Radio

26.Aug.08

When I’m in my room, I listen to EinsLive, a local radio station somewhere in the 80s or low 90s in the FM band. It is a pop and rock station so they play a lot of American and European hits, chart toppers, and they generally do a good job at picking songs. I enjoy it more than radio stations back in the States, perhaps because there are no commercials and they also play more European music that doesn’t make it to America. One of the big things I like about is the news bits in between. Based on my listening experience, pop stations in the States keep their listeners up to date with the latest celebrity information, and the life details of the DJs and what they did last weekend. I don’t care about celebrities’ marital status or children’s names and I certainly don’t want to hear exaggerated tales about a DJ’s weekend. EinsLive has breaks in the music with interviews and news about politics, economics, science, and people. It’s fantastic.

I think the hype of something has a lot to do with the public opinion towards it. There are lots of people that became celebrities mostly because they inundated the media market with images and stories. People see and hear so much that they want to see and hear more and a celebrity is born. This effect also applies to music. Songs that would otherwise be considered not good but get a lot of air time and hype are regarded as good. In my last weeks in the states, I heard something on the pop music station that was terrible. At first, I assumed it was a satirical spoof of a song because it was so ridiculous and bad. Beat, lyrics, everything. Then the DJ came on and said “Today’s BEST music.” I shed a tear.

That song was played often and people actually requested it! Maybe I’m just getting old and the kids these days have evolved to appreciate forms of music I may never understand, or maybe the artist and song were poured onto the general public by the barrel. I digress.

The German folks are really into conversations. Many of my friends here said they got into deep conversations about politics within minutes of meeting their host families. They seem to take pride in being informed on what is going on globally and locally. That got me thinking: what if we stopped running clips about celebrities misbehaving and replaced that airtime with news, economics, science, and serious interviews? What if our pop music stations and trendy TV shows had important information rather than garbage? Would the kids talk about important political and social issues? Would people spend less time observing bad roll models? Perhaps. I’d like to see what would happen.