In this blog, in no particular order and with no real plan in place, I want to talk about the importance and the role that the radio has played throughout its existence, and the role it plays today.
It was invented in 1894 by an Italian named Guglielmo Marconi. In its glory days, a radio could be found in most households, providing entertainment and news for the world. The news cycle was significantly shortened from a weekly cycle to a daily or even hourly news cycle as radio stations could pass on news shortly after it broke. Up until the rise of MTV, it was and still even is one of the primary sources for music today. It has led to the rising of many famous radio personalities like the infamous Howard Stern. In short, the radio has led to a more informed population, shortened the news cycles, led to a more entertained population, and is still a driving media force today.
In my own life, the radio has played an important role. As a little kid, I would love to tool around with the radio and listen to music with my friends in our garage. Whether it was on an old analogue radio of my dad's or on a more modern digital radio, it exposed me to new musical genres and increased my understanding of the world. My parents always play the radio even today in the car, something I think everyone does for entertainment, to make time in the car pass faster. Today, whenever I am in the car or I am driving, I listen to NPR because it is a great analytical news source and I don't always have time to look at the news during the day.
The use of the radio has declined since the 1900s, but it is still a dominant force today in entertainment media. Everyone still has a radio in their car and frequently uses it, almost as much as we use our cars themselves. The radio plays the newest hits for people, also allowing people to tune into stations that play what they are interested in, playing the hits of today. In that way, the radio is good and bad in my personal opinion. On one hand, it gives consumers freedom of choice, but on the other hand, it overplays good songs, making them hard to enjoy, and this freedom of choice in terms of radio stations keeps me from branching out and exploring new genres. I also want to point out that the quality of the radio is dependent on the people that broadcast. The radio is merely a way that people consume other people's content and if other people make bad content, then the radio as a whole will suffer.
In all, I think the radio is really important and one of the primary sources for entertainment media today with the capacity to give or take a lot from us. It has played an important role in my life and overall, I think it has changed the world for the better.
I think a big way that the radio has changed over the past few decades is with advertising. Radio stations now have an immense number of ads in their broadcasting, probably around 25-50%. I believe that advertising has become increasingly more apparent on these radio stations. After all, it is how they make their money.
ReplyDelete