It's a shame what's happened to radio

I also learned that that said station is owned by the same company as a station in my hometown, which is as bland, boring, and repetitive as radio gets. Still has me wondering what that market has that my local market doesn't. Perhaps the true death of radio is hinged on urbanization coupled with limited channel space? Maybe a channel like that can survive there because the small overall audience doesn't invite someone else trying to encroach on the available frequency? Whereas, as you noticed, where frequency space is at a premium someone else with formulaic programming in hand will soon come to buy out anyone who tries anything interesting.

Meanwhile the government still throws money at NPR on FM, but sadly they've quit playing classical music all day like they once did and are instead pummeling the airwaves with leftist crap. Supposedly CPB will cease funding NPR but I'll believe it when NPR dies.

I'd like a mostly-classical right-leaning FM station, please, to listen to before my pecker falls off from the leftist shite spewing from NPR.

Elsewhere in this thread I poured out such joy and happiness about so many station that are so beloved to me, are just darling special places. I want so badly to imagine https://mountainchill.com KRKQ to be broadcasting from Telluride Colorado for a hundred, a thousand years. It's something so special.

Yet the story, the sadness you tell here, identifying forces eroding us, our great Society, with nothing of substance and meaning in its place: it's just getting so much worse, in so many ways and places.

The mechanized take-over of the airwaves, the public's airwaves, that the FCC has congressional mandate to use and protect & make good for the public, is ongoingly getting so much worse, on and on. The takeover by right wing aligned outlets like Sinclair has been so bad, so ongoing, has so few hopeful counter-examples if things going right at any scale. Lots of small positive lights, but this chewing up of the world by hostile above-human quasi-immortal corporate super orgs is on full display in radio, in broadcast.

Trump I's FCC overturning congressional media ownership requirements has been part of this. There are only three major players in radio left, since these rules, and two of them are trying to merge right now, for a $6.2B merger. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15716219 (2017), and excellent article today, https://karlbode.com/local-u-s-tv-news-will-soon-be-entirely...

Meanwhile that same Carr run FCC is doing everything it can to chill and ruin free speech, to terrorize anyone with speech they find disagreeable. Orban style totalitarianism, right here at home. Ghastly ghastly anti-democratic, anti freedom, anti-liberty, just the smallest possible weasel stuff, shame beyond shame to these weak spirited cowards.

> "To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile but is morally treasonable to the American public."

Theodore Roosevelt, 1918

Meanwhile this same administration has all but destroyed the National Endowment for the Arts. Countless radio stations have had to make drastic efforts to stay afloat, as both a miniscule yet vital source of funding for such great public service has been cut, by these same foes of everything you've written of.

I want more than a memory. In the comments below I've shared some truly great amazing stations I love, that folks can tune into from anywhere and enjoy. I an a proud supporting member at multiple stations. Yet, with forces like this, big, scary, corrupt, evil, un American, in my view demonic forces like this, with Powell Memorandum operations to corporate and own the airwaves for private and increasingly political interest, I fear writing like this will serve all too strongly as a necessary vital remembrance of a past, one that few people would otherwise have any ability to connect to. With a tear and with thanks, let me say I really appreciate this write up, and I hope it will not be so very necessary for so very long into our future. With apologies for being a bit pointed, obviously, but for hopefully reasonable or understandable, good spirited cause... May there be better times ahead, may the people enjoy the airwaves & making special places of them together again.

Most of the time songs were played randomly from a huge list, there were no “hits”, and this was exactly what I wanted.

If there was a song I liked, I had to quick record it to tape, because otherwise I likely wouldn’t hear it again for days or weeks.

There would at times be people DJing for time segments, but it was relaxed and music focused, not person focused. I’ll take some dead air and a soft spoken young adult just giving the name of the next song vs bombastic “personalities” any day.

Another big key to it, was my college radio station didn’t have advertisements. Radio ads are grating and repulsive and I simply cannot tolerate that shit. Same thing with TV ads, which is a big reason I basically stopped watching TV in my late teens as well.

I cherish and miss the radio experience that I personally had, but when I hear what others subject themselves to I simply cannot fathom why.

These days my tastes are mostly adjacent to doom or psych-rock, and my modern day radio replacement is following some curators on YouTube whose hobby/side job is to find new releases in these genres and dig up old gems. Which makes it easy for me to quickly find and add (mostly through Bandcamp) new songs into my own collection every so often, which I then self host and further rate/curate via navidrome.

Basically I’ve always been a very active, rather than passive music enjoyer.

I suppose anything thing to bring up, is if I was listening to people on the radio doing something interesting, then I end up either needing to be randomly cut off from it to do something else, or try to constrain my schedule to their show. Not fun at all.