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Traditional Radio Faces a Grim Future, New Study Says (variety.com)
In a 30-page report, Larry Miller, the head of New York University's Steinhart Music Business Program, argues that traditional radio has failed to engage with Generation Z -- people born after 1995 -- and that its influence and relevance will continue to be subsumed by digital services unless it upgrades. Key points made in the study include: Generation Z, which is projected to account for 40% of all consumers in the U.S. by 2020, shows little interest in traditional media, including radio, having grown up in an on-demand digital environment. AM/FM radio is in the midst of a massive drop-off as a music-discovery tool by younger generations, with self-reported listening to AM/FM radio among teens aged 13 and up declining by almost 50 percentage points between 2005 and 2016. Music discovery as a whole is moving away from AM/FM radio and toward YouTube, Spotify and Pandora, especially among younger listeners, with 19% of a 2017 study of surveyed listeners citing it as a source for keeping up-to-date with music -- down from 28% the previous year. Among 12-24 year olds who find music discovery important, AM/FM radio (50%) becomes even less influential, trailing YouTube (80%), Spotify (59%), and Pandora (53%). By 2020, 75% of new cars are expected to be "connected" to digital services, breaking radio's monopoly on the car dashboard and relegating AM/FM to just one of a series of audio options behind the wheel. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, the typical car in the U.S. was 11.6 years old in 2016, which explains why radio has not yet faced its disruption event. However, drivers are buying new cars at a faster rate than ever, and new vehicles come with more installed options for digital music services.
Last time I listened to the radio in a car or at home that wasn't by accident was 1997, even then it was only because I was in someone else car or at someones house. Before that I'd only really listen to talk radio like Art Bell or shows like Brave New Waves on CBC Canada or Chris Sheppard Pirate Radio since it was hard to access electronic music where I was.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Turns out letting one company own all the radio stations in the country and letting all music be chosen by an algorithm that compares music to existing hits is not a great idea.
Radio will come back when different stations are run differently.
I like to listen to live streams of music, even if it is just a playlist. And maybe with some announcements along the way about what I'm listening to, some little tidbits of trivia about the artist and song.
As an listener I do not care that it comes over analog FM, or a digital system like HD radio, or over the Internet. Whatever is convenient and reliable in my car. (FM)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Yes, radio is an older technology - one option among many. But it's also the only one where you sometimes have to sit through massive amounts of advertisements to get to the actual entertainment. The ads in the free versions of apps like Pandora are nowhere near as often or as annoying.
Live music is cool when you're actually there. Listening to "live" music through a radio is sort of pointless.
As to audio dramas - that medium is far better suited to podcasts where users can listen at their leisure rather than tuning in to a scheduled broadcast.
Honestly, while RF communications as a technology has a bright future, "Radio stations" as in places broadcasting out scheduled audio programming seem like a doomed technology no matter what they do. They're not necessarily even doing anything wrong, except that nobody wants their product anymore.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
What does radio offer that the other options don't? Annoying commercials, distortion, and lack of playlist control aren't exactly compelling.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
AM/FM radio is in the midst of a massive drop-off as a music-discovery tool
Radio in the US hasn't been a "Music-Discovery Tool" for the last 10-20 years since ClearChannel acquired nearly every FM station and made DJ's irrelevant.
Live music on the radio is a pleasant surprise. I've paid for a Sirius subscription for over a decade now and its worth every penny. They have live DJs who might say a few words or news about the band and then play another song. One station was playing a live stream from a Lollapaloozo show and I heard some great songs from The Arcade Fire. Regular radio is dead and buried.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Every station own by iHeartRadio sounds the same. Radio hasn't been a source for new music discovery for years because they're always pushing the same 20 "artists". And I'm damn tire of Ryan Seacrest and Mario Lopez. Taylor Swift had a new song and about an hour later I've heard it 4 times on three different stations.
Radio has never been a great way to discover music. It's just that until relatively recently, there hasn't really been any better alternative. Once radio programming started to get centralized, it became even worse.
At least in the old days there was some sort of connection to the local community. Most radio doesn't even have that much going for it anymore.
frees up the spectrum for my cell phone. I don't care for their music and talk radio seem to be dominated by the likes of Rush Limbaugh & Co. Besides, they're all owned by one company. It's not like there's any real benefit outside of emergency services.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Just like TV, millennials (and others) tuned out because of the insane amount of ads and/or other crap, and they are not coming back.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Isn't that the point MTV was trying to make 36 years ago?
Live music is cool when you're actually there.
That depends. Classical ...symphony...yeah - no obscene amplification. Pop/rock/really loud - obscene amplification shit - NO!
I have to wear earplugs at rock/pop/country shows because they are too goddamn loud. When your ears ring, you have experienced permanent hearing damage. So, I either wear ear plugs and miss out on quite a bit of the music, or listen to the concert without ear plugs and go deaf.
Fuck it. I've been to two live rock shows in my life and that was enough.
All of the rock/pop stars have like 90% hearing loss. And when your profession is based on your sense of hearing, destroying it is idiot to say the least.
And the reason it's so loud? Because folks go to rock/pop shows and scream all the way through the songs - unlike classical shows where folks keep quiet.
some 15-20 years ago when they overpaid for all their stations, had to run too many commercials to pay for them, then heavily restricted their play lists to avoid the chance someone might not like the song currently playing. Forget about discovering new music on the radio, unless you switch from your country station to a hip-hop station or somesuch. Which ain't gonna happen.
I've got a 30G USB stick in my car with a dozen or so playlists. Only time I turn the radio on is when I'm stuck in traffic for a report to figure out if I should stick it out or go another route.
The problem is the internet can do anything that radio can. Radio has only a few advantages:
1)Blankets more of the US than cellular, and works on any radio device (no network issues)
2)Easier set up for less technical users (not too many people can't use a radio tuner).
3)No direct cost to user (data costs money for many).
As time goes on, 1-3 become less of an issue, which leaves radio in the dust. There might still be stations, but they'll broadcast online.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Maybe they should go back to original programming
Why would I turn on the radio and listen to some random "original programming" that I am unlikely to find interesting, when I can choose from millions of options on Youtube, listen anytime I want, pause when I am interrupted, and fast forward through the boring parts?
Radio makes no sense for music, news, or discussion/commentary. Streaming is superior in every way for any content. Even I can see that, and I am a geezer.
I was driving to work about a 35 minutes trip. As usual I jumped in the car, and turned on the radio to my local classic rock station. I then proceeded to hear the sports report, news report, at least 10 commercials for products I do not want, or need, the DJ yammering on about his golf game, and going out in his boat.
I then arrived at work, having not heard any actual music.
I know what you are thinking. Change to another station.
That might work in another market, but where I live most/all the stations are owned by the same company, so there is really very little difference between them.
I went out after work and bought an iPod, and an iPod interface for my stereo. Loaded my music, set it to shuffle play, and have been shuffling along ever since. (Over 10 years)(Several cars/stereos/media players.)
I do listen to a local news only station in the morning while I am getting ready for work, but that is about the only time I ever listen to the radio.
First law of people: People are generally stupid.
"which is projected to account for 40% of all consumers in the U.S. by 2020" People born after 1995 would be 21 and under today. By 2020 they will be everyone 24 and under. There's no way that the 0-24 age group represents 40% of all consumers in the US. I stopped reading after the first sentence.
OK, I am a geezer to, but radio is perfect for news. That's what I use it for. I don't watch TV news - haven't for years. But on my drive to work I turn on the radio news, traffic, weather AM station. Why is it not good for news? What streaming thing should I be getting local news from? I get it for podcasts, music, etc. But News?
Netkids don't "get" commericals. That's because they suck and contrary to popular believe, the kids on your lawn aren't as dumb as the media likes to act. Nothing can save their business model, but it's likely that if we moved the tech beyond HD radio and streaming titles, new opportunities would open up to a mixed-mode digital & analog radio that had more interactivity between listener and DJ, fan ratings, show movie previews, etc.. Even if you don't use the FM band to transmit, there is an awful lot of bandwidth there to receive. There are soo many possibilities there.
I took my family and friends to Yellowstone prior to the eclipse. One of the families in my car happened to have two young children (ages 3 and 5). As we approached Yellowstone and cellular data service dropped to near-nonexistent, the two had a meltdown. They were screaming "I want YouTube" over and over for a good half hour, and their parents couldn't get through to them that YouTube was inaccessible here. They had never been without Internet connectivity all their lives. Meanwhile, AM/FM radio worked just fine.
I'm not sad to see music radio die. The entire thing has been a scam for nearly a century with ClearChannel owning most of the music stations across the country, and thus selecting which artists and songs become successful, instead of it happening organically via popularity among actual listeners. But the technology of radio broadcasts is far from dead.
as soon as they realize it's exponentially cheaper to produce
What? How is licensing, maintaining, and running a radio station "exponentially cheaper" than running a website?
it's exponentially cheaper to produce
Are you talking about the hardware or the publishing? If the hardware, that's a iffy position unless you are mass maker of radios. While it is cute to compare something like Pandora or whatever to FM Radio, it would be more accurate to compare to HD Radio which has way more complicated and expensive circuits to implement. Many of those circuits are also under patents for HD Radio, so to build a radio it would be prudent to include licensing costs. If we're talking the publishing, the Internet is vastly cheaper to make an MP3 and share on the Internet versus trying to broadcast via FM.
doesn't count against their bandwidth cap
No argument here
no conceivable way to build in copy protection
Again, that's if we're talking FM radio. If we're talking HD radio then it's a different story.
Now I can only speak on my own behalf, but the biggest reason I don't listen to radio is that it is mostly ads. About 20 minutes of music and about 40 minutes of ads. And in the time that they do broadcast content, it's the same eleven songs that they've played for the last three months. This isn't like OTA HDTV, there's ads, yes, but in terms of absolute minutes of content vs absolute minutes of ads, there's no contest. The TV broadcasts vastly less ads than radio. So I actually value OTA HDTV simply because the content isn't drowned out by ads. I also like some of the shows that come on TV so that adds to the value. Additionally, TV isn't showing the same episode of CSI every other hour, so that really amps the value up.
Radio, at least for myself, is a product that has zero value because of decisions made by the broadcaster. The cost of the content is irrelevant here because personally I see zero value in the content. So the argument that it's cheaper and costs me less in bandwidth have no meaning. Zero cost for content that has zero value is just a wash. Radio's problems are a product of bad management, not one of cost to end consumer.
That's just my two cents and I'm a firm Gen X here. I can't really blame Millennials or Gen Z for not listening to radio. It literally is the Applebee's Effect going on here.
I never understand all these types of articles talking about music. Literally Jack/BOB FM are the only ones playing music during rush hour. Other than that it's all dumb ass talk radio with idiots. Their jokes are dumb, no cursing, and of course they're all basically the same. And nowadays they're syndicated from who knows where.
Just wait until they're stuck in a hurricane with no internet access. That little battery/wind-up radio would be a godsend.
load "linux",8,1
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Gen Z pretty much thinks cars are for grandpas.
No car, no car radio, no radio habit.
Besides, all my best radio stations do free podcasts.
Oh, and by the way, vinyl rocks!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I might not listen to music on the radio at all, but I listen to NPR on the radio on a daily basis. Younger me would never have done so, but I find a lot of their content interesting and/or informative.
Palaces, barricades, threats, meet promises
Is going nowhere.
KFI and WLS will be bigger than ever.
For me, the importance of radio is current affairs and news. But then, I might be an old fogey at this point, as my car's radio is pretty much stuck on CBC Radio One (I'm Canadian), or one of the local NPR affiliates when I'm south of the border.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
It's not radio that faces a grim future, it's the old fashioned model of commercial radio. You get, maybe, ten minutes of music followed by tons of commercials that repeat the phone number 20 times. But the spectrum will still be useful for new types of over-the-air services. Old radio needs to die. It's nothing but commercials and right-wing hate spew.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I'll echo the sentiment about Clearchannel killing the diversity that used to be available on FM radio. I moved to my current location 20 years ago. At that time there were locally owned stations that played many rock genres (hard/metal, alternative, contemporary, classic), some rap/R&B, top 40, country, talk, sports and two NPR stations - one that did news, the other was the classical/jazz station. Today, the NPR station still exists, and one of the independents, but quite literally everything else is programmed by Clearchannel. It's not only the radio programming that sucks now, but the stations used to be a big part of the live music scene, sponsoring festivals and promoting local bands, and otherwise contributing to the scene in some way. The DJs were local and knew the scene, did appearances at bars and many of were music geeks who really liked the genre they were in.
