Reviving Radio

I’m a radio listener, but sometimes, I’m ready to give up and admit defeat. Maybe radio is dead? I come to this conclusion because I once spent 2 consecutive hours pressing the scan button on my radio without hearing one thing I wanted to listen to.

I actually like the radio. It’s convenient. I know I have other options. In fact, I have an MP3 that I can plug into my car. Problem is, it has over a thousand songs on it and I would probably just wind up scanning all of those as well. Plus, you miss some interesting stuff. The radio can give you new music. My MP3 only has the stuff I already heard.

But central Florida, you have got to give me a little more to work with. Two consecutive hours of pressing a damn button and I didn’t hear one thing I wanted to listen to. Why? Because you have all been playing the same set list for years. The only thing that changes is the genre.

I don’t think radio is really dead. I think instead, people started saying it was dead and everyone gave up. So I have some suggestions to fix this failing system and hopefully, never get carpal tunnel syndrome again from pressing scan.

If you are a classic rock station, less Eagles, more AC/DC. Personally, I have always felt that the Eagles fell into the country genre, not the rock one. Regardless of what genre they really are, there is no good reason that I have heard the song “Hotel California” at least once a fucking day since the day I was born. Yeah, I know, they were huge in the 70’s. Let’s leave them there.

Popular music stations, just because a song makes it to the top ten does not mean it needs to be played every hour on the hour. Look, I love Alicia Keys. She is a very talented artist. The first time I heard the song “Girl on Fire” I thought it was fantastic. By the 500th listening, it made me want to light myself on fire. Stop playing the song until everyone hates it. Less is more.

Any station, if the song requires a bleep in every stanza, just don’t play it. I get bleeping the one f-bomb dropped in ‘Some Nights’. I do not get playing the song “She Fucking Hates Me” by Puddle of Mud and bleeping out 2 minutes of the entire 3 minute play time. If you have to bleep more than twice, take it off the set list.

Rap stations, DMX’s ‘Party Up’ is a good enough song to stand on its own. I don’t need to hear what it sounds like mixed with cuts from Tupac, Biggie Smalls, Pink or the Glen Miller fucking Orchestra. Just play it and move on to the next song. Save practicing you’re mixing for your cousin’s Bar Mitzvah.

DJs – old school v new school rap, get it right. Just because you’re a 22, and everything that happened before 2001 is old to you, does not make it ‘old school’. Simple explanation for old school v. new school; old school got its influence from funk music in the seventies. At the time, Disco was the music of the day. As a result, old school rap didn’t get a lot of attention. They had no money for recording or equipment and instead put their rhymes down via sampling (stripping the beat out of an existing song and reorganizing it). So, if it has a minimalist sound, i.e. Run DMC., its old school. If it has 17 layers of synthesized music and a custom made hook, it’s new school, i.e. Jay-Z. I’m a 32 year old white girl who was born in NH. If I know the difference, you should too.

Finally, every single station, why do you never play the BB King/Clapton collaboration “Riding with the King”? It’s King and Clapton playing a guitar duet for Christ sakes. It might be the finest thing to ever happen to music. So why the hell don’t I hear it, um, ever? Oh, yeah, because you have to leave room to play ‘Hotel California’ another 11 times.

Radio doesn’t have to be dead. In fact, it could probably still thrive. The problem is too many stations get stuck in their set lists, people stop listening and the sponsors pull out. If radio is going to be useful for something more than a communication method following the upcoming zombie apocalypse, then these stations need to get their acts together to save it.