In San Francisco, there is one independent radio station, Energy 92.7. It's owned by a dude from SF who comes on from time to time to let the listeners know that he is not controlled by the media conglomerates, and the DJ's employs choose their own music. San Francisco is known for being independent, and following the beat of its own drum, so the autonomy of the station is a big selling point. The station does not shy away from crossing media, as they have sponsored events and broadcast their shows on the internet, but still big companies have not bought them out.
So what does the channel sound like? you can listen for yourself, on their website, but it will sound exactly like every other channel, if you replaced Britney Spears with a techno group you've probably never heard of. This channel is straight up cookie cutter, playing the same 20 songs all day. The songs that are popular at the time are the only ones that get play, and the different DJ's only say different things before they introduce the same songs all day.
Remembering listening to the channel after watching Money For Nothing brought me to the conclusion that music companies are not entirely to blame for the degredation of radio. Listeners have to shoulder some of the blame, because we love listening to the same songs over and over, and have grown to lack the patience for listening to new things. As our society becomes isolated and individual, we expect everything we know we want as soon as we ask. If Energy started playing new, independent artists, some people listening would change the channel. A similar thing happened to another Bay Area radio station, Live 105. They went from playing independent Indie Rock to horrible mainstream bulls**t rock.
As a society, we cannot pass all blame over to companies buying out stations. Our music choices need to stay varied, and support those who do something different.
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4 comments:
I completely agree that many stations today only play the top 20 or most listened to songs. Oftentimes you can find yourself in a car for a couple hours listening to the same radio station and hear the same song 3-4 times. It's crazy. Radio stations need to spread out the various genres.
I agree as well that diversity is needed on the radio. Most stations will play a song that they want to be considered "hot" over and over again and people end up getting sick of it only a few weeks after the song hit the air waves. It also adds to the weakening of a bands independence because once they become too main stream, they start to lose their originality.
I agree that listeners share some of the blame for the state of radio. Radio can force feed us music all day long, but the companies don't make money unless people go out and buy the record, merchandise, or concert ticket. The capitalist system runs on supply and demand, and the media corporations can't make any profit if there is tons of supply and no demand. People can say what they want about the state of radio and the music industry, but a lot of the burden rests on the shoulders of the consumers.
Very good point. And I think this can extend to all kinds of media, not just music. We don't want to read the kind of articles we're not used to or learn about the things we don't already of a basis of understanding about. New things are scary. A trend I've noticed is with the information revolution we avoid all things uncomfortable, hard, or unknown. We can learn so much and yet somehow it has drawn us further into ourselves. In the words of the Wicked Witch of the West, "What a world! What a world!"
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