolling Stone is about all that's left. Back then, there were scores of fanzines and that's how you got to know your rockstar. MTV killed that era, and now they won't even play any f**king music videos. On top of that, they're owned by ViaComm, who also owns VH1, CMT, and BET. Yes, that's right, they own EVERY major channel devoted to music. In other words, ViaComm controls mainstream music.
Every change in society carries with it advances as well as sad losses of things that were once wonderful. People can market their own music now without having to be solicited and at the mercy of record labels in order to be heard. At the same time, mainstream music suffers because it's controlled by a single corporation and what you get is going to be whatever they think is marketable and will cost them the least amount possible and entail the least amount of risk in order to turn a profit.
Remember, we're not living in a capitalist economy anymore. It's a corporatist economy, which is different. Our entertainment industry reflects that.
there are some really good college radio stations here in Boston. The boston College station plays really out there avant garde stuff most nights and I usually tune into that, often while i'm watching movies.
95% of the time my radio is tuned to WEEI (850 AM) , which is a 24-hour Boston sports talk station. The only time I change the channel is when the station is covering a sporting event that doesn't interest me (such as college basketball). My music-listening is mostly done on my iPod, where I have complete control. And, yes, I have both STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN and FREEBIRD on my iPod!
I only listen to CDs in my truck. I used to have a Ipod Playing thing but due to some stupidity on my part it got stolen. :hatred:
I'm a talk radio junkie. I never was much into radio for music purposes.
We listen to the radio in the car, and sometimes I'll play an online thing like Pandora at home. We also play those music only stations on cable sometimes too.. does anyone else get those? They cycle through photos and mostly crappy trivia on screen about the band that's currently playing, or if the band is so obscure that there isn't even crappy trivia about them they show something like trivia on cassette tapes.
There's a pretty good mix of radio stations here so I can switch back and forth if I get tired of them. I also have the radio on all day at work, but it's not digital and sometimes there's a lot of interference downtown, so when I get a clear station in, I don't dare change it because it's hard to tell if I have the dial in the wrong place or if it's just normal downtown interference.
It's good enough for me. I've never had an ipod or experienced xm radio though, so maybe I just don't know what I'm missing.
I used to listen to the Dr Demento show on one of the local stations Sunday nights, but I don't think they play it anymore.
I have to say I love the idea of radio... I still imagine the night DJ talking out to the world and sharing music. It's still there in the college stations. But I'd love to go back in time and stay up all night listening to Symphony Sid, or an old late night show on in Omaha called "Headphones Only" from when I was a kid.
In Portland theres a show called Area 54 thats on from 12-2 on weekends ,they do cool chill music. I love listening to them when I am up.
I don't listen to the radio anymore. Last time was around 1991/1992.
I got all the music I like here on iTunes, and I don't care about people like Howard Stern.
Since Howard Stern and Opie and Anthony went to Satellite, I pretty much stopped listening to terrestrial radio. Here in Philly we did have a great dj named Kidd Chris, who was kind of a shock jock of sorts. But then he got fired over a song a listener sang on the air, and they replaced him with Danny Bonaduce.
Nowadays, I rarely listen to the radio. When I do, it's limited to 610 WIP-AM, the all sports station, as well as 88.5, our local college station. I like the college station cause it plays the best combination of music, ranging from Stevie Wonder to Sinatra, to Weird Al, to Slim Whitman and Beethoven. So you get a mix of great rock, jazz, classical, comedy, etc.
I normally listen to Highveld Stereo www.highveld.co.za (http://www.highveld.co.za) which is a Johannesburg based station. Like so many other radio stations, they seem to play the same damn songs over and over again but you get past that.
Quote from: indianasmith on February 17, 2011, 07:19:27 PM
I'm a talk radio junkie. I never was much into radio for music purposes.
