The Death of Commercial Radio

Some thoughts related to some recent semi-accidental lapses into the commercial radio universe while driving the 70-odd miles between Winston-Salem and Charlotte two or three times a week:

  • Kelly Clarkson sounds like Pink being gang-fucked by Alanis Morissette and Melissa Etheridge wearing strap-ons. Which is an entertaining image on some level, but the music still doesn’t do much for me.
  • 98.7 Simon: We play everything. As long as it’s “Wild Thing” by Tone Loc, over and over and over again.
  • “Land of Confusion” by Disturbed: way to take a song that wasn’t very good to begin with (though it had a good video) and make it even worse. I was surprised to see that the name of the band wasn’t spelled “Disturbd” à la Staind. They were both hatched out of the same focus group, weren’t they?
  • The above would have been less notworthy had it not been the only song played on the station we were listening to between 5 and 6 PM yeterday. The rest of the hour was filled with three boring people talking more or less about nothing.
  • I’ll be missing this now that we’ve moved to Winston-Salem. But I may enjoy being reunited with this and this.

I’ve been hearing stories about the death of commercial radio for two decades now. I finally believe them. And I’m starting to think that killing it off quickly would be the humane thing to do.