Fast forward to now, we have one NPR station that does news, the classical/jazz station is gone. The rock stations have been consolidated and homogenized, or converted to play "modern country", aka "country pop". The pop station has less diversity. There are now two sports talk stations that seem to be staffed by the world's most hateful idiot trolls that exist solely to fill the airwaves with useless drek. Local DJs only exist on some streaming stations, no longer on the air. I got a car with satellite radio and got hooked on that -- I like that the stations can be very genre specific and that there's a wide variety of styles to choose from. The DJs know their music and seem to like it. I also have a Spotify subscription and pile of podcasts to choose from. When I can choose between music that I like or talk I want to listen to, FM doesn't stand a chance, but on the other hand the vast number of streaming stations and services like Spotify make music discovery so much better now than when I was growing up -- even the best college stations from 20 years just don't hold a candle to what I have available to me now.
Have you read NAB's response to this?
http://variety.com/2017/music/...
It is so delusional that I almost feel sad for them.
For me, the importance of radio is current affairs and news. But then, I might be an old fogey at this point, as my car's radio is pretty much stuck on CBC Radio One (I'm Canadian), or one of the local NPR affiliates when I'm south of the border.
Same here (and I AM an old fogey). I don't bother with music radio, but I listen to several local news & talk stations.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
OK, I am a geezer to, but radio is perfect for news. That's what I use it for. I don't watch TV news - haven't for years. But on my drive to work I turn on the radio news, traffic, weather AM station. Why is it not good for news? What streaming thing should I be getting local news from? I get it for podcasts, music, etc. But News?
Absolutely this! Geezer, and proud of it.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Maybe they should go back to original programming like back in the day where radio dramas were all over the place as well as live music.
They have... Talk Radio is pretty much a daily dose of drama and is one of the few parts of radio that's doing OK these days.
(Yes, my tongue is firmly in my cheek here)
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
radio is perfect for news.
For news, radio is inferior to streaming in every way. You can't control the timing, the pace, the content, or the prioritization. I can use voice activated streaming to get exactly what I want, when I want it. I get the headlines first, then the weather, then the details. Since I have zero interest in sports, that is left out of my customized news report. Instead, I get an extra briefing on science and tech news. If I find a topic boring, I can just skip it and move on to the next topic. I can't imagine ever going back to radio.
When stations do this (or switch to news or sports programming), it is almost always because they either went out of business and their license was sold off, or they were about to go out of business.
So they probably didn't ruin by the format change. It was probably already ruined, and that's what caused the format change.
Heh! I used to listen to Coast-to-Coast when I had insomnia. I quit because everytime I turned on the radio, they were having commercials. I'm not even sure they still have Coast-to-Coast. AFAICT, they have commercials the entire 4 hours!
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
67 million millennials listen to radio each week, That's about 90% market penetration. Just because millennials will use other outlets to discover new music doesn't mean that existing outlets aren't used for consuming music. The Internet has become the new "local club/bar" where you'd go each week to hear new bands and genres; but consumption still is in radio.
SONOS, the largest consumer speaker company on the face of the Earth, sees a massive use of streaming FM stations over Internet - meaning if anything, FM radio's reach is increasing into the modern world. It's staying with broadcast but also streaming onto the Internet, so that a given station is no longer limited to a small geographic region but worldwide.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Almost every FM station near me has HD radio with 2 side stations, so you get up to 3 stations of content per station.
There is AM HD put doesn't appear to have been implemented, I couldn't find any hardware or AM HD radio stations.
But, some car manufacturers are still playing the "HD radio is extra" upgrade for their premium levels.
And then HD radio consortium killed off portable HD radios because they don't want people to pirate the clear signal.
I would Love an AM/FM (with HD) on my cell, but If you can't buy it, that's effectively killing it off.
It's easier for me to stream radio onto my cell phone, just so I can hear talk radio in the my car.
Corporations are ruining radio, mostly due to clear channel stranglehold.
But then, not everyone has high speed internet or mobile data across the US too.
The whole situation pisses me off.
Gota love those program directors who play the most popular stuff in rotation multiple times a day... Yea, they are idiots..
They are not really idiots, but hey, the way radio is done today is a stupid (but cheap) process and program directors are just one cog in the huge machine. It used to be that the local DJ would pick the records he/she played. Some DJ's where pretty good, so of course somebody analyzed what they played when and came up with a "formula for success" which boils down to playing the most popular material more often. They watch the billboard charts and you can bet the #1 song will get played multiple times a day. They then realized that it's easy to just automate the play lists, playing #1 once an hour, #2 every 2 hours and so forth. This leaves the personal touch at home because you fire the old PD with the grey hair, put a computer program in his place because it's cheaper and stupidity ensues as always happens when the MBA's face a shrinking profit..
But I gave up on music radio because they never played what I liked. I have an iPod full of stuff I like and it was easy to hook it up to my car radio.. I do listen to News/Talk some on the radio in the car, but I find that pretty repetitive myself.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I listen to the local talk station, 6-9am...then the rest of the day, we have a low power 24/7 no commercial blues/jazz station. If I can't pick it up on the FM dial, I just stream it. When I'm out of town, I stream everything from pandora, spotify or MP3's. Commercial FM plays the same songs over and over and over with little to no variety, not to mention the LOUD commercials.
The death of radio has been predicted every decade over the last century. It was supposed to have died when the first talking pictures appeared in the 1920s, then it was the rise of television in the 1950s.. MTV and cable tv was supposed to have killed radio in the 1980s. Than it was the CDs and music sharing sites like napster in the 1990s that was to be radio's demise.
None of these new technologies have managed to disrupt radio, which has proven incredibly resilient to change. I wouldn't bet against the death of radio, given its resilience over the last century. If anything, I think radio as a medium has more to teach other mediums of communication how to survive technological disruption than the other way around.
