Chase Burdick

Managing Editor

cxb1345@psu.edu

Do you listen to the radio? Do you actually listen to it? If so, how?!? I flip through 12 channel presets only to find one song actually playing. We barely have 12 stations worth listening to in the first place, and now they are just non-stop streams of advertisements.

Yes, I get it; stations need money to operate, supposedly anyway. Does anyone actually know how radio stations work? Maybe I should talk to someone in BVZ, like the person who will be editing this article, Charlie. Listen to Charlie’s show for BVZ on the TuneIn app, Saturdays 3-4 pm, by the way!

Anyways, how much money do they need?!? It feels like five minutes straight of just advertisements per station. Do they all have to end up playing at the same time, too? This is what’s killing radio for me: having to wait through five minutes of ads just to hear some song you already heard an hour ago. I know I’m not the only one that feels this way. And what if your commute is only five minutes long?!? So many problems…

So what do people do then instead? We stream! Is the free streaming option really any better, though? I think so. You at least get to listen to something vaguely close to what you wanted to, and that’s better than the random chance of the radio. You can also guarantee that you get the song you want if you subscribe to the service. Sure, it isn’t free, but I don’t know anyone who would trade that freedom for the low price they end up paying. 

There was also that one advertisement on the radio, of course, that was pleading with people to try to save AM radio. It was supposed to be a bill in the House of Representatives, but I don’t know what happened to it ever since the ad stopped running. So overall, things are not looking good for the radio.

One final gripe from me before we nail the casket on the radio as a medium is with the radio personalities. The only somewhat decent ones we have are either famous for something or have been doing it forever. I see them losing their jobs before we lose radio entirely, especially when people’s preference, streaming, doesn’t have ‘DJ’s, at least not human ones. Who knows, though, if stations don’t have to pay for a ‘DJ’ or whatever they are actually called, maybe they won’t have to run so many ads and radio can be saved.