Radio killed itself

Mark Morford posted a column today called All Hail the Death of Radio that I liked very much, in which he notes the death of commercial radio and wonders whether anyone cares. A quick taste:

"It has become background noise, something you leave on just to keep you from falling asleep as you drive to Sacramento, more ads than music and more generic than electrifying, a nearly dead form that lost its spark about 15 years ago and that is quickly giving way to Sirius and XM and your ability to burn your own custom-mix CDs for pennies apiece and listen to them for three days and throw them away and burn a new one.

"Then there is the wondrous joy that is the iPod and its new upstart spawn, podcasting, that cute grassroots do-it-yourself radio mini-phenomenon thing that is spreading like porn-flavored candy and has the potential to slap corporate radio upside the head, even more than it has been in the past decade, which is a lot."

Please don't get me wrong here; I love radio. Or I guess you could say I loved radio. It can be so intimate and so perfect and so surprising; alas, it almost never is any more. There are of course occasional exceptions, but I agree that it all fell apart quite a while back. It's been more than 15 years since I last listened to commercial radio on a regular basis, but I think that even independent stations are suffering and certainly NPR has become a pale shadow of its early promise and intentions, bless its cold, dying heart.

OK, I admit I still listen to NPR for a little bit most days -- for 15 sleepy minutes before I hit the snooze button, or I'll turn it on in the car if I'm not driving far enough to dig the iPod out of my pocketbook -- but I just get mad, more often than not, at their mealy-mouthed, wishy-washy attempts to ride some edgy edge while trying to prove that they are not -- god forbid -- the Liberal Establishment Media Network. Though my local NPR affiliate did just replace much of its stale lite-classical programming with more news & info stuff. The only real reason I listen at all any more is aesthetic; I'm used to the way the programs sound, the way the announcers talk. Plus they broadcast the BBC World News feed late at night, and I absolutely love to hear the sport segments while I'm driving. I have no idea what they are talking about, but cricket scores are hysterical.

There are a few remaining independent radio stations on the air, and many of them have live feeds online; Jake at Lying Media Bastards has a lot of good links (scroll down to Sonic Resistance on the right); two of my old favorites from Minnesota that didn't make his list are KAXE and KFAI. And of course there's Air America, which is a good idea, but I haven't heard very much of them as they went on the air just before I had to take the streaming-music clients off my work computer.

I don't know very much yet about this podcasting thing that Mr. Morford was talking about, but it's somewhere between making mix tapes (CDs nowadays, I guess) for your friends and having your own show on a community or college radio station. Great fun, or not, depending. I've listened to a few things at Coverville, including this installment featuring a hilarious (live, with audience sing-along) Richard Thompson performance of the Britney Spears, um, hit "Oops! I Did It Again" -- if you click on the link (at least on my mac) there's not a counter on the QuickTime display that you see, but the song is about 75% or so into the 31-minute show. The shows take a while to download even on a fast connection, but you can start listening right away. This particular podcast, Coverville, is presented in a particularly Mac-friendly format (iPodderX). It works fine on a PC too, I think.

[A digression regarding RT: he's been performing that Britney Spears classic as part of the occasional "1000 Years of Popular Music" set in his live shows for a while now. Here's what he says about the 1000 Years project:

"The idea for this project came from Playboy Magazine - I was asked to submit a list, in late 1999, of the ten greatest songs of the Millenium. Hah! I thought, hypocrites - they don't mean millennium, they mean twenty years - I'll call their bluff and do a real thousand-year selection. My list was similar to the choices here on this CD, starting in about 1068, and winding slowly up to 2001. That they failed to print my list among others submitted by rock's luminaries, is but a slight wound - it gave me the idea for this show, which has been performed occasionally, and will hopefully receive a few more airings."

The CD is available at his live shows and through his website.]

So yeah, radio is dead. Big deal. Will Podcasting take over? Or maybe satellite radio? Does anyone care any more?

I guess we'll just have to stay tuned.