Try www.702.co.za (http://www.702.co.za) for the best talk radio here. :smile:
I don't even remember the last time I actively listened to the radio. It is complete and utter sh!te in this country. When I lived in Canada, I listened to internet radio Radioio.com. They were fantastic. No ads, and just new music from people I'd never heard of and others I knew but their new stuff. No Britney or rap in sight. That's wehre I found Frou Frou, Merrie Amsterburg, John Mayer, Alex Lloyd, Delta Goodrem, Travis, Richard Ashcroft, Jeffrey Gaines and a whole host of others that I never would have been exposed to without that station.
It used to be free, but now I think you have to subscribe. Which is fair enough but I wouldn't listen to it enough to justify the fee.
I'll on a occasion listen to the radio, but it always ticks me off when they play 97% of a song and the DJ cuts it off :hatred: I still listen to sports talk every once a while though.
I dont have a lot of choice-My record player and cd player are broke-and I only have little earpieces for my computer. My radio is an ancient 1970 something clock radio with a cassete player. Luckly they have an old 50's,60' oldie station that plays some obscure stuf from that era. On Sunday morning they play bluegrass. I do miss the old WIDR collage station-they'd play anything from BLACK FLAG to Ernest Tubb.
Quote from: HappyGilmore on February 18, 2011, 01:15:59 AM
Nowadays, I rarely listen to the radio. When I do, it's limited to 610 WIP-AM, the all sports station, as well as 88.5, our local college station. I like the college station cause it plays the best combination of music, ranging from Stevie Wonder to Sinatra, to Weird Al, to Slim Whitman and Beethoven. So you get a mix of great rock, jazz, classical, comedy, etc.
88.5 is WXPN? Funny, those are the two stations I listened to back when I lived in that area a decade ago (plus the classical station). It sounds like XPN's even more eclectic than before... they were almost exclusively "adult alternative" back when I listened to them, good stuff but I could have used a little more variety.
Radio is mind meltingly AWFUL in ths country. I don't listen to it at all and haven't for at least 20 years. Every time I try, it's the same old sh.ite as always.
I listen mostly to 94.7 Highveld Stereo which you can audiostream at www.highveld.co.za (http://www.highveld.co.za) ~ their morning show used to be great up until last year, then it went down the proverbial crapper.
Quote from: Rev. Powell on April 25, 2011, 10:56:45 PM
Quote from: HappyGilmore on February 18, 2011, 01:15:59 AM
Nowadays, I rarely listen to the radio. When I do, it's limited to 610 WIP-AM, the all sports station, as well as 88.5, our local college station. I like the college station cause it plays the best combination of music, ranging from Stevie Wonder to Sinatra, to Weird Al, to Slim Whitman and Beethoven. So you get a mix of great rock, jazz, classical, comedy, etc.
88.5 is WXPN? Funny, those are the two stations I listened to back when I lived in that area a decade ago (plus the classical station). It sounds like XPN's even more eclectic than before... they were almost exclusively "adult alternative" back when I listened to them, good stuff but I could have used a little more variety.
Yeah, WXPN. They still do a lot of that 'adult alternative' but each dj pretty much produces their own show. So you get this weird variety where one show will be a bunch of bluegrass and folk, then another show that's r&b, and another that features a mish mash of rock and some novelty songs, etc. We had a 'youth oriented/alternative' station here that marketed to the 18-34 audience, playing a lot of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains and a bunch of mid '90s rock and current indie stuff. They were shut down and WXPN kinda picked up the pieces, hiring a bunch of their staff and adding a bunch of the artists to their rotation.
UK radio sucks pigeon leg! You have about a gazillion stations that only play either, classical music, nu-metal, bible readings or egotistical lecherous men talking about money and football.
I used to listen to a radio station called TotalRock, because they had a segment called "Midnite Dynamite" (after the KIX song), which naturally started at 12:00am. It was an absolute aural orgasm for moi, playing everything from Motley, Scorpions, UFO to Warlock, Wildside and Britny Fox etc...etc...There was no other station that played that kind of 70s-80s- early 90s classic hard rock and then they went and took it off air, then the station. You can listen to TotalRock online, but Midnite Dynamite is an atrocity these days, they play all sorts of new junk.
