You know you are getting old when:

[tonyb]

You know you are getting old when …

… you hear on a year-end news wrap-up that a pop music star named Taylor Swift at one point during the year held all 10 positions on Billboard’s Top 10 roster, and you have no familiarity with any of her songs.

I know what she looks like; that much is inescapable. But if I have heard any of her work I couldn’t tell you when and where that might have been.

 

[Turnip]

…you don’t listen to radio in your car anymore but have it on standby for TP/TA only.

 

[Trenchfriend]

…you don’t listen to radio in your car anymore but have it on standby for TP/TA only.

Funny!
In my nearly 15 year driving career from 2003 to 2017, I had the radio OFF circa 90% of time. And I was age 18 to 33!

 

[tonyb]

If I were in the radio biz, I’d take a serious look at other enterprises.

It’s a mistake to project one’s own experience onto the larger public, but there’s more than anecdotes to suggest that listening habits are changing in ways unfavorable to radio as we’ve known it.

Most of us have smartphones now, and an ever-increasing percentage of automobiles on the road have Bluetooth-enabled sound systems. So we can listen to the music and podcasts and audiobooks of our choice, rather than whatever the radio station decides for us. (Cars, by the way, are where most radio listening happens. The pandemic, which drastically changed commuting habits, was particularly tough on NPR stations, or so I’ve read.)

Radio will still be around, and will still attract an audience and advertising revenue. It still is, and will remain, a great medium for local news and information. Still, I find myself among the millions upon millions of people who have increasingly lent their ears to other media.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I saw this coming 25 years ago, which is why I got out of it when I did. I still listen to regular AM radio in the car, because it's still a good source for spot news if you can get a station that foreswears the bottomless idiocy of the "talk radio" format, but I'm the only person I know who does. Of all my many old radio colleagues there is one, and only one, who is still earning a living at it, and he's basically the only non-sales person in an otherwise fully-automated station. I feel bad for him, because I couldn't linger over a loved one's corpse like that.

I don't really have any interest in podcasts, because I've yet to hear one that didn't irritate me far more than radio ever did. If it's a topic I know a lot about, I get irritated with shoddy research and dubious conclusions, and if it's a subject I want to know more about, I get sick of waiting for the hosts and the guests to stop preening each other and get down to cases. And I'm not a particular fan of audiobooks, because they go too slow for me -- I read on paper much faster than I can listen to an audiobook, and after a few experiments I got frustrated and gave it up. So that stuff is fine for those who like it, but it isn't for me. So I guess when they finally do turn off the lights on terrestrial radio, I'll be the last one listening.

As far as postwar pop music is concerned, with very few exceptions I wouldn't recognize any of the Legends of Boomer Rock if I heard them, let alone the current favorites. Just never had any interest in any of that kind of music, not even when I was the target audience. It all sounds like feedback and caterwauling to me.

 

[tonyb]

I was among the many friends of the late Phil Harper (I wrote a little feature on him once, which is how we met), the voice of Harry Nile, private eye, who was also heard up and down the dial at Top-40 stations here and there throughout the West but mostly in Seattle and Portland going back to the mid 1960s. Toward the end of his life he picked up some work at an NPR affiliate that played mostly “traditional” jazz and at a country station where he went by the moniker Buffalo Phil. And he did more than a bit of voice tracking. I doubt he could tell you where his voice-tracked tones were heard, and at that point I doubt he cared.

He had that ineffable common touch. A listener had the sense he was speaking directly to him or her.

The barriers to entry in the podcasting world are low, so it should come as no surprise that much of the content is pretty darned low, too. But the cream rises. I’ve listened to some well-produced, informative stuff on podcasts. On a two-day drive home back in the spring I took in, among other things, a lengthy podcast about Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes. I came away from it knowing much more than I did.

 

[tonyb]

Oh, and H.L. Mencken was quoted as saying something to the effect of not caring how many radio fans there would be after he’s dead and gone.

 

[Trenchfriend]

MDR Middle-German-Broadcast, powered by public radio/television licence fee.

Radio Channels

MDR Sachsen
MDR Sachsen-Anhalt
MDR Thüringen
MDR Aktuell
MDR Kultur
MDR Klassik
MDR Jump (age 19-49)
MDR Sputnik (age 14-18)
MDR Tweens (age 8-13) ((DAB+/www only))
MDR Schlagerwelt ((DAB+/www only))

But as you can imagine, these are not all seperate departments (except the first three!), as they would have been in older days. Just organizational units. And working "economical" is a big priority, there. And there are many people here, excempt from fees, so budget must be handled more or less well.

