College Radio Today

[Richard Chonak]

I was surprised at the Oregon student's confidence:

> “At the end of the day your friends might not be there, your job might not be there,” Ms. Diamond said, “but radio will always be there. And it’s really cool to have something you can depend on.”

It's hard to know what this means, if anything.

It sounds as if the reliable existence of radio will be a source of 
consolation to her in future adversities, in the way most of us look to 
God, our countries, our families, and our philosophies.

Surely she is not so vapid: after all, she is a public policy major!

Is she hoping that the intimate experience of radio will endure?   That 
it will be the experience of a listener taking in a presentation 
artfully and personally crafted by a producer and presented by on-air 
personalities?   In commercial music radio, that's gone and she knows 
it.  And who's to say that college radio will survive: I can readily 
imagine most colleges de-funding their student outlets in hard times.

So what does she mean?   That radio will remain a piece of comfortingly 
familiar technology?  I can add to her consolation by assuring her that 
the book, as a media technology, will also endure, at least for the rest 
of her life.   In its current form -- the codex, the bound folio -- it's 
been around 1600 years.  That makes me feel pretty good about it.

And it's true: there will be something we can call radio: audio streams 
will be available through portable devices.   We can expect even more of 
them: with portable internet devices already available in our cell 
phones, and probably more convenient in the future.

But radio will no longer be a common social experience, a source of 
shared popular culture.  I can listen in my car to an internet stream 
from somewhere in France and you can listen to the reggaeton channel on 
the satellite, and never the twain shall meet unless, God forbid, we 
collide.

So what about radio is going to last?

And what on earth is she trying to say?

--RC