Sidenote: I got banned from their chatroom for voicing my displeasure at the playlist. (Screw you Sleazy H!)
I really liked the radio of the 70s and 80s. That was pretty much the end of the golden age of FM that started in the 60s. Back when FM was new and AM was still the moneymaker, and broadcasters with newly-licenced FM stations gave the DJs huge leeway in what they played, because they just wanted to fill up the time without taking too much attention away from their AM stations. You could hear a great variety of music, including stuff you might not otherwise have heard. A lot of great rock acts came to the public's attention because radio DJs took a liking to their sound. Of course, as FM radio grew and there was more money to be made, this freedom gradually disappeared, and with it a lot of the artistry and personality and fun of radio. It's probably been 20 years or more since I could honestly say radio was cool.
However, what I think really killed radio is the internet, but not for the reasons most people think. When stations got the ability to continuously poll their listeners, that pretty much killed anything I still liked about it. Until then, even at the most top-down, corporate stations, programming decisions were made by people who's job it was to keep abreast of what was going on in the music industry, who used their expertise to select programming they thought the listeners would enjoy, and they monitored their success through ratings gathered over the longer term.
Until about ten years ago, I could listen to my favourite local radio station and hear a nice mix of classic rock, while being steadily introduced to new songs that didn't clash too badly. It was nice. Then they started the ongoing daily phone polls and weekly online polls, and it just went for a sh!t. Fewer classics, while at the same time nothing particularly fresh or new. Songs that were never particularly good hung around for months. Songs that just didn't fit in with the other programming started to find their way into the rotation, while new songs that were actually pretty good never got much of a chance, because listeners' knee-jerk reactions got them pulled before they could grow on anyone. Instead of people with expertise carefully planning how to make the station better, and giving their plans a chance to work, they found a system whereby they could abdicate their responsibility and base their decisions directly on the whims of any idiot who can pick up a phone or work a mouse. And instead of making the station better (an exercise in fixing what wasn't broken, since they were already quite successful), they managed to zero in on the absolute middle of the road and stay there. And since independent radio stations have all but disappeared, you have corporate-owned chains of stations, applying that same crappy formula everywhere.
When you aim to please everyone, you invariably end up with something mediocre, because you can't please everyone. You always have to compromise. Anything distinctive that would really please a given group of listeners is likely to displease as many others. In the end, the best you can achieve is a mix that is tolerable for a majority. The same principle applies to everything from foods to elected officials. People vary enough in what they want and what they like, that putting the choice directly in their hands will never give you the best, but rather the least objectionable to the most people. And now, between music libraries you can carry in your pocket, web radio, satellite radio, and other developments that go in entirely the opposite direction, providing highly individualized entertainment, commercial radio can only get more bland as it becomes increasingly irrelevant.
Quote from: RCMerchant on February 18, 2011, 06:14:33 AM
I dont have a lot of choice-My record player and cd player are broke-and I only have little earpieces for my computer. My radio is an ancient 1970 something clock radio with a cassete player. Luckly they have an old 50's,60' oldie station that plays some obscure stuf from that era. On Sunday morning they play bluegrass. I do miss the old WIDR collage station-they'd play anything from BLACK FLAG to Ernest Tubb.
I know what I'm getting you for xmas now!
My mom about had me committed for this but, I do not listen to radio period. If I go into a store and they have a radio on, I immediately turn around and leave. At home, I've ripped off all the antennas of the stereos, clocks, ect. I will listen to what i choose to listen to, I'm not leaving that decision up to someone else. On a side note, I don't think any local stations around here would play anything out of my cd collection anyways....
Quote from: Circus Circus on April 26, 2011, 01:12:36 PM
Sidenote: I got banned from their chatroom for voicing my displeasure at the playlist. (Screw you Sleazy H!)
