The Death of American Radio

Good article in the NY Times about the increasing blandness of American radio and how it has become uniform, boring and too overloaded with advertising. This article made me think about the 1990 movie Pump Up the Volume about a teenager who creates an illegal pirate radio station.

If radio in America has become so bad, we might start seeing more instances of this happening. The FCC’s relaxed rules in media ownership has allowed just a few conglomerates to take control of the airwaves, resulting in cloned radio formats throughout the entire country. The individualism and uniqueness of the DJ’s, many of whom can be credited for increasing the listenership of radio, is gone.

Wouldn’t it be interesting to see an underground group of activists start operating pirate radio stations? As a response to the corporatization of radio, it would be the people saying “enough” and taking back the airwaves.

Posted by Cameron Barrett at June 8, 2003 02:12 PM

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *