I hate to say this, but I actually agree with Miss Morford on this one. Radio, plain and simple, sucks. I barely resisted the urge to rip my radio out of the dash on the drive to work this morning. Even if I can find a station that's not playing back-to-back, non-stop commercials, it's the same old crap--"Hey, let's groove to Sweet Home Alabama...for the 1,509,365th time!!". I made a mental note this morning to get a CD player for my truck. I'm done with radio.
Gotta agree. A genuinely good article from Morford. It would have been great without the puerile cheap-shots at the Bushs but...
Don't give up yet. Look into XM. I know there is an initial cost, but once you buy the hardware (got it as a gift so don't know how much it costs), it's about $8 a month. That's a small price to pay to get a HUGE selection of channels -- commercial free. I can finally get classical music -- on XM there are several classical music options. My local classical station went Classic Rock about 10 years ago. Also can get either all the major league baseball games or all the football games, depending what package you get.
Commercial stations are going to have to rethink how they get by as I think once more people get a taste of XM, they're not going to go back to the commercial packed AM and FM options. It's the equivalent of premium cable TV channels which a vast number of people pay for.