If there are older threads on this topic, I couldn’t locate any that addressed my tastes, so here goes:
Over the past year or better I’ve spent many hours listening online to such programs as:
Fresh Air (all their archives – Terry Gross is the best interviewer, period) A Prairie Home Companion (ditto on archives – mostly for Keillor’s humor) Wait, wait, don’t tell me (ditto on archives – I get most of my news here)
Random searches on the NPR website for topics or people of interest, mostly music and movies.
My only music-related stations are 100% straight-ahead jazz:
WMOT (local 24-hour jazz format) KKJZ (Los Angeles area 24-hour jazz station)
And just recently I’ve been listening to the SEC Sports talk show on
Paul Finebaum Radio Network (streamed through al.com)
If you have some favorite stations along the lines of these categories (or close to them), please advise. Especially if you know of another sports talk show that addresses SEC football. (Finebaum is a big flag-waver for Alabama and I’d rather listen to a homer for Auburn!)
(I even listened extensively to the C-SPAN stations back before the elections last year, but haven’t had the stamina since then.)
A couple of years ago I had a REALLY REALLY REALLY boring assignment at work, the kind of thing that takes a lot of time but utilizes almost NO brainpower. I saved my sanity by listening to almost all the archived files of TAL.
I came in to say exactly this. Many stations are free, and the variety is ridiculous. You’ll have to spend an hour or two with any given station to see if it REALLY suits you (Frank’s Americana is almost always my pick).
I used to get my news from Wait, wait… (and The Daily Show), but I’ve recently added the Rachel Maddow Show from Air America Radio. Air America does real-time streaming, but it’s more convenient to get it (or any of thir shows) on their archive.
Anybody else listen to Finebaum, radio or web? Fun show with lots of crazy callers to perk up your day (or whenever you listen to the daily archive). He keeps a two-month (current plus last) archive of “guests” and several pages of “humorous clips” that are real hoot to listen to.
You might want to check out Podcasts too - Podcast Alley has a list. You need a software for downloading these (e.g. iPodder), but I believe the downloaded files are a plain MP3 files that you can listen to on any computer or portable player. You don’t need an iPod.
Since you like jazz, you might like the Global Cafe on my station, WSYC-FM. We’re a small college radio station with a good morning show. Check us out sometime!
I’m a premium member of Live365, as it’s the only spot on the internet that I’ve found my exact taste in music (Eurodance/Hi-NRG genre), and I am very happy to give them 50 or so bucks a year for the privilege.
As an aside, there was a survey a couple months ago for premium members about how they want to proceed even further, there was some truly excellent ideas (ranging from recording the live radio feeds and save them on your HD, the ability to purchase any song you could hear on any radio station, the ability to do like IPod and pick any song on any radio station and download it to an MP3 player or your own computer to make your own playlist, etc.). Most of these aren’t cutting edge and you can already do them, but unfortunately I can’t remember some of the better ones (there were a few things that would be pretty revoultionary I think).