From the diaries by susanhbu. Cross-posted on D-Kos
I grew up with a raspberry-pink, AM-only, Radio Shack Flav-r-radio glued to my head. It was my constant companion on long bike or car rides, day trips to the beach and late nights in my room when I was supposed to be asleep. As Everclear sang, I listened to the music on the AM radio.
As I got older, college radio stations introduced me to obscure artists and late night DJ’s with their own style stamp. Even later, NPR was the first programmed button on any radio I had around, from car to alarm clock.
Then I heard Rush Limbaugh for the first time, and I nearly drove off the road. I’d had no idea that my harmless car radio could be the conduit for such dreck.
In the May 23rd on line edition of The Nation, Garrison Keillor reflects on his own life-long love affair with Radio.
His comments are amusing, insightful, and show a healthy perspective on the right-wing spew that so raises my own blood pressure:
And now that their man is re-elected and they have nice majorities in the House and Senate, they are hunters in search of diminishing prey. There just aren’t many of us liberals worth banging away at, but God bless them, they keep on coming. Just the other day, I heard one foaming and raging about the right to life and about liberals preying on the helpless–I realized he was talking about Terri Schiavo–and then he launched into the judiciary and how they had stood by and done nothing. He held their feet to the fire for a while and then he tore into George McGovern for about five minutes. George McGovern is a kindly, grandfatherly man who lives in Mitchell, South Dakota, and winters in Florida and every year attends his World War II bomber squadron reunion. He ran for President in 1972. His connection to the Florida case is tenuous at best. When you go ballistic over 1972, you are truly desperate to fill time.
GARRISON KEILLOR
THE NATION MAY 23RD ISSUE
Since I have so many relatives and friends who are total Dittoheads, I have long blamed the right -wing hate shows for part of the brainwashing of my country. I thought a Michael Savage or others of his ilk could do immeasurable damage .
But Keillor seems to have a different perspective:
These days I have a love-hate affair with my radio. Part of the time I have my car player set continually on “scan” as I search for something reasonable, part of the time I’m practically foaming at the mouth, debating with the idiots I hear on the call in shows, and part of the time I’ve given up and turned it off completely, preferring my cd collection to the corporate owned and programmed stations I find.
So: whaddya you think? Is the rise of winger talk radio the reason Bushco are in office? Has NPR sold out completely? Will Air America save the day?
Or do you just long for the days when you could curl down in the backseat of the car, put on those earbuds, and disappear into your own private chosen music haven? Does Keillor have a decent perspective on this whole issue, or is he missing the point as he surfs through the night time airwaves?
I miss Keillor’s advice column at Salon. He has a terribly sweet and very insightful take on love issues.
And I enjoy his show, especially the way he slips in his political views like a playful pinch, not a hammer.
I’m a fan of civility on the radio. Seattle’s Dave Ross is one AM host who is always civil and courteous with every caller, no matter their views.
I’ve always enjoyed Keillor too, and I was intrigued to see his perspective on the business.
I’m not sure if he’s wise here or wearing rose-colored glasses, but I love the way he takes the self-important air out of the whole right-wing radio hosts.
I’ll do a diary about it someday. I don’t have time right now because I’m in the calm before the storm of about 22 hours of frenetic activity culminating in my son getting married, and the storm is headed this way in about 20 minutes when the bus gets here.
For now suffice it to say that I sometimes bemoan the fact that radio isn’t as interesting or fun as it used to be back when I was eight and listening to the yellow radio set I got for Christmas, pulling in stations from San Francisco and Salt Lake City and Calgary. But every so often something interesting happens on the radio dial, and I remember why I fell in love with the spoken words from far away.
Does anyone wonder why the iPod and its ilk is such a phenomenon? People are just dreadfully tired of the crap that passes for radio these days. I’m utterly amazed that ANYONE actually listens to idiot morning-show hosts, for whom a special circle of hell is reserved. And when there’s actually music playing, it’s either overproduced, utterly disposable pop, or overproduced, utterly disposable R&B. The corporate-owned radio landscape is just as bad as that of corporate-owned TV.
You’ve described most pouplar music very well.
It’s fascinating to see my daughter’s tastes in music evolve and change. From Cobain in her early teens to all sorts of indy music — including some Icelandic groups such as Sigur Ros and P.J. Harvey — and now she’s stumbled onto Miles Davis, so surprising to me because she’d always said she disliked jazz. And all of it she collects on her IPod and on CDs. She’s 22. Here’s the list of what she listens to at work:
Listening to at work: PJ Harvey, PJ Harvey, and PJ Harvey. Also: Os Mutantes, Talking Heads, The Dirty Three, Sigur Ros, Lhasa De Sela, Kronos Quartet, Wire, Richard Thompson, Calexico, Nick Cave, Democracy Now!, Channel Africa, and BBC World Service Radio.
