Home |
Search |
Today's Posts |
#1
|
|||
|
|||
Freedom is a radio station that's out of this world
The Sunday Times - Comment
May 01, 2005 Andrew Sullivan One by one America's media giants are beginning to teeter. Newspapers are haemorrhaging readers. The networks are reeling from cable television. Network news is staggering towards extinction, as its anchors retire or discredit themselves. Institutions such as The New York Times have been damaged by scandal and bias. The news weeklies are just as likely to run cover stories on health or money than the hard stories of the day. Now the last powerful, free-at-use medium that America has left is also on the ropes. I'm talking about radio. In a country where millions spend countless hours in cars or trucks, radio has always been powerful. It has powered America's vibrant music industry; it helped pioneer the conservative politics of the past two decades; publicly funded radio is extremely dear to the blue-state liberals, who trust it as Radio 4 is prized by middle England. But just as blogs and cable news decimated newspapers and network television, so radio is now in the grip of the next, big, decentralising, narrow-casting revolution. The reason? Satellite radio - digital-quality programming beamed to receivers from outer space. For a small subscription fee - about £7 a month - Americans can now receive more than 100 stations of limitless, commercial-free radio for any taste. You buy a tiny receiver, plug it into your car or home stereo, and get news, music, sports, talk in a dizzying variety, bypassing the entire broadcasting network that covered America for the better part of a century. The growth of satellite radio is faster than any new medium in history. From zero in 2001, the total subscriber list is projected to reach 8m by the end of this year. In the first three months of 2005, XM satellite radio, the biggest of the handful of new companies, added 540,000 new subscribers. Its revenue grew 140% over the previous year. Remember, listeners are paying for something that is essentially already available for free. Last week, in a sign of the maturity of the new medium, America's domestic goddess Martha Stewart signed on for a 24-hour Martha channel. The legendary "shock jock" radio host, Howard Stern, recently announced his intention to kiss regular radio goodbye in favour of a five-year $500m (£261m) contract to go to Sirius, the second-ranking satellite service. Why is this happening? Consolidation in the regular radio market has led to huge companies squeezing more ad revenue and commercial time out of existing formats. And who wants to listen to endless, screechy radio ads on the motorway? But satellite radio is commercial-free. It's also free of censorship in an increasingly puritanical America. Stern, for example, was regularly fined for indecency by the newly aggressive Republican-led Federal Communications Commission. Radio stars Opie and Anthony - known for outrageous stunts such as recording sex in churches - couldn't keep paying the government fines their smut brought on them. Satellite radio gets around political censorship and disciplining. Because it's not on general airwaves, subscribers get what they want, and public decency is preserved. Satellite radio more accurately caters to contemporary culture. Radio has always been an intimate medium. Broadcasting in an increasingly diverse and fractured culture means reaching a lowest common denominator that renders programmes bland or too commercial or simply too eclectic for increasingly picky listeners. The spectrum of satellite radio expands the choices to a dizzying degree. You can now have talk radio channels for conservatives, liberals, Hispanics, gays, or new agers. You can have Vatican-approved Catholic radio or WISDOM radio, with Deepak Chopra sending karma to your car. Interested in English football? On Sirius, you could have listened in Los Angeles or Chicago to the Bolton v Chelsea match or Southampton v Norwich. The entire baseball season is available, along with basketball and American football. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...592845,00.html |
Thread Tools | Search this Thread |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Forum | |||
197 English-language HF Broadcasts audible in NE US (23-NOV-04) | Shortwave | |||
190 English-language HF Broadcasts audible in NE US (21-NOV-04) | Shortwave | |||
Amateur Radio Newslineâ„¢ Report 1415 Â September 24, 2004 | Broadcasting | |||
214 English-language HF Broadcasts audible in NE US (09-APR-04) | Shortwave | |||
209 English-language HF Broadcasts audible in NE US (04-APR-04) | Shortwave |