Tuesday, January 6, 2009

The Continuing Death Of Radio

I love radio. The only job I truly loved was, no joke, board operator. I was by myself, had no one yelling at me or telling me what to do, I could watch TV or surf for porn on the company's computer, and when I was done doing that I could listen to sports on the radio. I also loved working odd hours. For about a year and a half I had the run of the place to myself on Sunday nights. That meant I could listen to the Sunday night baseball game broadcast by ESPN Radio while watching it on ESPN -- or watching something else, like Prime Minister's Questions on C-SPAN (I miss that).

I hate it when people lose their jobs. Especially when it's radio, a medium I love but know is dying. And also especially when it's the people working the odd hours, like what happened to the two guys holding down the fort for WCCO, the long-time news-talk station in town. They are, in the bottom of their hearts, misanthropes who love being awake when the world is asleep because when they drive home from the station's downtown Minneapolis studio, they'll be smoking down the highway as they see traffic the other way backed up a mile. (I worked overnights in other jobs.) But they have syndicates doing that now. Sad. What can these hosts do now?

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