'Retto Ruminations
By: Amy Sciarretto
Last updated February 25th , 2010

Radio is getting the shaft.

I got my start in college radio. I interned at a radio trade magazine. My first full time job was as the metal columnist at a radio trade magazine. I worked on Sirius's 24/7/365 metal channel Hard Attack (before it became Liquid Metal after the merger with XM) for three years. I held the title of Director of Hard Rock Radio promotion at the record label I work for for six years before switching departments. It's obvious that I have quite a deep-seeded love for radio, as it has been a part of my career since the mid-1990s. And while I embrace the digital age and movement and technologies, I've come to see that radio isn't what it used to be, because of these change in technologies, something I often use this space to discuss. I hate seeing radio succumb the way it has. I miss the days when radio was the medium that let me know where I was and what was going on, along with print music magazines. I'm no codger or dinosaur, but missing the past doesn't mean I am holding onto an outdated mode of communication.

What prompted these thoughts was the time I spent driving home from visiting my dad in the Philly suburbs last Saturday and since I had left my iPod converter in a different handbag, I couldn't listen to whatever I wanted on my car stereo. I have no CDs in my car anymore, save for a few random comedy burns that I just was not in the mood to listen to that evening. My Sirius satellite radio has frayed wires, so it doesn't work any longer, so I can't listen to the replays of the replays of the Howard Stern show, as I do all day long at my office. I couldn't listen to sports radio any longer because I was driving up the interstate, away from the station's listening radius and the station became rendered unlistenable.  So it hit the scan button my car stereo system and quickly realized the opening statement of this column: radio sucks anymore. Once I hit the central Jersey region – too far from Philly, not close enough to NYC- I found myself distinctly underwhelmed by radio offerings. I wanted to find new songs, hear old classics, be surprised by hits of yore that I forgot about after they went to recurrent status. But none of that happened.

And not because the stations suck or the programmers suck or the talent sucks. It's quite the contrary. The format and the medium is slowly but surely being pushed out of relevance and that totally sucks. It used to be that radio was a cultural dictator as well as a cultural reflector, shaping what you listened to, all the while responding to what was becoming popular in music culture and in the city where the tower was located. It's not easy to do both – to dictate and reflect. It's usually one or the other, but radio was able to do both. Now it's struggling to be a relevant medium, as technology changes and develops with each passing minute. Sure, there is something to be said for a broad scope of national coverage, when it comes to satellite radio, which effectively serves anytown, anywhere at any time. There is also something to be said for being your own radio station by listening to your iPod – like your own personal JACK FM station, no?- but this type of control has cost us the regional flair and flavor and the unpredictability and the randomness that makes radio stations in a city, town or state unique to their geography. You could take the temperature of a the local culture simply buy flipping on a switch. When you love to travel, as I do, that's a thrill. It makes you feel connected to the place you are in.

I remember when I would listen to the local rock, alternative, hit and rhythmic stations for the hits, for information on shows coming to town, for the newest songs, for the DJ to talk about local news in the market. This particular night, as I flipped channels, I could not even stay on one station for more than a few minutes, because I couldn't find or detect the regional flavor and flair that I look for, that I crave, that I need, that I want. It does not matter if I am driving in an area that I am familiar with or that is totally foreign to me, I used to listen to local radio stations to get an idea of where I was, to submerge myself into the region's words, phrases, songs and sounds, even if just a radio station bumper, cart or jingle. I couldn't figure out what was the format of the stations I was scanning through, either. I wasn't looking at the frequency on the dial, either; I just kept hitting scan, randomly stopping, to see what information I could ascertain. Part of me thinks it was my brain, now trained to get what I want, when I want it, being so ADD-riddled by instant technologies that I wasn't even allowing myself a moment to absorb and soak what was on the dial. It's probably a combination of both.

I know that I proclaim that the digital age is killing lots of old fashion comforts, yet I still embrace the technologies that are out there. I will always do that, but it doesn't mean that I can't yearn for the days of old. That doesn't make me a fuddy duddy. It just makes me realize how quickly life and music are changing. ~ Amy Sciarretto

[Tags] Metal, Rock

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