College Radio Today

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In a message dated 12/8/2008 12:02:50 PM Eastern Standard Time,  
boston-radio-interest-request@tsornin.BostonRadio.org writes:

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




Wow. I never knew a simple comment could be so over-analyzed. How about a  19 
year old kid, because that is what she is, making a comment about how  she 
felt about radio at that particular moment in time. 
 
 I think what she was saying is that life today is so uncertain, and  in her 
young mind, radio would always be there. Nothing in  life will always be there 
and that includes us.
 
Mike
 
 
 
 
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