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It's a shame what's happened to radio

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Re: It's a shame what's happened to radio

#181

Post by imglorp »

mobilene wrote: post #138

I'm the OP, and I'm surprised to find this article on HN at all, let alone the front page! Many comments are focusing on music but the thing I tried to get across in the article was that good radio wasn't primarily about the music, it was about fun and connection. A good DJ kept you from just turning the radio off when you heard that same hit the fourth time today -- you wanted to keep listening because the DJ made i…

I miss DJs with taste and encyclopedic knowledge of their music would challenge their listeners, educate them, expose them to new things. Variations on themes, new artists, connections with old ones. Now, I guess they read the blurb and hit the button on the canned program.

Shouts to Pierre Robert (rip), John DeBella, Cyndy Drue, etc at WMMR and WYSP (rip). They still let Jacky Bam Bam play the real stuff sometimes; at least the bots take a break for his show.

Re: It's a shame what's happened to radio

#182

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

ssl-3 wrote: post #49
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Most smartphones do include most of the FM radio circuitry in the chip used also for Bluetooth connectivity for example Who told you this? They are wildly different frequencies and encoding.

I don't know about "most smartphones," but the FM bits were commonly a built-in with Qualcomm and some other chipsets for a coon's age. Even the OG Motorola Droid, of 2009, had the parts inside for an FM radio. They just weren't connected to an antenna and the default software stack didn't include any access to those parts at all. Flagship Qualcomm-equipped Samsung phones up to the S20 or so tended to be ~similar: Th…

This has absolutely nothing to do with similarity with BLE radio and it’s 2.4Ghz antenna. And a far cry from most smartphones.

Re: It's a shame what's happened to radio

#183

Post by mobilene »

JohnFen wrote: post #169
mobilene wrote: post #138

I'm the OP, and I'm surprised to find this article on HN at all, let alone the front page! Many comments are focusing on music but the thing I tried to get across in the article was that good radio wasn't primarily about the music, it was about fun and connection. A good DJ kept you from just turning the radio off when you heard that same hit the fourth time today -- you wanted to keep listening because the DJ made i…

> A good DJ kept you from just turning the radio off when you heard that same hit the fourth time today -- you wanted to keep listening because the DJ made it fun. I'm old enough to remember when radio was king, but if that's what a good DJ does, then I suppose I've never heard a good DJ. Personally, I preferred the DJ who talked as little as possible and had good taste and variety in the music they chose to play. Bu…

In commercial radio, DJs haven't selected the music in 40 or more years. I used to show up for my shifts to find a printed playlist from a software product called Selector. I had to follow it.

Re: It's a shame what's happened to radio

#184

Post by mauvehaus »

don-code wrote: post #41
wffurr wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boston has a whole bunch of live and college ratio stations still.

Well, sort of. My radio presets back in the 2000s were 101.7 WFNX, 104.1 WBCN, 107.3 WAAF, 100.7 WZLX, and 92.9 WBOS. Of those stations, only WZLX remains. The greats - in my opinion, WBCN and WFNX - are long off the air. They were powerhouses of culture, both local and national. WFNX was the first to play Nirvana's Nevermind; Bono of U2 once said that "...without BCN, we'd all be (expletive)'d, let's face it." Oedip…

Counterpoint: I always found WERS to be a slightly broader interpretation of adult contemporary programming than the commercial stations.

My goto was WUMB, which is out of UMass Boston, and played a consistent format (folk and Americana, I guess?) throughout the day. Blues Hangover on WHRB (Harvard) was always worthwhile when I caught it.

Re: It's a shame what's happened to radio

#185

Post by carlosjobim »

NuclearPM wrote: post #178
carlosjobim wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fine - but young people don’t yet have a complete mental map of what culture they enjoy. Spotify and the likes will suggest new and different things for people to listen to. Apple has a special app just for classical music, which is the highest level of musical culture. > Even worse: many of these (eg, Spotify) hide real access behind subscription fees. If you grew up broke, like I did, you will understand how inac…

> Apple has a special app just for classical music, which is the highest level of musical culture. Really? Why?

Not the app itself of course. What I meant to say is that classical music is the highest level of musical culture.

