Poor Helen Fields, she doesn't know what to do with herself. The local public radio station, WETA, went 24/7 talk, abandoning decades of a talk/classical music mix. This follows on the heels of WHFS' change to Spanish music. WHFS was the local alternative music station, and was for decades the only station for men and women who were curious enough about the world that they could sit through songs they hadn't heard before. The change was a blow for many aging Gen Xers who saw themselves as permanently cutting edge.
To the subset of DC radio listeners who embraced the music of WHFS and the politics of WETA, it's been a hard couple of months.
Poor Helen Fields. She's dismayed and disappointed by all these changes. And so, like any typical blue state progressive -- ie, Philistine -- faced with change that cramps their style, she's whining about it. True to form, the Philistine, er, Washington Post, gives her a platform to whine away:
And look at me now -- more than a decade later, back in my hometown and HFS-less once again. I was stunned when the station abruptly switched to a Latin music format a month ago. Still, I could have lived with that, but then came an even bigger shock: Another longtime favorite, public radio station WETA, decided to drop classical music and go all-news and talk, beginning tomorrow. Suddenly, I find myself adrift in the ether, lost without a radio station of my own.
This pair of losses reminds me of how much the little voices on the air can mean.
In my blue-state-of-mind past, I used to listen to WETA (pronounce: wheeta) all the time. I thought it made me smart. You know, all that nuance and all. Of course, it was a station that filled the local airways with the voices of aging radical leftists, cookie-cutter minority "personalities," and heaping pile of blue state conventional wisdom, and Boomer navel gazing. With my slow pre-9/11 conversion to the Red Side, WETA became increasingly annoying. It's only redeeming value was its classical music programming. After 9/11, however, I couldn't listen to it anymore. Classical music or not, I haven't listened to that station since about September 15, 2001. Still, for a lot of people, WETA was one of very few alternatives to the commercial radio wasteland in DC. The other two being WAMU (a college station) and WCSP (C-SPAN radio).
The fact is that most radio stations in the DC area are owned by two companies, Infinity or Clear Channel. If these companies decide they have enough rock music with one station then, well, that's their choice to make. If they decide that what they need is a Spanish language station that will tap into the gray markets generated by legal and illegal immigration into the region, well, that's their choice, too. The results, however, have been disastrous. Radio in the DC area is an awful mix of commercials, treacle, and the same 15 songs from the 70s, 80s, and 90s (anyone want to listen to "Pride: In the Name of Love" again...and again...and again?).
What Helen doesn't seem to understand is that she, too, has choices. She doesn't need to listen to the crap being pushed by commercial stations, or the aging fools at WETA. She can listen to two different stations dedicated entirely to New Wave music, one for the old stuff and one for the new stuff. There are stations that play really whacked out, cutting edge music that you would never hear on WHFS. There are three classical music stations, including one for vocal music. One for disco; one for 70's pop. One that plays old metal and another that plays, well, metal music that makes me feel old.
If I keep on harping on the virtues of satellite radio, I'm only doing it because I believe in competition. When consumers have more choices the products get better. Commercial radio knows they have a big problem with satellite competition, and they've done their darnedest to try and stop its growth. If progressive blue-staters -- Philistines, all -- yammer and whine constantly about the cookie cutter character of American culture then they should have no problem embracing satellite radio. Since there is no censorship, several NPR/PRI stations and foreign news, music and talk stations, they should be running to embrace the product and its format. Right? I won't hold my breath, especially since they have venues like the Washington Post to whine incessantly.
Andrew Sullivan recently mentioned the advent of satellite radio (among other things) as a negative trend that stovepipes our tastes and leads to further cultural and social isolation:
It wouldn't be so worrisome if it weren't part of something even bigger. Americans are beginning to narrowcast their own lives. You get your news from your favorite blogs, the ones that won't challenge your own view of the world. You tune into a paid satellite radio service that also aims directly at a small market - for New Age fanatics, or liberal talk, or Christian rock. Television is all cable. Culture is all subculture.
I have experienced the opposite. The sheer variety of content has a liberating effect. It stimulates your curiosity, and motivates you to explore the music of other decades and genres. Right now I'm listening to Lionel Hampton. Just before, it was Berlin. And before that? ABBA (not by choice, I've been busy typing). There is next to no choices available in broadcast radio, and as a result, a lot of people are turning to iPods for their entertainment. It's not the technology that's narrowcasting our world, it's the increasingly bad decisions of commercial radio executives and aging Boomers at public radio stations who believe they are maintaining their viability by making short-term changes that will lose them long-term listeners. Frustrated with an increasing lack of choices, people will find other means of defining the soundtrack of their lives.
Buy a satellite radio, Helen, and stop whining.