So I guess, in the next 15 years, they are going to terminate "Grandpa's Klassik radio" first. MDR Kultur doesn't really need it's brother channel.

And so things will surely happen to BR, SWR, SR, WDR, HR, NDR, RBB, Deutsche Welle, Deutschlandradio, etc.. They will melt together, what can be melted together. There's not other way for public radio in the future.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I used to enjoy Deutsche Welle on the shortwave, and a while ago I came across a cassette aircheck I'd made back in the early 90s just noodling along the 31 meter band. When the DW interval signal came up, there were tears.

 

[GHT]

When the DW interval signal came up, there were tears.

Aw, Lizzie, how I resonated with that, albeit in a different environment.

 

[belfastboy]

If I were in the radio biz, I’d take a serious look at other enterprises.

It’s a mistake to project one’s own experience onto the larger public, but there’s more than anecdotes to suggest that listening habits are changing in ways unfavorable to radio as we’ve known it.

Most of us have smartphones now, and an ever-increasing percentage of automobiles on the road have Bluetooth-enabled sound systems. So we can listen to the music and podcasts and audiobooks of our choice, rather than whatever the radio station decides for us. (Cars, by the way, are where most radio listening happens. The pandemic, which drastically changed commuting habits, was particularly tough on NPR stations, or so I’ve read.)

Radio will still be around, and will still attract an audience and advertising revenue. It still is, and will remain, a great medium for local news and information. Still, I find myself among the millions upon millions of people who have increasingly lent their ears to other media.

I use a clock radio as my alarm...tuned to a classic rock station. I love to hear the traffic report each morning and it cheers me that now retired I no longer have that form of torture in my life any longer.

 

[tonyb]

… it’s 7:44 on a Friday night during the holiday season and after a modest dinner you ask yourself if it’s really too early to turn in for the night.

 

[Trenchfriend]

America exports only the finest products of its rich, nuanced culture to its international friends.

And thank you for Hodge Twins! They're killing my brain cells, but I can't stop watching their family stuff with Dana & Co..

 

[Trenchfriend]

"Pickled Egg", it's funny, because it was still common in the 90s, in old Germany (Soleier). But I guess, it's cooked in the pickled juice, not pickled after cooking, removing the yolk, in North America, for simplifying it?

 

[Zombie_61]

If I were in the radio biz, I’d take a serious look at other enterprises.

It’s a mistake to project one’s own experience onto the larger public, but there’s more than anecdotes to suggest that listening habits are changing in ways unfavorable to radio as we’ve known it.

Most of us have smartphones now, and an ever-increasing percentage of automobiles on the road have Bluetooth-enabled sound systems. So we can listen to the music and podcasts and audiobooks of our choice, rather than whatever the radio station decides for us. (Cars, by the way, are where most radio listening happens. The pandemic, which drastically changed commuting habits, was particularly tough on NPR stations, or so I’ve read.)

Radio will still be around, and will still attract an audience and advertising revenue. It still is, and will remain, a great medium for local news and information. Still, I find myself among the millions upon millions of people who have increasingly lent their ears to other media.

Let's not forget that auto manufacturers have been installing turntables, reel-to-reel, eight track, and cassette tape players, and CD players in their vehicles for decades now. Bluetooth is just one of the latest technologies available for drivers to "program" their own listening pleasures. Will it affect the way radio stations conduct their business? Probably. It seems television and radio are both susceptible to the popularity of "streaming", so their technologies will likely adapt to that too. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Trenchfriend]

Some words on wonderful enjoyable daily things:

As long as there's the good old plain white bar soap, here called "household curd soap", still coming in the 3 pcs-packs (3 x 100g), this one little corner of the world is in order!!
I just love love love the simple perfumed bars, giving tribute to Grand-Grandma's times with the loose soap flakes in the paperbag.

Some years ago, you even had the choice in supermarket to get the pure curd soap OR the glycerine-enriched fine/bodysoap for multipurpose.
Now, only the gentle multipurpose bodysoap is still available. But it doesn't smaller the joy for me!

 

[Trenchfriend]

"Issa hoooood snack..."

9 M size-eggs fit in the 1 liter glass!
Only salt and a half cup vinegar.

 

[Turnip]

In West-Germany you could find these literally on any old school pub,(aka Kneipe) counter until mid eighties of last century.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Those were also a mainstay of American gas station snack bars, right along side the "Red Hot" pickled sausages and the hot dogs revolving slowly on aluminum rollers. There would always be one or two left in the jar, floating in the murky water, and you wondered who ate the rest of them.

 

[Tiki Tom]

Pickled eggs, pretzels, and beer. That combo was a routine after Thursday night classes when I was at university. The resulting farts were eye watering. Good times.