RADIO, RADIO

Dear Readers,
Call me old fashioned, but I've always been fascinated with the radio. With so many more listening options these days, the free airwaves still thrive, and like a maiden aunt who you can borrow a twenty off of now and again, we appreciate it being around without having to make a big fuss about it. Yet I am finding it harder and harder to find stuff on the radio that I can actually stand to listen to. The irony of ironies.
Morning radio especially is an American national embarrassment - that is, if embarrassment was still possible in the age of Bush, Bailouts and Britney. I concede that people need to hear something 'peppy' to make bearable the solo, 100-mile auto trip to work each morning, but listening to the juvenile antics of otherwise grown people is disheartening, to say the least. NPR (No Point Radio) at least offers a serious alternative, but they are losing listeners daily, bored into narcoleptic one-car wrecks by the drone of the adenoidal hosts and the endless 'audio reports' about local village water-treatment awareness days in Bolivia. See that Volvo suddenly veering into a guardrail? That's another NPR listener down the drain.
But surely there must be a middle way between programs hosted by the class a**hole and the class nerd. 'Morning Zoo Crew'-type shows are the hardest to listen to. They usually consist of a mouthy duo who crack each other (and their witless sidekicks) up with crude and unfunny comments, make ham-handed prank calls and create lame song parodies. The French seem funny after 5 minutes of listening to that. To hear human beings reduced to hooting, slathering, leering idiotic jerks makes me want to belong to another species altogether.
And it's not so-called 'bad words' or 'taboo topics' that I'm against, either. In fact, I believe there should be no censorship at all (well, maybe I'd ban one topic - any mention, joke, report, speculation or comment by or about the current Governor of Alaska. She's so October!). But using 'off-color' humor on the radio is an art that should only be practiced by a select few, and not allowed for the pond life that dominates morning drive-time.
I used to be a big fan of Howard Stern before he deserted free radio. The fun of his show was testing the limits of what could be said and done over the airwaves, and the frisson of listening to him as he neared the electrified wire of the censor's bleep. I don't know what he does over at Sirius Radio, but I hope he hasn't descended to all-in smut, just because he can. Stern revealed how unique he was by the way he used bawdy humor on the radio to get us to use our minds and free our senses. But the 'morning crews' that pollute radio these days makes the fart the intellectual pinnacle of comedy. What they offer up as free-form, no-holds-barred spontaneous radio is actually a dumb-headed formula. Plus, they are way too loud. And ignorant.
Speaking of loud and ignorant, the other loathsome species on radio is the Right Wing Talkshow Host. These personalities pollute bandwidth from coast to coast with commentary that borders on the insane. I admit that I used to occasionally listen to some of them because - give them credit - it's truly stunning how they can gas on for 2 or 3 hours without even so much as one "err..." or "umm..." or "like". Rich, bloated misanthropes like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are the worst (or the best, at least at what they do). Yet they reap the rewards of their success not by making people better informed or smarter, but by making them dumber. An underused mind can easily be persuaded by unchallenged argument. Neither host brooks any dissent, and reverts to schoolyard insults when thoughtfully challenged. Therefore, listeners softened up by the inanities in the morning are prime victims for the the fact-free simplicities of the Hannitys in the afternoon. And while the talk show titans live insulated lives of disaster-proof splendor, we get corporate misfeasance and Iraq, wrapped up in a leak-proof American flag. As for the various musical formats that are offered up, they are like your local McDonald's - pretty much the same no matter where you live, and about as nourishing.
Lately, I've been reduced to listening to Bloomberg Radio - especially in these days of financial guacamole. It's interesting to hear all these experts dispassionately report and discuss the machinations of our economy like they're describing the goings on in an ant farm. It gives you sad perspective on how the corporatization and homogenization of radio exercises such deadening control over the American mind.
So am I saying 'don't listen'? Not exactly. Radio - like all corporate media - needs advertising dollars to survive as it is. What if, when you get called by one of the radio ratings surveys, you told them you were listening to the voice of the man inside your head instead of the usual stations? Maybe, after a few months of these responses, programmers would begin to experiment again, trying new things to attempt to find out what all us crazy people really wanted to hear. And maybe, we'd really listen.
I was tuned to BBC Radio 3(on my compooter) as I typed this, which put me in mind of old blighty, and the sight of a stained and battered kettle. Warm up the teapot, Mum, (loose, not bags) because right here it's 4 o'clock and time for some tea.