Tired of AM talk radio
Originally published at Pretty Geek. You can comment here or there.
I am tired of talk radio on AM. It blares from every radio in the house with ever-increasing volume. Always KRLA with people like Dennis Prager and Michael Medved and always some sort of controversial topic. And while more often than not I’d generally agree with the hosts, it’s definitely not something I want to hear 24 hours a day. It’s not something I want to eat lunch listening to. But it is, it’s buzzing from the clock radio in my grandparents’ bedroom, blaring from the stereo in the den, playing loud and clear from my grandfather’s “shop” boom box in the back yard, and even streaming on my grandparents’ computer. I always try to turn off the streaming one when I’ve noticed that it’s on and nobody is in there because, well, it’s streaming.
But really, I went into the kitchen and I was making some shells and cheese for lunch. Getting tired of the hugely loud talk radio discussion about the 9/11 movie, I changed it to the classical music station. There was no one else in the kitchen or the two rooms on either side of it. Several minutes later my grandfather came in the door and put something down on the table, then he went outside. About a minute later I realized that the radio had been turned back to the talk radio. He had changed the radio and left the room again!
Okay, I love my grandparents, I really really do. But sometimes I just don’t understand. Who knew there could even be so many radios in one house. Why does there need to be talk radio playing at all times in every room? I’m not against spoken audio, I mean, I love podcasting and I listen to tons of podcasts. Another thing that I notice is that AM band radio doesn’t sound that great. I noticed that some of my grandfather’s favorite shows are now available as podcasts, some of the KRLA shows and also the NPR All Things Considered shows which they always listen to on Sunday afternoons, a welcome change. Even our church puts the sermons out as a podcast now. I brought up the concept of podcasting to my grandfather and the shows that were available and I even set up itunes to subscribe to some of the shows I thought he’d like with a smart playlist to show the most recent shows, but the sticking point seems to be that it isn’t live.
The point of it not being live confuses me. To me this seems like the opposite of the “time-shifting” revolution that everyone seems to want now, and I suppose it is. I realize that my grandfather is in his 70’s and live radio is what he’s used to, but I don’t understand why you wouldn’t want to listen to audio that’s not live. At any rate, I’d be happy to have some of the radios playing something else for part of the day.
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