I’m one of those who do not own the radio receiver anymore turns out.
Last year we had the National Emergency and it became obvious to me that we don’t have any radios in the house when I had to go out to the car in order to pick up news.
That’s true for the restaurant business in general, especially in my neck of the woods.
I’m surprised you were able to find a local radio station that wasn’t in automated mode! Most radio stations don’t have newsrooms any more, even so-called “News-Talk” stations. A few years ago I worked on Saturdays at a radio station in a very large market, a music-oriented station. There were five stations in the building. We had a tornado warning. The station I was on was the only one that was “live.” I covered it by tuning in to local TV and gleaning information from there, passing it along between songs. Had I not been there, our listeners would have never even known about it.
And, CBS announced a few weeks ago that they will shutting down their radio news operation in May, after nearly 100 years. Their news segments are still being carried by over 700 affiliates.
We still have the excellent WBBM news radio here in Chicago, which has traditionally always been live radio news. But, even they are being affected by changes:
- As noted above, they are going to lose their CBS network news segments next month.
- Last year, they started running pre-recorded news during the overnight hours. They loop the 11pm-midnight news broadcast hourly, until around 5am, when they go live again for the morning rush slot. However, I suspect that they have they ability to go live during overnight if some breaking news happens.
WGN radio, which is mostly talk rather than news, is also live for most of the day and evening, as I understand it.
Other than what’s built into my car I own no broadcast radio receivers. I have a NOAA weather warning receiver, but that’s not what @XOldiesJock is talking about. As I’ve said elsewhere, I pretty well zero-baselined all my possessions ~3 years ago, so I’ve got a lot less accumulated old stuff of any kind than most people my age. As in “substantially none whatsoever”.
I listen to music in the car, but it’s SiriusXM built into the car entertainment system, not AM/FM broadcast. Rarely I’ll stream a different service via my phone into the car, but that’s a mild PITA in terms of UI.
On a longer drive across the metro area I occasionally turn on AM or FM and scan through the stations. Being Miami, most are not in English, and those that are are either haranguing me or playing advertising. Not interested in any of that. Click.
And so dies an industry.
I like to listen to the radio in my car, but the car barely supports that. It really wants to be streaming something from my phone. It’s obvious that radio is on the way out.
I was watching a pair of YouTube reactors a while back. Something in the movie they were watching prompted one to ask the other “Is radio even still a thing?” I’d guess they were probably early 30s. So yeah, for any under 40 or so radio just isn’t a part of their lives.
Same here, it is the constant advertising and long DJ-babble breaks that killed it for me. I’ll occasionally listen in my car to a couple of public radio stations, and a college-radio station, when I get choppy cel reception, but that’s very rare. Otherwise we don’t have any radios in the home anymore, aside from a hand-crank emergency radio somewhere in storage.
The fading out of OTA radio makes me rather nostalgic, having once been a part of it. And living in hurricane territory I tend to value it more.
Heh… I mean, really, if I’m managing a business I will want my traveling staff to take a flight that leaves ample room for unforeseen issues, in an airline that can handle those. Break-your-Spirit Airlines was especially notorious for leaving you higher and dryer than the norm in case of cancellation or delay.
Didn’t realize I started this thread so long ago, but yes, I do remember the “all #1 songs of the rock era, but the announcer didn’t match up to the songs played” station in the Oklahoma panhandle.
Recently, in my area, the “bin” stores have taken a hit after going strong for the last 5 or so years. Had 4 a few weeks ago, one closed last week, the biggest one made a Facebook anoucment that they were cutting hours and going to more of an online auction format.
Their explanation they gave was that the middle man who was between the retailers (Amazon. Target, etc…) and the pallet buyers (the bin shops) started cherry picking the pallets. No more finding the great deals as before when an untouched pallet would come through. Also the store traffic dropped due to people not getting the great deals they once were getting.
My thought is that their primary customers were resellers and hoarders, Resellers realized that the market was crowded with the same items, the hoarders maybe finally ran out of room?