College radio is still a great way to discover music. Scan the lower end of the FM dial and there's a good chance you'll find a music lover queuing up obscure tracks from eras gone by. If you don't live within range, check out the College/University section of iTunes' built-in Internet Radio menu. KALX (Berkeley), KXLU (Los Angeles), KRPF (Moscow, ID), KEXP (Seattle) are good places to start. Plus, NO COMMERCIALS.
Over the last couple of years, it seems like we've ditched a growing handful of perfectly reliable technologies in favor of a host of closed systems that rely completely on an internet connection. I see a massive vulnerability bubbling to the surface here.
We have people who simply cannot function without some kind of internet access. Without it, most of our industry leading experts become empty headed morons, unwilling or unable to perform whatever they are supposed to be the experts at. Most of our tools and toys are the same way, no network=no workie.
When the power goes out, these people and technologies just shut-down and stare at the ISP hardware until the power comes back on. Most don't even seem to own/include an AM/FM receiver.
This makes me sad, and a little worried. I completely understand how inferior OTA radio is when compared to things like streaming services and fancy internet connected gimmicks and such, but at the end of the day, radio will still be there when the rest of this shit is "searching for network"
When the rest of your options die because they all rely on a single point of failure (network connectivity) talking shows, commercials, and the same 20 artists over and over again will still be there, free of charge.... unless we let it die.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
It's been just less than 100 years since the very first commercial broadcast radio station was licensed - and that one was for news.
There are people alive today who didn't experience broadcast radio in the early years of their lives. It was initially only for those with money.
How can anything that didn't even exist in the early lives of some alive today be even close to being "traditional"? Virtually nothing in the realm of tech is "traditional" yet. It will all change and most of it will change within the lives of even middle-aged folks alive today. The tech revolution, especially electronics tech, is still in its childhood if not infancy. It is growing and changing like a preteen in puberty and is just as unpredictable.
In the beginning we had free, over the air, TV... then cable came along... and now we pay Netflix/Amazon/Disney for their programming...
Radio used to be free, over the air... then XM came along and soon we'll be paying youtube/Pandora/Spotify/Some-music-label to listen to their catalog.
Most people used to drink tap water too, now we pay $2/bottle because it has a picture of a mountain on it or it says it comes from a Tiny island 3000 miles away (Fiji).
I don't know if such stations exists in the U.S. (besides NPR). At least I didn't find any of them when I was in the U.S. the last time.
The only station near me that doesn't play the same songs over and over is run out of a college. Even they have large time-chunks dedicated to the same music every day. I used to live on the coast and moved to the midwest. It took three years for a song the played every few hours on the coast stations to make it to the midwest stations. So no, overall the market for AM/FM is not, nor should it be "music-discovery".
Other music services can be tailored per-person. They don't rely entirely on pandering to large groups. That inherently gives them a huge advantage to market to anyone that cares about more than the top 40 in a single genre.
Listening to the radio to hear new music is like going to a chain pizza place when you want tacos. Yes, very rarely you may find a place that sells both...but more often that not you'll just get pizza, and even when you do find tacos there's a decent chance that they aren't that good anyway.
I just want to know why, when there are just two data points, the OP chose to extrapolate with an exponential curve instead of a line. You could just as well say "it's hyperbolically cheaper to produce". That'd probably be better anyway, given that the phrase itself is meant as simple hyperbole.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Ah yes, all kinds of stuff comes to my mind.
I haven’t listened to traditional radio for some time, usually listen to the 2-ways from CHP, media helos and ENG vans, and the hamsters. In another forum they talked about fewer media aircraft, I remember KCBS SF bay area had a number of aircraft flying around the bay area, I could either tune to their AM station or simply listen to their 450 MHz 2-ways (get more gossip). KCBS did away with all their aircraft, and many other media stations have reduced their staff.
I see a number of comments how ClearChannel monopolized the market, I can easily perceive how their programming is a complete disconnect from the young people. For older people they lose that sense of “connection” with the community of interests. I remember back in the days of a independent country radio station KFAT where the people find all kinds of obscure country songs including vinyl records from way way back at garage sales and flea markets. They also had bumper stickers, “I found it! and it’s hard to find too.” as they didn’t have a lot of RF power. I see many references about NPR, maybe I will tune in (all these 23103s dispatches on CHP I never see). And I usually at work by the time N6NFI TalkNet gets started at 9 am.
So the traditional AM/FM radio will go away? May not make much difference as all cars have the screens for multiple systems so I don’t expect people to find a blank panel or a hole to fill with something else. What gets me is ***every vehicle*** has this big thing between driver and passenger seat. No room to conveniently put a 2-way radio except for some creativity with remote headsets. The last thing I need is another cup holder.
Some years ago an amateur radio operator purchasing a new car requested no AM/FM radio installed. His intention is to have a spot to insert his ham radio gear, people at dealership were baffled. They just didn’t understand how someone can have a car but no AM/FM radio installed. As if they felt the radio is like tires, car cannot run without it.
the Doonsberry cartoon, “radio in car?”
Urban dweller: “no, someone stole it already. Have you thought of getting a life?”
Suburban dweller: “yes, big sucker too. 300 watt Blaupunkt!”
Country dweller: “maybe I do, maybe I don’t. It ain’t none of your business.”
mfwright@batnet.com
I also prefer online radio to regular radio for the following reasons:
- thousands of stations to choose from;
- specialized stations grouped by category are available;
- When a song I like starts streaming, I can pull the device I listen with (usually phone) and copy the song info (artist, title) and either look them up on the Internet, or transfer that info to my Evernote document for later searching;
- if for some reason I want to switch, I tap a button and switch to the next online radio in the same category;
- no generic crap music is being streamed - because the categories I choose don't stream said crap;
- online radios do actually compete with each other.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Last I checked, radio 3 doesn't have any on-air transmitters. Due to the shitty mobile data plans in Canada, I'm not about to stream it while driving.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
Community and college radio continues to introduce people to new music, old music they do not know, and all sorts of cool stuff. Listen to KALX, WWOZ, KFJC, and others. Online, mostly, given how few are left physically available. But as younger people grow older, they'll find less time to futz with their playlists and appreciate the DJs who guide them well.
