Who Needs Radio?

DragonMagic writes "MSNBC asks what many /.ers have been asking: Who needs the radio anymore? Rather, it goes on to really ask, who needs the RIAA anymore? With online music distribution sources, television, and the internet itself, how much longer will it be before the radio, and the RIAA, will be an obsolete means to promote artists?"

Comments

Translated for the America-Impaired

[RobotRunAmok]

For those Slashdotters from foreign lands just tuning in:

NPR is a good way to stay abreast of the latest news during my daily commute and provides some sanity, compared to TV news stations like FoxNews.

NPR is left wing (although it seems middle-of-the-road to liberals). Fox News is right wing (although it seems middle-of-the-road to conservatives.) NPR is commercial-free, being underwritten by corporations, donations, and tax dollars (to the great dismay of conservatives). Fox is a commercial enterprise owned by Murdoch and the top-rated newschannel on cable/satellite (to the great dismay of liberals).

Now, draw up sides, and... engage!

Re:What?

[Our Man In Redmond]

That's not entirely correct. Actually, there were three classes of stations: clear channels, regionals, and locals. I don't think there was an "odd-even" split, based on a few of the channels I can remember off the top of my head: KIRO is at 710, KSL at 1160, KGO 810, WOI 640, KMOX 1120, and CBR 1010 which was right next to clear channel KOMO 1000. (Canadians used the same general band plan as the US; Mexico sort of went its own way, at least as far as transmitter power was concerned.)

The locals were (and are) assigned to seven "graveyard" frequencies in the upper portions of the AM band and limited to 1000 watts of power. Try tuning in 1490 some night; unless you have a local station there, it's an unintelligible jumble. The regionals got what was left, which to be honest was quite a bit.

As for three-letter IDs, that wasn't always the case either. The earliest commercial station was Pittsburgh's KDKA, for instance. Originally (we're talking 1910s here) shore stations communicating with ships were given three-letter calls, but eventually broadcast stations started to ask for them, sometimes to fit their parent companies' whims. WGN, for example, was supposed to stand for World's Greatest Newspaper (it was owned by the Chicago Tribune), and WLS (World's Largest Store) was owned by Sears.