I’ve recently realized that I enjoy listening to the radio much more than watching TV. As a matter of fact, I barely watch TV anymore and when I first moved in my own flat I didn’t even have a TV for over three years. However, I did have a radio which I listened to every night. And even today, I regularly lie in bed in the evening or early morning on weekends and listen to the radio for an hour, sometimes more. I guess there’s something that I find more “intimate” about the radio.
Anybody else feels this way? For the purpose of this thread, let’s forget about computers and smartphones and other such devices.
I do not own a radio, I never hear a radio except when I’m riding the bus. That exposure does not inspire me to wish I owned one. I have a few on-line go-to streaming bookmarks for music, none of which broadcast in a language I understand.
I do own a TV, but rarely use it for anything but a comfortable VGA monitor for online streaming. Although I often watch Jeopardy if I’m finished supper by 6 oclock.
Ive spent most of my life earning a living in one or the other of them. My day was spent scrabbling to fill the available airtime with the cheapest content and seeing to it that the advertisers could not think of a reason to cancel their accounts. Quality of program was not an issue. What we produced of value was not content or programs, we produced captive audience, which was then sold for profit, at cost-per-thousand rates.
As an aside, I’m old enough to remember when there was no TV, and the human mind was taught to sit in the dark and create images based on audible stimuli. So, in my mind, the radio/TV distinction as it is perceived today is something that evolved after my own formative years. Jack Benny’s Maxwell and Fibber McGee’s house at 77 Wistful Vista are as clear to me as if I had seen them on TV. That was a useful talent, which enabled me later on to actually read To Kill a Mockingbird and Lord of the Rings and Lolita.
I listen to radio more than I watch TV, but I only listen to radio in the car so that’s not saying much other than I don’t watch TV at all, most notably since I canceled my cable a few years ago. There was nothing on TV anyway.
My radio is for news so I NPR it back and forth to work. I have the three strongest NPR stations preset in my radio so when one fades during my commute, I switch to another.
I get all my entertainment media through streaming services.
I don’t watch any regular storyline-type TV shows anymore. But in our household, there is almost always baseball or tennis on. We enjoy our TV.
When we’re in the car, we are almost always listening to NPR. We do occasionally switch to satellite radio when we’re in the mood for music (or when we want to follow a baseball game while on the road).
I can go weeks without either (I do/did a lot of Living History events and hunting in remote locations) but the only one I ever found myself missing is radio.
When I first moved to Canada, the CBC was superb and I listened to it constantly. Over the years it lost some of its appeal until the Conservative government took over in the early 2000s. What they did, aside from reintroducing commercials that had been dropped several decades ago, was decide it was too “elitist”. Previously, you could listen to programs that varied from classical to light classical to jazz through the day and evening. They decided to install a programming that switched every couple hours from classical to rock, sometimes very heavy rock. Of course, hardly anybody is interested in that mix of genres, so I imagine very few listen to it any more. And it has not succeeded in selling many commercials. I list to a classical program 9-1, then an hour or so of an odd program called Shift that gradually varies over three hours from light classical to heavy rock. Then at 8 I tune into a 2 hour jazz program.
I’ve barely listened to radio the past several years. I use various mp3 players to listen to music. (From a desktop PC, to an ancient “thumb drive” player, to a microSD card stuck in my car stereo, to …)
I loathe “talking head” type programs. Just post a transcript and I’ll read it.
So TV kid still after mumble years. But with DVRs, I can skip the ads and boring crap.
It looks like I’m not alone in prefering the radio. Interesting.
I’ve discovered much more new music through the radio than TV and spent countless hours listening to a great piece and trying to guess who wrote / plays it, waiting for the announcer to reveal the answer. Plus, listening to the radio at night, in complete darkness, is a wonderful experience, I feel you can more easily focus on what’s playing. And of course you can listen to the radio while showering or driving. TV, not so much.
I have wonderful memories of going on holidays in France with my parents. We’d set out very early in the morning, while it was still dark and the combination of excitement (holidays!), new scenery and the weird radio programs that you get at that hour are forever ingrained in my mind.
Heck, I even like talking head programs if the topic is interesting.