It's most certainly about the fidelity. As someone pushing 50 I have been collecting vinyl since I was a kid. I'm glad to see it coming back. It doesn't really bother me if you don't like it. If you can't distinguish the difference between an LP and MP3 that's your loss I'd say. Granted LP is not portable, requires a really good system to fully appreciate, takes up more space, and degrades over time. All of those are true. But for myself I find it to be a superior format. I like being able to have the full size cover art, and words I can actually see. As my eyes get older I really appreciate that more and more. Usually I record it into the PC using a firewire interface at 96k/24 to a wav file. And then file the record and play the wavs. In this way I reduce wear, and get my portability. And have sound quality that is far superior to CD let alone MP3. DVD-audio is the only digital format that comes close.
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
FM radio is free music of the most commonly popular types of music at very high audio quality. Sure there are commercials, some more than others, but free music.
It's easy to understand -- the selection of music on the radio is incredibly limited. For the most part, if you listen to it for a half hour, you've heard their entire playlist.
Not everything that is free is worth the price.
And this is how we wind up with society as it is today. IMNSHO, it's important for people to be informed about things, and events, even if they are outside their interests or something they disagree with. If you just listen to content that you want to listen to, you're going to miss the larger picture. There is more to the world than what we are interested in personally, and it's valuable to know at least something about it.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
With all the God(tm) damn commercials I'm surprised it hasn't nearly died out already. Especially AM radio. holy shit it's nearly 50% commercials.
And commercials. SHITLOADS of commercials.
And this is how we wind up with society as it is today. IMNSHO, it's important for people to be informed about things, and events
Do you have any evidence whatsoever that people were better informed at some point in the past?
even if they are outside their interests
I fail to see how forcing myself to listen to high school football scores is going to make the world a better place.
you're going to miss the larger picture.
CNN slogan is "give us 20 minutes and we'll give you the world". I doubt if that kind of shallow journalism is really giving you "the larger picture".
I grew up with the AOR top-down radio system (the 80's). I went to school in a college town. The station owners broke a song there...if it took off, it went to NYC. I was stuck with the same playlist for months at a time....it sucked. Once it was played out in Boston, it was "a NEW SONG" in the NYC market....you never heard anything truly new in NYC. We once tried to get a band to play our school. We were told by the band manager that even though we could afford them, and they wanted to play our school, the stadium owner and the radio station would then blackball them in the market for playing our school, as school concerts didn't make money for the machine. My 20 year old just got a car. Her concerns were a) does it have Aux In, and b) is it a manual ? So much for millennialls all hating cars... AD2P is now in just about every car sold in the US, so.... My kids don't radio at all. Period. Spotify and other things downloaded to the phone, yes. I'm pretty sure my tech savvy 17 year old doesn't know how to use the car's radio part. I still listen to NPR cause I'm an old guy and liberal, but beyond that and one classical station, I use occasional satellite radio (and their playlists have been taken over by the same leisure suit c-suckers that killed FM radio) and Spotify...the family plan gets me my old stuff AND a stream of new stuff...and zero commercials. Hey Kids ! ... do you know why some 80's music is called "New Music"...it is because in this era of AOR music embargo, a few small stations, not in the usual lineup, dared to play "New Music". Some of us even put up antennas to get that tiny station, usually not a full power major market transmitter (WLIR). This truly was a parallel universe, and the AOR sh!the@ds fought it off as long as they could, kinda like Cable is fighting streaming now.
Yes, it was that bad....and no, I have no sympathy for radio at this point. We won't even get into how horribly compressed and augmented FM radio was back in the day, when it CAN sound about as good as a CD...but never did due to station greed. I once bought an FM tuner...and could never listen to a few stations ever again, once I heard how bad the full quieting signal truly was.
Radio is still shooting its own feet. Digital is a great idea, but the sidebands detract from the main signal. The solution is to go fully digital, but that won't happen. A digital signal only works near the transmitters, and many dual mode radios "skip" when going from the digital source back to the analog source. Corporate greed then says "hey, we need 40 streams on this signal" so, like a teen who wanted every single song on one CD, they all sound like crap.....
When, the basic FM analog signal can be almost full CD quality....
Nope, when it dies, it will be suicide, and we won't mourn.
were some of the radio programs that were broadcast when I was a kid. I loved the Green Hornet and The Shadow Knows. That was in the last 40's and early 50's. Then came BW TV and all the movies and cliff hangers that were shown on the silver screen in the 1930's started appearing on the Tube. I loved Buck Rogers and his battles against Ming the Merciless as he flew through space with his spaceship making weird sounds while sparks fell from his exhaust as smoke was rising from it. In the late 50's through the 60's it was all Top 40 and Wolfman Jack, from of XERF-AM at Ciudad Acuña in Mexico.
I'm 76. Sometime about 20-25 years ago I stopped listening to radio. About 15-20 years ago I stopped listening to TV. It's all digital now.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Music radio (as opposed to talk/news radio) gave up on innovating altogether back in the 20th century. I blame ClearChannel (now known as iHeartMedia) and its ilk for that.
Back in the day - which is to say "the 1960's and 70's" - radio programming was mostly done by people who actually cared about music. Program Directors, as they were called, actively searched for new and interesting artists to whom they could expose their audiences. Formats became increasingly fluid, mixing genres and styles, and playlists often included thousands of songs. And albums - because progressive radio stations would sometimes play entire album sides. The three-minute rule was largely abandoned, as artists tackled longer-form compositions. It really was a golden age for music.
Then the MBAs took over, and radio went straight into the toilet.
Instead of trying to broaden their appeal, radio stations narrowed the audiences they catered to. No more mixing rock and country and jazz on a single playlist. You wanted rock, you had to listen to a rock station. You wanted country, you had to switch to a country station. And, if you wanted jazz - well jazz didn't attract sponsors, so, outside of urban markets, you were pretty much s.o.l. You could find R&B, though, in the form of soul stations, until disco took over and soul pretty much vanished overnight. Radio became, in a word, "balkanized": hopelessly divided into ever-smaller audience segments, each being fed a fast-dwindling playlist of hits.
Which takes us to "market research", the new payola, where record labels pay for the privilege of having tracks they select "tested" for audiences - by being played at the top of the hour, every hour, for however long the label chooses to keep paying for "research".
