Is it just me, or has regular radio not changed in at least
a decade?
I may only be 20, but I’ve been listening to the radio since
I was old enough to fight with my alarm clock in the fourth grade. While all
the other kids were listening to CD players and first gen IPods, I had a D-cell
powered boom box screaming away in my room. By 7th grade I had
probably consumed my own bodyweight in D-cell batteries as well.
Anyway, I love listening to music radio. Rock, alt, and
country mostly, which have all shared the same format for as long as I can
remember- 50 minutes of music per hour, with three blocks of ads. The ads were
always for the following six items: car dealerships, Mortgage loans, bars,
concerts, tax help, and whatever the ongoing contest was. They each had a
morning show that danced on the line of what was appropriate for public radio,
spliced in with traffic and weather read verbatim off of the local news station’s
TV channel.
I think the fact that radio’s evolution is so stagnant is why
it is so comforting to listen to. In this ever-changing media landscape, no matter
where I am there is a rock station I can tune into and get the same thing I’ve
been hearing for years.
To be honest, why should it change? The recipe obviously works;
I have yet to hear of a radio station that “went out of business.” The events
they sponsor are always changing, the music library is (slowly) growing, and
the volume of ads has been pretty constant.
It’s just interesting that literally every other aspect of media is changing- we have fifteen different varieties of internet radio,
smartphones can download or stream whatever you want to listen to, mp3 players
are built into cars, friends can share songs and playlists, and yet WPLR is
still going to play the same 6 Eagles tunes twice today, as they have for
twenty years.
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