Sometimes I think that I am the only person that listens to over the air radio. Most of my friends have upgraded to satellite radio, listen to their iPod, or enjoy a format that is not available over terrestrial radio. One of the advantages of listening to country music is that there are typically stations in every locale. I’ve only been one area that didn’t have country on the radio: Newark, New Jersey back in the 90s. Also, I’ve only been in two areas that didn’t have any signal at all: rural Wyoming north of I 80 and Interstate 40 between Barstow and Needles.
San Jose’s country radio station KRTY is independently owned and operated. One of the nice things about that is that the disc jockeys are much more candid about the area in which they live. Now that Infinity and Clear Channel bought a lot of radio stations into their corporate conglomerates the local flavor is getting lost. Even with those stations however sometimes a bit of local flavor gets through. Satellite radio is great. There are many formats that are available commercial just about everywhere you can get a clear view of the sky in the United States.
There are three things I look for in a source for music: discovery, local feel, existing content. Satellite radio and over the air radio are great for discovery. Both of them are push media, but the local station has more local feel while satellite has better selection.
The iPod is a pull medium. Setting up play lists is a bit of pain and the content gets old quickly without reaching out for new content. Anyone have a good solution for keeping the iPod fed 99 cents at a time?
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