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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

#211

Post by tarentel »

PaulHoule wrote: post #196
mobilene wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There was that time I was tripping on acid at 2am and was offended by hearing the same Doobie Brothers song that plays during my drive in and my drive out and called up the college radio station thinking, "I'm either going to talk to the janitor or the program manager", turns out the program manager picks up the phone and I ask him, "Who picks this music out?" and he says "I do" and that it's programmed on the comput…

I did college radio for a bit. You could play whatever you wanted up to a certain extent. At least where I was at, ~'06, you could play like 30? minutes of whatever you wanted, it's been a while might be more or less. The other x minutes of your hour you had to play a selection of music. It was a very wide range of things so you could easily find something to fit into your show but it had to be from the pool that college got.

Maybe other colleges did it differently but we didn't have a program manager or anything. Everyone was free to do what they wanted outside of some FCC rules and what I previously mentioned.

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

#212

Post by troyvit »

There's always public radio.

* If you're in your 50s and listening to the radio you're probably rich and we want you!

* More live DJs for sure

That said, if you're going to listen on your iPhone there are plenty of good DJs there too. dandelionradio.com for me.

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

#213

Post by ryandrake »

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.

Also, most commercial radio DJs would talk and talk and talk all the way up to the point in the song where lyrics started, and then right after the last lyric, they'd start yacking again. A lot of music that was on the radio in the 70s, 80s and 90s had great instrumental intros and outros that you just totally missed because some garbage DJ had to get in one last "TODAY'S HITS, YESTERDAY'S LEGENDS, ONLY ON IDIOT ROCK 95.1!!!"

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

#214

Post by usefulcat »

verall wrote: post #132
TYPE_FASTER wrote: post #129

College radio is still a thing. I've discovered some good music via WRUV (UVM). WERS (Emerson College) dropped the Rockers reggae show when they changed their programming back in 2013, but I should try streaming again and see what it's like these days.

kutx and koop on the same frequency are great

KUTX is 98.9, KOOP is 91.7?

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

#215

Post by beej71 »

My town has a listener-supported community radio station with all volunteer DJs who play whatever. I love tuning in and getting random music. And, unlike the robo stations, I rarely hear anything I've heard before. It's the only music station I have programmed in on my car. (My car is 26 years old--does the terminology still work? Maybe I should say "favorited". :) )

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

#216

Post by nephihaha »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #15
ChrisArchitect wrote: post #10

(2009)ish And a very American/mainstream-centric view of things. Radio (especially from the view of things in 2009) in more niche/underground circles was and in some regards still is a driving force of music curation and community in other parts of the world like the UK, parts of the EU and beyond. Does radio have to be on the FM band? Do we count streaming like via YouTube, twitch and other platforms the same as Rad…

I grew up in the UK in the 80's, and that entire generation received our music taste from BBC Radio 1. Literally the entire population of UK teens listened to that one station for ~20 years (though individuals would listen to different shows - John Peel's famous indie/punk/whatever show in the evenings was very different to the daytime mainstream stuff). In Australia it was ABC's Triple J - similar story. Everyone tu…

"I grew up in the UK in the 80's, and that entire generation received our music taste from BBC Radio 1."

I didn't. Apart from John Peel, many of the DJs were naff and the station was behind the curve (as the BBC nearly always is). The BBC was faintly ridiculous and banned groups like Runrig (informally because they considered them too Scottish) and songs like Split Enz's "Six Months in a Leaky Boat" (formally, because of the Falklands War). Both of which were inoffensive...

But apart from Peel, the BBC was way behind when it came to metal (except pop/hair metal), hip hop, indy/alternative/shoegaze, rave/trance/techno etc. I think they picked up on the Pixies and grunge but not much else.

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

#217

Post by _whiteCaps_ »

kanbankaren wrote: post #203
spaghettifythis wrote: post #112

Here in NZ we have a wonderful publicly-funded ad-free radio station RNZ! (Radio New Zealand.) The main channel "RNZ National" is a mix of news bulletins [1], panels featuring interesting people [2], and episodes of the numerous high-quality podcasts they produce [3]. The really channel one is "RNZ Concert" through - it's just msuic. They have a best-in-class audio team who record concerts (e.g. choirs, orchestra, or…

Hey, I can receive RNZ on shortwave on the East Coast of USA! About 10,000 miles away if we count the signal bouncing multiple times between the ionosphere and the ground.

I get it in the mornings here in Vancouver, BC.

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

#218

Post by nephihaha »

chickensong wrote: post #102

This is peak old man yells at cloud. There's so much good radio to be had since the arrival of the internet. Not even talking about online-only, but actual radio stations who also stream. Maybe there's less cool broadcast stations in any given area, but our overall exposure via internet is incredible. Just search for free-form radio. If you have a college in your area, you probably have interesting radio and DJs on t…

There is a very different feeling streaming radio online as compared to getting it off a traditional radio. For me anyway. It's hard to explain. At night, you could pick up many weird stations from around the world here including Iceland and the Eastern Bloc, the Voice of America, sometimes if the conditions were right North American stations. I used to try and guess some of the languages. That was a challenge in itself sometimes.

Thanks to censorship and government interference, you can't listen to certain stations now, e.g. Turkey won't allow you to listen online outside Turkey, Russian stations are blocked thanks to the Ukrainian situation, and even some American stations are blocked. Search engines are near useless for most things nowadays.

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

#219

Post by lesostep »

waveforms wrote: post #12

The removal of FM radio from cell phones was a big mistake. It should never have allowed. Radio is very useful in emergencies. Lately I have been getting back in to internet radio, mostly via Elisa in KDE. Here is my favorite internet stream: https://hawaiireggaenetwork.com/

If I remember correctly, wasn't that because you can't fit proper antenna into the phone?

Something-something antenna 1/4 of the wavelength physics. And FM wave is roughly 3 meters long.

When people carried antennas (headphone cords) around it was handy, but not a lot of people would carry antenna now

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

#220

Post by nephihaha »

GJim wrote: post #115
stackghost wrote: post #3

>I signed off the air for the last time in 1994 [...] radio has changed drastically, and it just wouldn’t be any fun for me today. I don't agree with this premise. FM Radio is definitely more corporate today, but I grew up in the 90s and my memories of FM radio are not fond. For my whole life it has always been materially the same, shitty, experience: occasional good songs interleaved with mediocre ones and a hefty d…

> FM Radio is definitely more corporate today, Opposite here in Blighty. There has been an explosion in the number of local community FM stations, frequently playing music from local bands and chat with local figures. Factor in the national BBC radio stations (who's charter is to “inform, educate, and entertain”, not to retain attention) and we are onto a winner. Yes there are still some 'corporate' commercial statio…

There are a lot of corporate piss-poor local stations. Apart from the Heart and Crapital stuff, the Forth and Clyde stations are awful. Even their continuity has one of those awful Estuary accents.

Most of them are indistinguishable, don't carry local news (apart from boasting about charity fundraising they do), or local bands. Pure pap

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