Radio Gaga

[Nightowl]

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     I still listen to sports talk every once a while though.

[RCMerchant]

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.

[Rev. Powell]

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. 

[Killer Bees]

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.

[Trevor]

I listen mostly to 94.7 Highveld Stereo which you can audiostream at www.highveld.co.za ~ their morning show used to be great up until last year, then it went down the proverbial crapper.

[HappyGilmore]

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.

[Psycho Circus]

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!)

[AndyC]

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.

[Sister Grace]

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....

[AndyC]

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.

[Zapranoth]

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.

[HappyGilmore]

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.

[JaseSF]

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...

[Sleepyskull]

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....

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...

[Sister Grace]

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....

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.