I had a similar experience. I took the opportunity to participate in the online "advisory council" at the station I used to like, and I was pretty vocal about what I thought of the direction they were going. It eventually got me kicked off, but not before getting into a private email row with their patronizing, passive-aggressive, semi-literate jackass of a program director, when he decided to tell me very politely that they didn't really need me as a listener, and if I didn't like their station, there are others. And I countered by telling him if he was serious about listener feedback, he should be prepared to hear the bad along with the good. It escalated from there over several more emails. The guy never understood what my complaint really was, or why I cared so much. There was a lot I did like about the station, just not where they were going with their programming. When I just happened to get unregistered from their site, twice, and the prick tried to tell me he thought that was what I wanted, after I complained, I finally just stopped listening.
Funny that I tuned in again to that station on a visit, after having moved away a couple of years earlier, and I'd swear the playlist hadn't changed at all. Still the same crap, neither good enough to be classic, nor new enough to be interesting. Songs a couple of years old, just as uniformly crappy as they were, and far more stale.
These days, I listen almost entirely to my own music collection, occasionally to web radio, and to CBC radio on car trips. Haven't listened to a regular radio station in years. Even when I need to wake up in the morning, I prefer the sound of the buzzer.
Mostly the iPod, for me. I listen to the radio a bit while I drive, but I have a very low threshold for muttering "that is insanely annoying" and turning it off.
Hey, Paquita! Dr Demento! I listened to that show quite a lot when I was in high school. He's all internet play now I think, by subscription, but he's still out there if you google him.
I think the most annoying pop music in the existence of the universe is probably French pop. Gaaah.
Quote from: Zapranoth on April 26, 2011, 07:19:14 PM
Mostly the iPod, for me. I listen to the radio a bit while I drive, but I have a very low threshold for muttering "that is insanely annoying" and turning it off.
Hey, Paquita! Dr Demento! I listened to that show quite a lot when I was in high school. He's all internet play now I think, by subscription, but he's still out there if you google him.
I think the most annoying pop music in the existence of the universe is probably French pop. Gaaah.
Yeah. Demento had a few stations left, but most were changing formats and wouldn't carry him.
There' s a local Classic Rock station called K-Rock which is pretty cool and plays a lot of variety of stuff from the 70s- 90s mainly. It's actually not half bad a station at all...
Quote from: Sister Grace on April 26, 2011, 05:11:00 PM
My mom about had me committed for this but, I do not listen to radio period. If I go into a store and they have a radio on, I immediately turn around and leave. At home, I've ripped off all the antennas of the stereos, clocks, ect. I will listen to what i choose to listen to, I'm not leaving that decision up to someone else. On a side note, I don't think any local stations around here would play anything out of my cd collection anyways....
:thumbup: I always have my MP3 player with me anywhere and everywhere I go for that reason. It's also very helpful in blocking out intercom announcements, salespeople, customers, TV displays, fire alarms, cash register sounds, gunshots, etc...
Quote from: Sleepyskull on April 27, 2011, 02:38:52 AM
Quote from: Sister Grace on April 26, 2011, 05:11:00 PM
My mom about had me committed for this but, I do not listen to radio period. If I go into a store and they have a radio on, I immediately turn around and leave. At home, I've ripped off all the antennas of the stereos, clocks, ect. I will listen to what i choose to listen to, I'm not leaving that decision up to someone else. On a side note, I don't think any local stations around here would play anything out of my cd collection anyways....
:thumbup: I always have my MP3 player with me anywhere and everywhere I go for that reason. It's also very helpful in blocking out intercom announcements, salespeople, customers, TV displays, fire alarms, cash register sounds, gunshots, etc...
They are also great for spending time with family you don't particularly care for. Having long, dark hair and black wires to my headphones, they often think i'm just deep in thought.
The main problem is there isn't much choice or diversity for listeners these days, when it comes to music. It's like, "Screw you for having taste buddy! This is what's in the charts! This is what's happening now and we're going to ram it down your ears until you go download this crap!"
I would just LOVE to start a pirate radio station...