All four of the radio links to which I subscribe have been reacting to the Ink
Tank blog Randy Stewart shared, but I've been busy with other things until this
morning, when I scrolled through and read all the comments. As one who grew up
loving radio, as it was in the '40s into even as late as the early '80s --
particularly steady, small-town radio that combined news, public service and
entertainment -- the many words that have been shared these past few days
struck more than one chord.
Back in 1947, when I invented DX'ing (later learning that I had merely
discovered the hobby), I fell in love with the medium. I wanted to be a radio
comedian, but as network radio began to be supplanted by television, I shifted
my sights to becoming a personality DJ, leaning toward zany. I was a Tin Pan
Alley nut, loving big bands, ballads, Broadway, et al. Slowly, Elvis in the
mid-'50s and the Beatles in the early '60s began the trend to push the music
that I loved into the "Music-Of-Your-Life" niche. Luckily, I had a second
calling ... sports writing, editing the high school and college sports pages
while stringing for the local daily from my sophomore year in high school on
... so it wasn't too hard to shift to news.
To make a long story short, I loved radio. Note the past tense. "Loved" is the
operative word. In late 1981, recognizing that radio news was diminishing in
importance to radio ownership, I shifted to the local daily newspaper and
managed to maintain an editorship for the last 19 years of my working life.
Music radio stations, who in the '50s and '60s prided themselves on their
competitive news operations, learned, when FCC's public service requirements
eased, learned they could make more money with just music and, in some cases,
"lip-service news." Even the all-news stations seemed to come to the conclusion
that in-depth coverage of complicated issues was more of a tune-out factor than
an audience-builder. Today, it seems "traffic and weather together," ambulance
chasing, celebrity behavior and government scandals ranging from imaginary to,
on occasion, real, seem to be the bulk of what's covered.
My wife still listens to radio. When she was a young teacher, 50 years ago, she
woke up to KPDN in Pampa, Texas, and, months before she met me, my 15-minute
7:30 newscast marked the start of her day. To this day, we wake up to KRLD
sometime around 6 a.m., get up after the 3-minute CBS newscast at 7:00, and she
lulls herself to sleep with the KRLD syndicated talk show at night, having
programmed herself to turn off the radio just as she transitions from awake to
asleep. I am a captive audience. When we are riding together, the only station
she'll cotton to is KRLD. When I'm on the road alone, if I forget to take along
a cache of CDs of 40- to 80-year-old music, I'll tune to the classical music on
WRR or, in desperation, find a country-music station (though the current,
Hank-less country-music sound [Snow, Williams, Thompson, Locklin, etc.]) bores
me.
Talk radio -- left, right, or sports -- annoys me at best and angers me at
worst. Self-centered "stars," to whom their absolutist opinions are far more
important than facts, make big money, apparently. I can only imagine their
schooldays, when the jocks on the one hand and the honor students on the other
ignored them; now, they can "get back" at natural leaders by depicting them as
enemies of the people (politicians), overrated crybabies (athletes) or stupid
tyrants (coaches.) Maybe there's someone on the air who examines issues
intelligently -- I've given up trying to find him or her.
Oversimplification? Yep, I admit it. And I didn’t really make a long story
short, did I?
But the bottom line for me when it comes to radio is that the broadcasters,
reading the desires of the advertisers, don't want anyone born in the '30s or
even in the '40s among their listenership.
As to DX'ing, when I bought my Perseus, a couple of years ago now, I thought
maybe I'd regenerate my interest, with a phased antenna system, in fighting all
those noise factors my fellow DX'ers have alluded to in these threads. I
haven't hooked it up, probably won't, and I may try to find a market for it. I
still love the hobby -- or at least the memories of it -- and I expect to be in
Minneapolis during the first weekend in August, but radio as it exists today
just isn't fun anymore.
John Callarman, KA9SPA, Family Genealogist, Retired Newspaper Editor,
DX-oyente, Krum TX (AKA Qal R. Mann, Krumudgeon)
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