Over the last year I have driven through many states for various reasons. Radio is incredibly homogeneous across the country and can be divided into 4 groups; AM talk radio, FM Country, FM Classic Rock and FM Pop - the latter having a couple of sub-categories. The problem is finding a station not built to "pander" to a target audience.
Back in the '70s I remember listening to an "album rock" station that would play anything from the Moody Blues to The Cars or from Janis Joplin to REO Speedwagon. It was the "rock genre" but not sliced into "Classic, lite, Grunge , Alt", etc, etc. Stations that painted with a broader stroke like this were able to expose someone to a lot of different styles within a genre and were also able to aviod repeating the same artists songs over and over again! Today all sounds the same because, as so many others have pointed out, the media conglomerates have emphasized (too much) what their marketing departments tell them, all in order to have "documentation" to help in their sales of advertising.
I say bring back the radio station who turns you on to all types of artisis, SPONSORS LOCAL music events with LOCAL artists AND has DJ's that actually can tell you about the music you are about to (or just) heard! Media conglomerates owning a bunch of stations doesn't bother me as much as some people but I just wish the people at the top would wake up and allow the station managers to call thier own shots in their local market. This could make radio cool again IMO. Regards, Tony
Back in the '70s I remember listening to an "album rock" station that would play anything from the Moody Blues to The Cars or from Janis Joplin to REO Speedwagon. It was the "rock genre" but not sliced into "Classic, lite, Grunge , Alt", etc, etc. Stations that painted with a broader stroke like this were able to expose someone to a lot of different styles within a genre and were also able to aviod repeating the same artists songs over and over again! Today all sounds the same because, as so many others have pointed out, the media conglomerates have emphasized (too much) what their marketing departments tell them, all in order to have "documentation" to help in their sales of advertising.
I say bring back the radio station who turns you on to all types of artisis, SPONSORS LOCAL music events with LOCAL artists AND has DJ's that actually can tell you about the music you are about to (or just) heard! Media conglomerates owning a bunch of stations doesn't bother me as much as some people but I just wish the people at the top would wake up and allow the station managers to call thier own shots in their local market. This could make radio cool again IMO. Regards, Tony