Re: It's a shame what's happened to radio

#186

Post by JohnFen »

mobilene wrote: post #183
JohnFen wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A good DJ kept you from just turning the radio off when you heard that same hit the fourth time today -- you wanted to keep listening because the DJ made it fun. I'm old enough to remember when radio was king, but if that's what a good DJ does, then I suppose I've never heard a good DJ. Personally, I preferred the DJ who talked as little as possible and had good taste and variety in the music they chose to play. Bu…

In commercial radio, DJs haven't selected the music in 40 or more years. I used to show up for my shifts to find a printed playlist from a software product called Selector. I had to follow it.

> In commercial radio, DJs haven't selected the music in 40 or more years.

Yes, I'm painfully aware. That was what got me to stop listening to music radio.

Re: It's a shame what's happened to radio

#187

Post by jonhohle »

mobilene wrote: post #138

I'm the OP, and I'm surprised to find this article on HN at all, let alone the front page! Many comments are focusing on music but the thing I tried to get across in the article was that good radio wasn't primarily about the music, it was about fun and connection. A good DJ kept you from just turning the radio off when you heard that same hit the fourth time today -- you wanted to keep listening because the DJ made i…

I’ve always felt that way as well. It doesn’t matter how perfect a playlist is, what a masterpiece an album is, the humanity of a real person selecting the music, and interjecting comments or style along the way just feels different.

Re: It's a shame what's happened to radio

#188

Post by anthk »

The public Spanish radio and TV conglomerate (our BBC, that's it) recently shut down SW/AM radio stations. A shame, even more when we recently suffered a blackout and nothing could match AM's reachability, FM pales against it.

Re: It's a shame what's happened to radio

#189

Post by Tallain »

couchand wrote: post #177

Radio is still cool! But it's just not really on the FCC-licensed bands anymore. Independent Internet radio stations keep the spirit alive. Look around, there very well might be a vibrant local music-and-more community right in your neighborhood! Two stations I listen to regularly here in NYC: 8 Ball Radio - https://8ballradio.nyc Radio Free Brooklyn - https://www.radiofreebrooklyn.org Who else has favorites to share…

Radio Paradise (https://radioparadise.com) has been my go-to for years. Discovered a lot of great new music through here.

Re: It's a shame what's happened to radio

#190

Post by gabriel666smith »

carlosjobim wrote: post #153
gabriel666smith wrote: post #75

It is a shame. I think it’s especially a shame for children and young people. A counter to radio remaining relevant is “I can listen to whatever I want, via this digital technology”. Fine - but young people don’t yet have a complete mental map of what culture they enjoy. In the UK, funding for libraries and the arts (public radio, the BBC) has been increasingly cut in the name of austerity. I think that’s true in the…

> Fine - but young people don’t yet have a complete mental map of what culture they enjoy. Spotify and the likes will suggest new and different things for people to listen to. Apple has a special app just for classical music, which is the highest level of musical culture. > Even worse: many of these (eg, Spotify) hide real access behind subscription fees. If you grew up broke, like I did, you will understand how inac…

Lol, I'm personally too broke for a Spotify subscription - as in I couldn't sign up this month with the cash in my bank account - and that has often been true during the periods of my life I have not spent working in tech. I don't think I'd even be in their youngest adult user demo anymore!

We definitely exist. It's pretty tight out there right now. The £10.99/month I see quoted buys quite a few kilos of dry pasta.

In any case, the core argument I was making specifically is that I believe human curation can provide more friction for the audience than algorithmic curation tends to, and that this is a net-good for cultural education.

I would contend with classical music being the highest strata of musical culture (and the deeper idea of culture having 'levels'), but that's subjective. So, that aside, if classical music is your thing, and you believe:

> "The quality of podcasts and music streaming is on a quality level which radio never reached."

I'd recommend Glenn Gould's The Idea of North, which is one of my absolute favourite pieces of music. It's considered pretty innovative and important:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry5MUnZoeGI

Glenn Gould wrote it specifically for radio, as it was commissioned by the CBC. So "government produced sewage". :-)

I'd also strongly recommend you give BBC Radio 3 (still often excellent, especially late at night) a try. NTS has some great classical shows, too. Perhaps you're already familiar with all of these, but - if not - they might give you a reason to turn on your radio more frequently than annually.

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