You should put your father in law name of the items you decide to buy him ,things do have a way of ‘getting lost’ in nursing homes.
Here is an entire forum discussing assistive tech and Echo.
There are some really good old time radio stations accessible through apps like TuneIn in both Android, iOS and Windows.
My favorite is Hank’s Gumshoe OTR which specializes in detective shows from the 1940s to 1970s. There are similar stations for comedy shows as well.
For more modern radio plays BBC Radio 4 Extra is also available through radio apps.
You might make arrangements with an immigrants-aid group, for him to meet with people who want to practice speaking English.
Why is TV not an option? a lot of shows now have descriptive video, which is to say, you turn on a second audio track that describes the action on screen. You turn it on once, and leave it on, like captions, You don’t have to turn it on every time you turn on the TV.
A lot of DVDs, both new releases and classic films, have descriptive video tracks. It says so on the box.
My cable system has a remote you can speak into, and it just comes that way-- it’s not an extra perk I have to pay for, or anything. Maybe whatever company that is local to your FIL has this as well. Or maybe someone who works at his facility wouldn’t mind helping him find a program his likes from time to time.
This was mentioned before, but is worth repeating. In the 1940s and before we got TV in 1952, my family would lie on the living room floor and listen to radio dramas in the dark. Somehow we always had a mental picture of what was happening in drama, thanks to gifted sound effects men who provided footsteps and car doors slamming. Quite a lot of those shows were done live, as there was no audiotape in those days, so many are lost to posterity., But I think quite a lot of them were recorded and are available now to listen to. I believe there are also groups that have retrieved the original scripts, and have reconstructed them using dedicated modern actors.
Sirius and XM are the same company now, they’ve merged. If you have a subscription, you can stream SiriusXM over the internet.
Thank you all, I showed this thread to my wife last night and we will be spending part of the Thanksgiving holidays looking at these suggestions.