It's Not Really Radio, But It's Fun

Radio is a great medium, but there are really a number of media that grow out of radio.

One of those is television. As you likely already know, television transmissions are generally sent "over-the-air" (or were before cable and satellite), in the form of radio waves.

Radio, of course, is traditionally transmitted in the same manner. That's true whether it's local broadcast radio or shortwave radio or citizens' band or ham radio. It's all radio.

Because I'm a fan of shortwave radio and the Internet, I've been spending some time recently, checking out radio "streams" and podcasts of foreign radio stations. On one of my "trips" I went to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, which operates in a way similar to the BBC or CBC. At the ABC site, there are also a number of TV programs which they've previously broadcast in Australia, which are available for downloading and viewing.

One of the reasons I find that enormously convenient, is that I can pause the broadcast or -- even though they're videos -- I can play the audio in background (someone once described TV as "radio with pictures" and I'm skipping the pictures during those moments), while I'm working but not on the phone. If I miss something, I can rewind a bit, within Windows Media Player.

Three of the programs on the ABC site http://www.abc.net/au that I really enjoyed were The Einstein Factor, First Tuesday Book Club, and The New Inventors.

On Einstein, three contestants try to answer questions from the host, but each contestant answers questions on his/her own area of expertise. So they get most of the answers right, but not all of them. There's much more to the show, but that's the basic element, and it's a lot of fun.

First Tuesday has a bright group of people talking about books they recommend and advise against, and a group of kids who talk about children's books. It's also a fun show. The books of course, are from around the world, rather than just Australia. It's heavily weighted towards fiction, but there are also some non-fiction books discussed. In this age, with Amazon able to get you just about anything, it doesn't really matter where a book's published.

The New Inventors is a vast improvement over the show that was on a couple of years ago in the U.S., called American Inventors. On this show, the inventions are much more practical and useful. In the episode I saw, there was a product to make it cheaper to ship bananas and to get them to the store with less bruising and an inexpensive hoist to get heavy items up to a roof. It was much more interesting and enjoyable than it sounds. Like the U.S. show, it has a group of judges who choose each week's winner.

Of course, if English is your primary or only language, there are lots of radio and TV programs on the sites of foreign broadcasters, many of which are really enjoyable. Or you can sit in front of the tube at home and watch American Idol. Your choice.

Thanks for "tuning in."

I Don't Care About Randi

Covered more fully elsewhere (see the earlier posting which includes a link to LTR), because of the crisis at Nova M Radio, talker Randi Rhodes has been off the air for a while, and a great deal has been made in radio circles about it.

As you've guessed from the title, I don't care.

I agree with her politics but I can't stand hearing her on the air. You may not feel the same way, but I thought "talk" radio is more than tuning in and listening to the host talk and talk and talk. I grew up on talk radio, and I confess the first talk radio show I listened to was hosted by Joe Pyne out of L.A. I didn't agree, even then, with Pyne's politics, but he was terrific at what he did.

Most talk shows for decades afterwards followed Pyne's pattern. They took calls and sometimes interviewed guests who were either authors of then-new books or folks who were active in local or national politics.

Randi Rhodes and some of her fellow hosts don't do that anymore. The other two who come to mind are Rush Limbaugh and Ed Schultz. In all three cases they rarely take a call and never or rarely have guests. The only reason for the "rarely" is that I've heard Schultz interview someone occasionally. But all three and their similar numbers mostly just talk to us in hours-long monologues.

I should add that I'm not a hide-bound traditionalist. I like a lot of the newer hosts who've come along. Stephanie Miller's show is a hoot and Tom Hartmann is almost always interesting as is Lionel (who's also very funny), but they all take vastly more calls than the other ones mentioned.

Talk radio's a lot of things, but the best of it involves interaction and challenges to and from the host.

What Rush-Randi-Ed and their bretheren (and sistern?) are doing isn't talk radio. It's public intellectual masturbation.

If you want to share a comment, you can do that at jbushman@gmail.com. And, if you want to read my writing on other subjects, try: http://JeffOnPolitics.blogspot.com and/or http://JeffOnHealth.blogspot.com.

A Resource and Radio and Rental Cars

I wanted to share another resource for those who may have an interest in talk radio. The resource is http://ltradio.blogspot.com/ and the "lt" which is part of its name stands for "liberal talk," but you don't have to be a liberal to enjoy the writing that you'll find there.

It talks about a variety of talk radio issues and what's going on in the industry. It's tightly written, often humorous, and very well presented.

An interesting radio-related occurrence happened to me a few weeks ago that you may find interesting (or not). I had occasion within a few days to rent a car from each of two different companies.

I should add that the reason I first subscribed to Sirius radio, after already having been an XM customer was because when I'd rented a car and heard Sirius, I was impressed with all the additional programming they had, and had to have it (yes I'm a member of the Yuppie scum).

In this case, neither of the cars had either satellite service, and I found that curious. It really wasn't disappointing, because I took my Sirius radio in the cars with me, but it did seem odd. So I asked. I was told that the companies are keeping their cars longer now and the reason they had the satellite service in the first place is that the companies (XM or Sirius, depending on the auto manufacturer) provide the service free for a year. After a year, you -- if you're the purchaser of the car -- have to pony up and subscribe or you lose the service.

This tells us several things.

One, XM and Sirius (now merged) were both behaving intelligently by providing their services free to get someone hooked, and hopefully gaining subscribers. Hey, it worked with me and I'd only heard it for a couple of days (on a long trip in the rental car).

Two, rental care companies are keeping their cars longer for a simple reason -- they're trying to save money. It's also reflective of what happens in a serious recession. The rental companies' income is down, so they buy fewer cars and that affects the automakers, and the rest of the economy.

There's no real conclusion, here, but it's interesting how radio can tell us things that seemingly have nothing to do with the medium.

In any event, check out LT Radio.

Also, if you want to share a comment, you can do that at jbushman@gmail.com. And, if you want to read my writing on other subjects, try: http://JeffOnPolitics.blogspot.com and/or http://JeffOnHealth.blogspot.com.

Thanks.