Is it any wonder that audiences - especially milennial audiences - have chosen to abandon in droves this profoundly corrupt, accounting-driven music distribution model in favor of personally-customizable streaming services, where they get to pick their own playlists, instead of having MBAs drive bought-and-paid-for playlists down their throats?
Oh, and did I mention the endless commercials ... ?
Check out my novel.
So what you're saying is you've set up an echo chamber?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
No direct cost to user (data costs money for many).
That's the dealbreaker. The problem with 'streaming' anything, is that it COSTS, COSTS, COSTS. You're paying for the connection. You're paying for the streaming service -- or you're taking an inferior streaming product for free. It's all a deal-breaker for me; I don't want to pay for ANY of it. I LIKE BROADCAST RADIO. It would sadden me greatly for it to go away -- but I would NOT pay for streaming digital anything. I'd sooner drive in silence, or bring my own music. I'm getting sick and bloody well tired of everything being monetized to death, by the way.
If you live near Heartlandburg try to catch Rex Bob Lowenstein's show on W.A.N.T.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Way way way back even before Jerry (6400), there was this article from the magazine Radio Age, July 1924, which I always find an interesting read:
CONGRESS has adjourned without acting either way on pending radio legislation, according to the news dispatches from Washington.
Unless a special session is called, which does not seem likely at this time, radio will be untouched by legal attachments until next year, at least.
The two most important measures which were shelved by the adjournment of the well-meaning but unusually deliberative governmental bodies are the White Bill and the Dill Bill. The first proposes to establish governmental control over radio broadcasting, reception and perhaps the industry eventually. This bill, while not viciously attacked, did not go through because some representatives of the people wanted to know just why such a young and untried industry as radio should suffer the bonds of law so soon. Accordingly, it is unlikely that the White Bill will ever become a law -- so the fans may rest assured they will not be hindered for some time to come in that respect.
The Dill Bill is more far reaching in its scope. It is liberal and fair-minded. It asks that the copyright laws be amended so that copyrighted music can be broadcast without the payment of levies to the music publishers. Although this bill has been opposed at every step by huge organizations and moneyed interests, as well as several prominent music publishers, it was about to be passed with a fair majority when Congress adjourned.
There is still hope for the Dill Bill, then, and we hope that when it finally reaches the President's desk it will represent the result of a fair compromise between the broadcasters and the music publishers, in the interests of the fan who listens to broadcast music and helps the sale of the published article by buying the pieces he likes best.
Government legislation, we believe, appears to be the only means yet suggested which offers any kind of a solution to the bitter enmity between the broadcasters and the so-called music "trust."
Radio's recent jump to prominence in official circles such as Congress is only one indication of its growing importance. Big capital interests, legislators and public spirited citizens are realizing more and more that radio will some day control the destinies of our nation; and accordingly they are setting out to prevent its too sudden growth to an unwieldy influence. Quick government control, the legislators aver, will prevent radio from becoming a menace instead of the help and pleasure it should be.
In a measure these radio-legislators are right. Something must be done to prevent the air from becoming a bedlam of tangled wave lengths. Something must be done to prevent the ether from being clogged with propaganda and useless stuff that will discourage interest in the world's latest miracle.
If legislation works along those lines, it will be beneficial. But if it takes a political trend, this country will see a united uprising of righteously aroused fans -- lovers and promoters of the good in radio.
mfwright@batnet.com
Interesting comment, I looked up that station, found this http://www.modestoradiomuseum....
mfwright@batnet.com
The younger folks I know who so a lot of streaming avoid using their cell data plan to do it. They use WiFi. If they don't have an available WiFi access point available, they'll still do some streaming but are more frugal about it (such as, they won't just let it play as background noise).
I live in a urban area, though, so there's almost always a WiFi access point available. In a sparser area, the behavior is probably different.
The problem with 'streaming' anything, is that it COSTS, COSTS, COSTS. You're paying for the connection.
The GP's point is that this will change, or at least that prices will drop to where it's negligible.
You're paying for the streaming service -- or you're taking an inferior streaming product for free.
The free services are superior to broadcast radio. The paid services are dramatically better than broadcast radio. I long swore I would never pay a subscription for music, until I tried it. Having access to basically all music published is so much better I can't see ever going back. If I were so poor I had to skip one or two meals per month to pay for my subscription music service, it would be worth it.
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AM radio is either sports or politics or religious bullshit when it is not lame advertising
shortwave radio is either foreign broadcasts in spanish, french or arabic and what is in english is either the tinfoil asshat alex jones peddling his snakeoil products or religious nuts panhandling money, shortwave is basically a circus of carpetbaggers either conspiracy nuts, religious nuts or a mixture of both religious & conspiracy lunacy,
FM radio is more of the same, music of various types with annoying commercials, or religious nuts
people are tired of being pandered to with bullshit,
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I listened to a lot of Sports talk radio like ESPN. As time has gone on, the level of advertisement is now just about 50 percent. Coupled with boring hosts who all talk abtout the same thing, with the exception of goofball Dan LeBetard, there is about ten minutes of content per day.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
So what you're saying is you've set up an echo chamber?
Compared to talk radio? No. Not at all.
There are advantages of radio. Try throwing a streaming device together out of a diode, a capacitor and some wire. Try streaming in the middle of nowhere, or like me, 40 miles from the big city (lots of my neighbours commute the hour+ to downtown). Try streaming during a natural disaster such as is happening in Houston now. And, at least where I am, streaming is expensive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Listening to "live" music through a radio is sort of pointless
Sounds like the only "live" music you listen to is bands playing their set pieces as if reading from music.The beauty of live music is the variance you get when bands decide to cover others, try songs they've never played, or just plain mess around with songs they are famous for.
Same as video stores, it's not like anyone doesn't watch movies / series etc. it's just there is no longer a need to get in your car and go fetch it. Nobody wants their product anymore.
Book shops and eventually libraries are going to go the way of the dodo as well, pity about the libraries though, have lots of fond memories of libraries. But come to think of it, I live a block and a half from our local library and I've only been in it twice. First time to register, second time to take the books back, never even read one though, found a digital copy and put it on my kindle.
There are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third is statistics.
This is coming out of the country of "we're so big, we have to drive everything", and of "we're so big, we have cell phone coverage nearly nowhere"?
