Posted on 07/07/2006 12:05:08 PM PDT by Panerai
Apple's iPod has played a major role in the death of one Chicago radio station. WBEZ, Chicago's National Public Radio (NPR) member station and one of the oldest public radio outlets in the U.S. has elected to scrap scheduled music programming, which was mostly jazz, in favor of a 24-hour news and public affairs format, according to Reuters. A major contributing factor proved to be the growing popularity of Apple's iPod, as the portable device generated a culture of listeners who dictate their own musical selections. Loyal jazz fans are crying out in response to the change, while WBEZ and other public stations say they haven't kept pace with the changing U.S. population. "Local news has simply been abandoned by the commercial broadcasters and sometimes even the commercial newspapers," said Ken Stern, vice president of National Public Radio. "What you see as a trend is stations like WBEZ investing heavily in local news and information," Stern said.
The iPod's fault that NPR failed to adjust, adapt, and present listeners with a compelling program.
Look, if public radio is so terrific, let it compete with the commercial stations. Taxpayers shouldn't be shouldering the costs of public radio or TV. It's like having a government owned and operated newspaper.
No good, no good.
"It's not our fault! It's Steve Jobs fault!"...........
OK.
I doubt whether any iPod users were ever NPR listeners.
What will be the excuse after non-stop communist propaganda drives away the rest of the listeners?
It wouldn't take much. Every time I turn on a radio, I am subjected to more advertising than I can stand. One morning I turned on WABC 770 in NYC, and I listened for what seemed like 20 minutes before there was any programming.
Sounds like a fake excuse.
That IS what drove away the listeners!..........
They didn't "demise" - they just went to all lefty news and talk on the public dime, of course.
BINGO!.......
"It's all them young college students and their damn ipods! They used to be all hot for Jazz! Benny Goodman! Bird! Chet Baker! Then they all got their fancy ipods! Now they don't listen to our station any more!" [/grumpy old man]
Solid Rock
Dire Straits
NPR, like the record industry, has made a boogeyman of the iPod rather than look at their own shoddy product.
Part of the reason jazz has become a niche genre is that it's been put in a museum: stations like BEZ keep playing the same old stuff from forty years ago. And of course, every artist is a "legend." Maybe if clubs and stations put a little effort into featuring developments in jazz instead of the Wynton Marsalis and Ken Burns nostalgia for the good old days, the medium might be thriving instead of dying.
Create your own commercial-free jazz station. Or any format you want (except classical).
www.pandora.com
Shameless plug.
I like jazz, and I agree with you. Radio jazz has been enshrined, and has since become uninteresting. Unremarkable DJs and programming on NPR doesn't help either.
One of my contemporary favorites is David Sanborn.
(And then there's the fact that NPR began a hard shift to the Left in 2002 and 2003 that it became painful to listen to their frequent "news" interruptions in their music and cultural programming.)
It's more like having a government subsidized buggy whip factory.
It's more like having a government subsidized buggy whip factory.
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