vocial

All right. I have a really big bone to pick with a local radio station. Specifically the ownership of, the new ownership of that local radio station. Now, I'm not big on gospel music, but WCAB in Rutherfordton, North Carolina has new owners. They had it about a year or so ago, and they kept the call around, morning call around report. We're a local, small town area. It was a very popular local thing. Well, last week was its last week, and apparently they were told it's no longer needed. Now there was a gospel hour, and I'm not fond of gospel music, but it was from 6 to 7 a.m. For people that like that stuff, it was great for them. No more. So basically, I think they're pretty much gonna try to get rid of all the local talent on the shows and such, and just turn it into a country music station with no talent on the air. They'll still probably do Braves games for now. The thing that bugs me most about the way radio has been going the last 30 some odd years is the fact that these huge corporations that now own radio stations, and even the smaller companies that own like stations like WCAB, it's ruined what made radio special. Radio used to be a connective... you got to know the DJ. You got to know... you could call in and request a song. You could, you know, you got to... they used to do remotes at businesses to promote businesses. They used to do contests, giveaways, and all that stuff, and it really made you feel connected to your favorite radio station. Now they just play music and shove a bunch of commercials in there because they got to pay the bills, and I know why it is, because a lot of folks go, I don't want people to listen to talk during the music. I'm like, and now you got Pandora, you got Spotify, you got YouTube music, and all these others, and unfortunately it's meant that radio is pretty much dying. It's not a completely... it probably will never completely die off, but it's becoming pretty much banal. Sports talk radio was once a very powerful format. Now it's kind of dying out because of podcasts. The only ones that are doing well are conservative talk radio, which, you know, even that isn't what it once was because you got podcasts all over the place. Satellite radio still is there, but it's mainly a mobile app. Now how many people actually have... you know, unless you're in your car, you know, most people use the app, you know, but radio unfortunately has kind of died out. Once upon a time, many, many moons ago, I wanted to be a radio DJ, but then I went to college to train for it and realized the industry was changing into something that I knew wasn't going to work out in the long term, so that's why I kind of gave up that dream. You know, it kind of sucks when you're young and you realize that the thing you wanted to do, or one of the things you wanted to do, and you really thought you'd be really good at it, you realize that down the road a computer is going to be doing it, and they won't need human interaction anymore. And it's a real shame. It's hard to believe that I'm of a generation, one of the last of the generation, that knew what it was like to actually be able to call into a DJ and request a song and actually get that song played. It's hard to believe. And this new generation now, they can just put it on their Spotify or whatever, but they don't have that interaction. It's a real shame.