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Live music on the radio is a pleasant surprise.
Can't say I enjoy it, all the background noise, etc. What makes live music in person enjoyable is the experience of the shared emotion, and enthusiasm of people in the room etc,
Live music on a radio always comes across as cheesy to me.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
The beauty of live music is the variance you get when bands decide to cover others, try songs they've never played.
I don't think many bands will just start playing songs live that they've never played before, I'm sure there's a fair bit of rehearsal goes into every performance.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
The problem is the internet can do anything that radio can. Radio has only a few advantages:
1)
But of course, the big disadvantage to Radio: ads.
The article talks about Gen Z turning their back on radio. I'm the tail end of Gen X and I havn't listened to tradition AM/FM radio in almost a decade. I can't get past ads. They're awful. I just can't do it.
A few years ago I tried watching over-the-air TV as well, couldn't do it. I can't tolerate the ads. Once you get used to no ads, either from Netflix, or Sirius, there's no going back.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
If you want to be pedantic about language then sure. More power to you.
Do you not buy live albums? Same thing, no?
Hell, one of my favorite albums of all time is the live '69 tour of the Stones on "Get Yer Ya Yas Out"....you can almost hear the sweat dripping on the fret boards...raw and powerful setlist.
Some bands are great live...some suck, especially the lip sync'ers.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Live music is cool when you're actually there. Listening to "live" music through a radio is sort of pointless.
The problem there is that live music isn't live for the most part. Most artists you hear on the radio these days are so auto-tuned that they are physically incapable of reproducing the same sounds. So they end up miming everything, concerts have become a carefully choreographed pantomime rather than live music.
Most concerts I go to are for rock/metal (occasionally the odd jazz, latin jazz or even to the orchestra) and you know it's live because you can hear the artist make a mistake. They'll drop a note, miss a word or line or do something spontaneous, like dropping a random solo into a song. No one cares if they drop a note or make a mistake either.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
All of those are bad for business, which is why OTA radio (and TV) is dying.
What killed radio was the FCC removing the ban on allowing a few companies to own all the stations in one area, as well as a limit on stations owned. This homogenized radio, and turned most stations into basically a 50 song MP3 collection set on shuffle with ads and a DJ announcing a few things. For "rock" stations, any music post 1980-1990 was removed, leaving the same 60s-70s crap playing. Of course, this pretty much moved people to iTunes and other places for new stuff to listen to.
It used to be that radio actually played new stuff, and was a central point where people would actually discuss a new band or a new song. Those days are gone.
The ironic thing is that there are tons of FM radio tuners out there. Most Android phones can do FM radio, if used with headphones. However, with the market the way it is, we likely won't see much change, as the days of independent stations are gone.
Now, the finger pointing. Easy enough -- the FCC. There is a reason there were regulations on keeping one entity from owning stations, and when that was removed, it collapsed the entire industry and created monopolies.
Do you not buy live albums? Same thing, no?
I HAAAAATE live albums. On the rare occasion when I bought a live album by mistake I've been royally pissed off.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
For me, the importance of radio is current affairs and news. But then, I might be an old fogey at this point, as my car's radio is pretty much stuck on CBC Radio One (I'm Canadian), or one of the local NPR affiliates when I'm south of the border.
This kind of thing only goes to show the age of commercial radio is pretty much over.
Commercial radio only provides 3 things people want, music, news and talk-back.
1. News: With far more sources of news, live traffic updates on our GPS's, so on and so forth radio stations are now behind most sources of news. In the olden days before the interwebs this used to be the only way to find out live game scores but that's no longer the case.
2. Talk back radio: pretty much the only thing that keeps them in business, angry old people who aren't savvy enough with computers to use the comments section of the Daily Mail. This is literally a dying business, as younger angry racists/xenophobes are capable of draging their knuckes across the keyboard to produce a badly spelled, all caps locked, badly thought out rant based on myths, propaganda and a warped world view.
3. Music. Long since overtaken by these little devices in our cars that play music from other sources like round plastic discs, portable memory devices and our telephones. Beyond this we have satellite radio that has many more stations that can be tailored to our tastes and streaming services that allow us to pick our music. I want to labour on the point of music, commercial radio now only plays the same 10 odd songs on repeat, this will be the latest pop crap straight from mass production. This is the main reason that they're losing audiences, I have an eclectic mix of rock, metal (from hair to death), Latin jazz and classical on a USB stick in my car. Ignoring the fact I wont ever hear Megadeth, let alone Marilyn Manson on the radio (the poor old Christian Conservatives shit kittens all the way to the stations owner), I doubt I'll even hear the Foo Fighters from FM most stations because they aren't in the top 10 charts that are made up each week despite Everlong being a legendary classic.
These three things are only there to bring our ears to the one thing they want us to listen to, advertisements. These over the years have become louder, more obnoxious and more insulting. After the crappy music repeats, this is what is driving away customers. People who still want the randomness of new music are switching to satellite and DAB stations where it's not so commercially controlled, similarly there are those who have moved to Spotify, Pandora and the like and the rest of us have MP3's in our cars and on our portable devices which we listen to. Commercial radio is a dying industry and that is entirely because they are unwilling to change. Ultimately they're the start of an entire dying content industry, dying because it is unwilling to change.
The A/B/CBC's will likely be the last to turn off the FM transmitters because they provide better and local content without the constant and extreme annoyance of commercials.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Might I ask what you don't like about them?
Is it that they don't sound exactly like the studio versions?
Do you not like when they improv on stage (Zeppelin was notorious for this in their old 3+ hour concerns in their heyday)....
Just curious....and do take in mind, I only really know of the bands of old, I dunno much of what comes out today....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The GP's point is that this will change, or at least that prices will drop to where it's negligible.
it would have to be ZERO to be acceptable to me.
The free services are superior to broadcast radio.
LOL no, I've tried them, I think they suck.
