Love it or hate it, truckers say they can’t stop listening to public radio
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Re: Love it or hate it, truckers say they can’t stop listening to public radio
#2“And I said, ‘Well, so why don’t you stop listening?’” Murphy continued. “And he says, ‘I can’t, because it’s the only station that will go on mile after mile and I can pick it up again.’”
Just drove from IA to MI and it's true. Between 90.3 and 92.7 FM there's always an NPR station waiting.
Or I could just download their app and listen anywhere / anytime.
Re: Love it or hate it, truckers say they can’t stop listening to public radio
#3Looking for a "bubble-free" media venue? Not a bad place to start.
Re: Love it or hate it, truckers say they can’t stop listening to public radio
#4“And I said, ‘Well, so why don’t you stop listening?’” Murphy continued. “And he says, ‘I can’t, because it’s the only station that will go on mile after mile and I can pick it up again.’” Just drove from IA to MI and it's true. Between 90.3 and 92.7 FM there's always an NPR station waiting. Or I could just download their app and listen anywhere / anytime. http://www.npr.org/about/products/npr-one/
It occurs to me that a FM radio should be capable of automatically doing this hand-off, thanks to this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Data_System
If a station signal goes weak, the radio could scan the FM stations for another station which is known to broadcast the same signal (according to, say, an internal cross-matching database, or some other means).
Re: Love it or hate it, truckers say they can’t stop listening to public radio
#5> it’s the only station that will go on mile after mile and I can pick it up again.
I can vouch for that -- I just went on a road trip to visit all the state parks in Utah, and believe me, once you get out of Salt Lake, your choices are NPR, country music, or static. I listened to a lot of NPR.
Re: Love it or hate it, truckers say they can’t stop listening to public radio
#6> Aside from the content, according to Murphy, drivers like NPR for the continuity. They can keep listening to the same programs from state to state.
Why don't truckers use satellite radio? They could listen to the same programs anywhere in the (U.S.? World?).
Re: Love it or hate it, truckers say they can’t stop listening to public radio
#7I listen to a number of NPR podcasts and perhaps I'm misremembering but it seems there's an uptick in the past few years of interviewing and discussing the lives of just "regular folks", people who work blue-collar jobs, people with conservative religious backgrounds, etc., ... and not in a disparaging way.
But ... Fresh Air with Terry Gross still largely wanders the fields of the cultural left with nary a nod to alternative viewpoints.
Re: Love it or hate it, truckers say they can’t stop listening to public radio
#8Both XM and Sirius before they merged had a big following among truckers. Even after the merger, they still have shows and channels tailored to them. The big reason was that could listen to the same channels across the country.
Re: Love it or hate it, truckers say they can’t stop listening to public radio
#9I love NPR. My wife makes fun of me because sometimes I sit in the car with the battery / radio on after I park just to hear a story finish.
New Hampshire Public radio has a lot of local news and features too, which I can't hear anywhere else. I'm sure other markets are the same.
You can get it on Alexa too because most of the shows are also podcasts which is also great.
I've also heard a lot from my conservative friends that NPR is too liberal but to be honest, I haven't seen that at all. The more entertainment like programs like "Wait Wait" do sometimes have liberal jokes but I think anyone who can take a joke would laugh at them even if they are conservative.[1]
[1] I'm a Libertarian and thus social liberal and economically conservative which puts me in the great position of being able to laugh at jokes at the expense of either of the two major parties.
Re: Love it or hate it, truckers say they can’t stop listening to public radio
#10> Aside from the content, according to Murphy, drivers like NPR for the continuity. They can keep listening to the same programs from state to state. Why don't truckers use satellite radio? They could listen to the same programs anywhere in the (U.S.? World?).
If you spend any time listening to satellite radio, it's pretty clear that they do - I'd say 70%+ of the callers to talk shows on SiriusXM are truckers. (Though they could be over-represented amongst those likely to call in, it's clear they make up a significant portion of the subscriber base.)