Ignorance Was Bliss (part 5: Radio is Dead)

Yes, I said it in the title...Radio is dead...Now be patient, it may take me a few minutes to get there...But what got me thinking more about this was that damn Justin Bieber movie...Yeah, I saw it...My wife took our daughter to see it in the theater, twice...She told me she was going to make me watch it when it came out on DVD...Last Friday it was released on DVD, and on her way home from work, Mrs. Beeze grabbed it...

After dinner, I did something I didn't want to...I watched it...Hey, it's what we as dads do...We do shit to make our kids happy...My daughter didn't get why I didn't like Bieber...She knows how much I love music, and talented artists, and she kept telling me how talented he is...The thing is, I didn't like him because of the God awful hype machine behind him...And the teen music scene isn't for me...But she was right...Kid has some serious talent...The kid you're born with...And that hype machine behind him, well that was needed...

You see, I never heard this kid on the radio...Neither did my wife...He made his bones grinding away at it, playing where ever he could, and then that stuff made it to the Internet...Video didn't kill the radio star...The Internet did...Actually Radio did itself in, and the Internet put the nail in the coffin...

Radio got scared by MTV, which no longer shows video...Just stupid ass Teen Mom and Jersey Shore, retard shows...Radio kept changing formats and getting stuck in ruts...Stations latched on to one demographic and went all out with it...As technology changed they started getting rid of personalities, and started doing it without DJ's...Let me show you...Here are the top (music playing) Radio stations in Cleveland...

92.3 plays 90's and early 2000's "Alternative Rock" with tiny bits of today and '80s Alternative, like the Police, and Clash...The also have no DJ's now, they run off of a computer...98.5 plays nothing but "Classic Rock" since I was born...They have beaten Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and ACDC to death, and I can't take it anymore...100.7 is a legendary station here...The play a mix of 98.5 and 92.3, and some of today's rock...Oh, but they also have 9 hours of talk Monday through Friday...104.1 is top 40 crap...Mainstream pop...105.7 is oldies...Fuck that! 106.5 has says they play some crazy, awesome mix of everything, but it's mostly '80s stuff...And no DJ's...

The Radio business has no power on the music business anymore...Radio is playing what they think people want...And what people end up doing is downloading what they want to there iPods...Billboard rankings aren't based on air-play, or album sales...It's based on the iTunes numbers...Artists don't push albums through radio play...They push downloads through their websites...They use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and U-Stream to stay connected to fans and push them where they want them...Sooner or later, Radio will be gone...We'll download what ever we want right to our car stereos...

And when it comes to Radio, I have become loyal to Satellite...I got XM about 5-6 years ago...Why? So I wouldn't be force-fed the same crap...With Satellite, I have tons of options, to listen to whatever varieties of music or talk I want...And O & A are there, and those guys brighten my days...But talk will die off one day too...People will just be getting podcasts of there favorite shows...And I'm sure sports will find their way of the Radio as well...

I'll miss my old friend Radio...I sometimes miss my Ignorance to all this technology...But then I look at myself right now, typing this blog, checking Twitter for funny one-liners, checking out the happenings on Facebook, while the Todd Wright Show is streaming in the background, and after I hit publish, I'm going to check out some filthy porn...What a world we have at our fingertips!

Later,The Beeze.