Internet radio, like we had about 10 years ago wasn't bad, it was more or less like broadcast radio, and I actually used it. But the RIAA destroyed that forever, then brought in their shitty 'streaming' services. it's not anywhere near the same thing, as I've said I tried it and I thought it sucked. Also as I've already said if they killed broadcast FM radio, there's no way I'd pay for their shitty streaming services, I'd either drive around in silence or bring my own music and screw them. 'Newer' isn't always 'better' and Millennials who don't know how to read an analog clock face and are convinced that if something isn't digital and internet-connected then it must be 'for old people' and 'old fashioned' and 'stupid' are the ones who are actually stupid so far as I'm concerned.
Tom Petty was right
Well you can't turn him into a company man
You can't turn him into a whore
And the boys upstairs just don't understand anymore
Well the top brass don't like him talking so much,
And he won't play what they say to play
And he don't want to change what don't need to change
There goes the last DJ
Who plays what he wants to play
And says what he wants to say, hey hey hey?
And there goes your freedom of choice
There goes the last human voice
There goes the last DJ
Well some folks say they're gonna hang him so high
'Cause you just can't do what he did
There are some things you just can't put in the minds of those kids
As we celebrate mediocrity all the boys upstairs want to see
How much you'll pay for what you used to get for free
Murphy was an optimist
Might I ask what you don't like about them?
Is it that they don't sound exactly like the studio versions?
Do you not like when they improv on stage (Zeppelin was notorious for this in their old 3+ hour concerns in their heyday)....
Just curious....and do take in mind, I only really know of the bands of old, I dunno much of what comes out today....
#1 peeve is all the background noise. All the clapping or cheering and whistling over tracks.
#2 is they are a lot more flawed. It frequently takes many cuts to produce a perfect track. Things with prominent vocals with many musicians are especially bad. It annoys me when the singer is flat (as many are live). Many singers aren't really that good when they don't have the ability to re-record a section a dozen times.
#3 the quality of the recording is usually lower in general. Cracks, pops, feeback whistles.
#4 yeah, I hate the long improvs too.
#5 often they use a smaller variety of instruments. The pieces become much less complex, often simplified down to guitar and drum.
#6 Musicians talking before, after, or during the tracks. Get's tiring after the first time you listen to the track.
I feel like I've been cheated if I buy an album start it up and then I hear cracks, pops, and people cheering.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Regarding Pandora, I have noticed that if you "over tune" a channel, by rating a lot of songs, it will go into regular loops of 40-60 songs. The sweet spot seem to be somewhere between 5 and 15 rated songs.
it's not anywhere near the same thing, as I've said I tried it and I thought it sucked
In what way is radio better than Pandora?
Newer' isn't always 'better' and Millennials...
Don't play the "Millennial" card on me. Odds are decent that I'm older than you are.
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The GP's point is that this will change, or at least that prices will drop to where it's negligible.
it would have to be ZERO to be acceptable to me.
When you have unlimited data which you use for everything else, the incremental cost of streaming music will be zero. It already is when you're at home.
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I'm in my early 50's.
Pandora is precisely what I tried because everyone recommended it. I didn't like what they were playing, and it was both highly annoying to have to reach over to 'skip' things, and it only let me skip so much. After not too long of that nonsense I decided I didn't like it and killed it. I do not have or WANT a smartphone and do not have or want internet in my pickup and I do not like these streaming services, so I don't kinow what it is you think you can do to 'convince' me I'm wrong. I like broadcast FM radio just fine, I can channel surf around commercials, or just turn the volume down for a few minutes if I can't find something I like. If I'm somewhere there are no good stations to listen to I'll bring my own music and listen to that, or just drive in silence. I do not like or want 'streaming' services, I think they suck ass and want nothing to do with them, I don't see how anyone can think they're any better than broadcast radio. Honestly I think you're all fools for paying for any of that; you pay for internet, you pay for streaming, and you PAY and PAY and PAY ad infinitum. Why not just buy music you like and listen to that if you're so picky about what you listen to? How is having some algorithm on some shitty 'streaming' service choose what you're hearing any different than a DJ at a radio station picking from a program directors' playlist? Spoiler: It's not any different, somehow you've been convinced that it is and they take your money. I can ignore commercials on the radio, can you ignore money disappearing out of your bank account every month? Doesn't matter how much it is you're still paying MONEY to be fed not much different than a radio station will feed you. Honestly, seriously, I think it's rather dumb.
I've borrowed them from the library. That's even cheaper. Of course, they don't have as good a selection as with dead-tree books, but there's lots worth listening to.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
All news is biased. If you find one that seems unbiased, it means you've found one whose bias agrees with yours, and you're in danger of being in a cognitive cluster and not learning things. Once you understand the bias, you can get value out of any good news source.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Libraries often lend ebooks nowadays. They're modernizing and hanging in there.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
You're paying for the connection anyway. Most radio lives by advertising, and you're paying for it with time and attention. Some (like NPR) gets money from other sources, including talking people into becoming members. I'd rather pay a little money to do without the advertising, myself.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
If you listen to content that lots of different people with different viewpoints want you to listen to, you're going to learn something.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
All news is biased. If you find one that seems unbiased, it means you've found one whose bias agrees with yours,
We are only talking about one blatantly biased source here.
. Once you understand the bias, you can get value out of any good news source.
I never claimed there is no value, but there is also a negative impact of bias. Which is why they won't get my donation. One could also argue that a publicly funded entity like NPR should strive to be neutral.
I assume, from your statements, that you never have any issues with biased reporting because, as you say, you can take value from it.
200 stations? Yea. Sort of like the 500 channels I have from satellite. 500 channels and only like 3 or 4 that are actually worth watching. Sometimes I can't find a single thing to watch. Everything sucks. I had XM for a while, same thing. Sure it was great for a while. After the first year it was too much like on the air radio to me so I dropped it.
Not hard. Anytime they do the rap crap, they lose market share fast. Ditch the jungle music and put real music on and it comes back. It's about time for the big bands to come back again. Some real music.
I've had personal experience with stories covered by mainstream journalism, so I have limited trust in any media. I've sought out news sources with different biases, which is the best you're going to be able to do.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I've had personal experience with stories covered by mainstream journalism, so I have limited trust in any media. I've sought out news sources with different biases, which is the best you're going to be able to do.
I agree with that. I've never seen a mainstream media outlet that wasn't clearly biased on one side or the other. As for any given one, its quite easy to see when alternate views are not presented, or not adequately presented, or purposely minimized or misrepresented.