And I’m such a news junkie but I find it difficult to listen to so much of what passes for news radio. More often than not, I turn on BBC World Service or some NPR shows, just because they actually have conversations or talk about something beyond typical US media fare.
We can’t be the only people who feel like this…. and what you describe, Johnny, is one reason I really enjoy LinkTV. They have world music shows as well as news and documentaries. Great stuff.
This is on the NYT site:
By STEPHEN LABATON
Published: May 6, 2005
WASHINGTON, May 6 – A federal appeals court handed a major setback to Hollywood and the television networks today when it struck down an anti-piracy regulation that required computer and television makers to use new technology that would make it difficult for consumers to copy and distribute digital programs. …
It was an important victory for libraries, consumer groups and civil liberties organizations. They had maintained that the regulation, known as the “broadcast flag” rule, would stifle innovation in technology and make it more difficult for consumers and users of library services to circulate material legitimately.
Although an appeal is possible, lawyers involved in the case said the fight would shift in the near term to Congress, which is already weighing legislation. … link
A bit of a wierd snippet about radio listening in the UK.
The BBC is converting to digital broadcasting and transmits radio from land based transmitters (DAB – Digital Audio Broadcasting) and the web. It is also broadcast alongside the TV signals on satellite and more recently on the digital terrstrial TV system. These last of course need to be listened to using the TV so a simple logo is sent showing station identification and program information. It has the side effect of giving sound that is far better than an ordinary radio.
This development has meant a large increase in radio listening figures. Stand alone digital radio sales now outstrip analog radios.
What does a digital radio cost? Do your cars come with them as standard equipment now?
Stand alone sets are quite expensive still compared to ordinary mass-produced transistor ananlog radios. The prices I give include a sales tax (VAT at 17.5%)
Portable radios and add-on separate units for hi-fis start around £50 (($95). “Walkman” style ones go from about £70 ($135). Car DAB radios go for arbout £120 ($230) separately but the high end cars are incuding them as standard. Car versions are mor complex as they hand over from one transmitter to another so if you are travelling the country and set the radio to a national station, it will find the strongest signal.
The “listen on TV” option is the one that has pushed adoption as something like 60% of households can now get digital TV. As well as virtually unlimited options from satellite and cable, the digital terrestrial TV (DVB) service uses spare bandwith for radio but this limits the choice to 11 national BBC stations and 13 commercial stations. The boxes for cable and satellite are free with the subscription (a 80Gb Tivo type box costs a one-off £99, $190 with the subscription – a larger disc capacity is available) Usuallly the radio stations are a free extra to the monthly TV fees.
The set-top boxes for the DVB service cost from about £40($75) for the free-to-air service, Freeview which carries about 30 TV stations plus the 23 radio ones. Boxes with a slot for a decryption card cost about £70 ($135) with a monthly subscription of £10 ($19) giving another 10 TV stations. DAB carries far more radio stations and add the local BBC station. The exact line up depends on the locality and the number of stations varies according to how many they put on each frequency. Speech only stations need a lower sampling rate and therefore less bandwith than classical music so the programming determines number.
Every household has to have an annual TV licence which pays for the BBC’s services available in the UK and you have to have one even to listen to the radio over your TV. There is now no separate radio licence so the car, portable and hi-fi add on versions are free to use. The elderly and blind get a reduction on the TV licence but the full cost is about £11 ($20) a month. Non BBC stations are funded by advertising as in the US commercial sector.
The increase in radio listening has been prompted mainly by the heavily promoted DVB TV boxes. The BBC heavily cross-promote to the digital channels from their two analog only ones. As an example, the new Dr Who episodes BBC1 is immediately followed by “Dr Who Confidential” on the BBC3 digital station. These are like the “making of” documentaries you get on DVD. Digital TV also has a lot of “red button” interactive services. The main 10pm news on BBC1 for example has an “extra” service where you can access text background information of on the stories and usually a full version of a big interview they have shown in part during the main program.
Sorry to have to elaborate so much but as you can see the answer can be anything between a quite a lot and nothing because it is a free extra when you get the TV box.
One wierd peculiarity is “digital delay”. Because the digital services use “multiplexing” and the set then has to decode the data, you get a slight delay between analog and digital. If you have an FM radio, DAB radio and the TV box tuned to the same station, you hear them in that order with a sort of multiple echo over sometimes a second.