Funferal

Why radio shall survive

Garrison Keillor has written what is essentially an ode to radio in which he focuses in on what I think is an important factor for the future of radio broadcasting:

Clear Channel’s brand of robotics is not the future of broadcasting. With a whole generation turning to iPod and another generation discovering satellite radio and Internet radio, the robotic formatted-music station looks like a very marginal operation indeed. Training kids to do that is like teaching typewriter repair.

I love it. Oh, and read the rest of the piece, where Keillor provides bountiful examples of the sheer fun of radio. I used to listen to shortwave radio – I haven’t had a shortwave receiver in some time – and I listened for the same reasons Keiller outlines: to catch a peek into a different universe. A few minutes of a southern preacher, a station from a nascent country – in the 1980s it was Latvia and Lithuania – or a random signal from Radio Moscow, or a Chinese service. It’s the same with the AM and FM bands. A few minutes of a random discussion or rant won’t necessarily tell you ‘the news’ but it will put you in touch with another slice of society.