What Happened to Radio???

I discovered a new local radio station this week after seeing an advertisement for it in the sunday paper. KCUV out of Denver. Its an AM station, but the list of artists that they had listed in their ad caught my attention. Lots of diversity. They call themselves Colorado's Underground Voice and the Colorado's home of Americana. Listened to them yesterday on my down to Colorado Springs for work. Sound quality ain't that great, but the selection of tunes and lack of advertising was SWEET!

Anyway, i checked out their website this morning (they have a live stream if anyone's interested) and ran across this article written by the stations owner about the current state of american radio. Really hit home. Check it out:

http://www.kcuvradio.com/whathappened.asp?Counter_ID=1

T-

NP: "Mighty Wind" from Mighty Wind soundtrack

I still listen to radio in my car. I don’t mind the numerous commercials too much (I just hit a different preset), but I have little tolerance for the formula DJ teams. Usually a man/woman team or two men and a woman. They spend too much time yapping about nonsense and not eough time playing music.
That article was interesting, another example of greed ruining a good thing.

He's preaching to the converted. I hate Clear Channel nearly as much as I hate just about anything, but nobody's pointing to the fact that the listeners are the ones that dictate long-term trends in playlists more so than anyone else. If their testing indicated that people wanted to hear local bands or cared about hearing a DJ that they knew was local, that's what would be on the airwaves. The fact is that people don't care. They're comfortable hearing the same Billy Joel song again for the 50th time that week, a pattern that's been going on for a couple of decades now. Unless you change the desires of the people who are actually listening to these stations, none of this is going to matter. Large media companies couldn't lay off all these employees if listeners wouldn't accept canned shows programmed from a central location & beamed all over the country. Nobody cares. What Clear Channel did was to realize that & exploit it. Some blame really must be applied to the listening audience at large instead of it all going towards the Telecommunications Act or Clear Channel.

I listen to two listener-supported radio stations--occasionally. And Howard Stern. But I fell out of the habit of listening to the radio 20 years ago. So I'm afraid I can't relate as much as some might to the 'what happened to my radio station?' thing.

I listen to the radio for the news. My car radio sucks, and I haven't set up a radio at home in eons, so I can't get the college stations, which is what I would listen to.

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Originally Posted by Dusty Chalk

I listen to the radio for the news. My car radio sucks, and I haven't set up a radio at home in eons, so I can't get the college stations, which is what I would listen to.

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Just do a search for BXR 102.3 It's out of Columbia MO. As I type this their playing a Smashing Pumpkins tune. Oh yeah, you can listen on your puter.

I've posted about this enough times risk sounding like a spammer, but if you can stream you really should check out 3Wk.com. You can patch in right from your browser, or pick them up from the Radio Tuner on Windows Media Player (which can sound better cuz you can use SRS WOW enhancements) They play a true cutting edge indie mix, and also have a Classic Rock Underground station that blows AOR radio away.

Here's their last four tunes:

faint/let the poison spill... (tommie sunshine remix) - danse macabre remixes/saddle creek
a fir - ju well/step down - el torero/international hits

folk implosion/leaving it up to me - the new folk implosion/imusic

boom boom satellites/soliloquy - /sony japan

I listen to this most days at work (I also go to Accuradio.com Many, many styles of music).

Try it if you can. I'd be interested in what you think.