Some history about what has happened to North American radio stations since the days of independents in the 60's/70's to present day would make a great topic for a substack. And what about the days of pirate radio from the UK offshore?
Part of it is conglomeratisation (can that be a word?). All of my local stations were locally owned, and locally advertised on. They played what we wanted to hear, or they played to some other genre that was interested, or they went broke. Clear Channel originated here, bought them all up and they turned to shit. Same songs, over and over and over.
I make my own playlists now. Or I listen to Public Radio jazz. Our local PR station is still locally hosted and I actually know them.
Good Lord, I’m old enough to remember when Voice of America broadcast across the world, and echoed the values of freedom and democracy. I grew up listening to VOA on the radio while living in Libya.
Did you then mature to the point where you realized VoA was pathetic propaganda, and that Libya under Gaddafi was about as good a country as you can get?
Some history about what has happened to North American radio stations since the days of independents in the 60's/70's to present day would make a great topic for a substack. And what about the days of pirate radio from the UK offshore?
eg: Howard Stern. And Jimmy Kimmel too.
They became famous and rich because they were Pirates.
Then they became Parrots.
I'm sure there's a Jimmy Buffett song about this somewhere.🤔
Part of it is conglomeratisation (can that be a word?). All of my local stations were locally owned, and locally advertised on. They played what we wanted to hear, or they played to some other genre that was interested, or they went broke. Clear Channel originated here, bought them all up and they turned to shit. Same songs, over and over and over.
I make my own playlists now. Or I listen to Public Radio jazz. Our local PR station is still locally hosted and I actually know them.
Local, local, local is always the best.
Good Lord, I’m old enough to remember when Voice of America broadcast across the world, and echoed the values of freedom and democracy. I grew up listening to VOA on the radio while living in Libya.
Did you then mature to the point where you realized VoA was pathetic propaganda, and that Libya under Gaddafi was about as good a country as you can get?
Yeah, about 20 years ago!