Fraters Libertas

Spirit Of Sirius

I like to go to the gym during lunch and get a workout in. I also usually listen to Rush on the headphones while I do so. Yesterday, as I rested between reps I started thinking about radio and how incredibly dated the entire premise of it is.

Radio started in the days when people basically had no money for entertainment. Smart businessmen decided to come up with a deal where the audience would get their entertainment for free over the airwaves in exchange for having to listen to paid ads. In 1930, this was a pretty good deal for most people who would never had access to news, weather, sports and Fibber McGee and Molly in any other way.

But 75 years later? Why on earth would I subject myself to annoying ads, limited programming and stale, over-played music when by plopping down a few hundred bucks and signing up for Sirius satellite radio I can get every kind of programming imaginable and WITHOUT ads?

I admit I now look down on the poor souls who have to put up with commercial over-the-air radio: they're rubbing two sticks together and I'm walking around with a flamethrower.

One of the things I'm discovering from listening to non-ad talk shows on Sirius is that isn't so much the ads that kill conventional talk radio it's the momentum that the breaks destroy. Rush will just be getting into a groove when he is cut short and forced to start over where he left off when the ads are over.

Again, why should I put up with this? Sirius is about nine bucks a month--a pittance to be given all of the entertainment, news and music options it bestows.

We have all heard that Stern will be moving to Sirius when his contract ends with Viacom. I would hope that other shock jocks give Sirius (or XM) serious consideration when their contracts are up. The conservative talk show audience has dough, but they are not exactly early adopters of new technology. Once more and more of us start to realize that we are living in the stone age of radio and there's a product available that is markedly superior to that old transistor, there will be a revolution afoot.

Hmm...kind of like what is happening with blogs and the MSM.