Soap, No Radio
Jun. 8th, 2003 04:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tmcgThis afternoon on "The Sunday Show," which airs on bothWNYC (a local NPR station) and XM satellite radio, Jonathan Schwartz read the entirety of Brent Staples' editorial "Mourning the Death of American Radio" from today's Times.
On the face of it, it's a wonderful editorial, decrying the crass commercialization of the airwaves. But ultimately it seems to me an outcry against the commercialization of "pop" music, since in New York City, the listening area in which both Staples and I live, there is more outstanding radio being broadcast than anyone can possibly listen to, and most of the songs that are (yes, okay, in my opinion) worth listening to in the pop top 40 (which list is a product of precisely the corporate forces Staples decries) can be heard on noncommercial stations in other programming mixes. It's a pretty recursive outcry. He's giving up on radio because commercial stations are too commercial? "Pop" music is a creation, a definition, of the commercial world. If Staples lived somewhere else, somewhere lacking the variety of nonsubscription and noncommercial broadcasting we have here, his editorial would punch harder. But he lives in Brooklyn; the only reason for him to put a CD player in his car is if he can't live without corporate-defined "popular" music in a particular mix while he's driving--if he just can't wait twenty minutes for PLJ to play Avril Levigne or Evanescence or Matchbox Whatever's "Unwell."
It was cool that Jonathan Schwartz could share Staples' essay with such a large, dual audience. And yes, radio is too corporate, too homogenized, too market-tested, too corrupt; like all media these days, most of it seeks to brainwash us. But it doesn't take that much to resist. And the very fact that Schwartz was on those airwaves, through those carriers, on a show like his, to be reading Staples' words, belies the concept "death of American radio."
Also on the front page of the Times online, a cartoon diagram: "What Was Found in Sammy Sosa's Other Bats," in which one of the items is "Only known videotape of Tina Brown's American Idol audition."
Oh, if only.
Lastly (update): I mentioned that cartoon at our Sunday seisiun, and someone said, "Gee, I wonder who the Times plagiarized that from," and I felt a surge of anger on the Times's behalf. The New York Times has more editorial integrity in one pica than most right-wing media has in total. I didn't lay into the guy; he was just trying to make a current-events wisecrack, and it wasn't worth pointing out the inaccuracy of the gibe. But I'm hurting for the old grey lady.
On the face of it, it's a wonderful editorial, decrying the crass commercialization of the airwaves. But ultimately it seems to me an outcry against the commercialization of "pop" music, since in New York City, the listening area in which both Staples and I live, there is more outstanding radio being broadcast than anyone can possibly listen to, and most of the songs that are (yes, okay, in my opinion) worth listening to in the pop top 40 (which list is a product of precisely the corporate forces Staples decries) can be heard on noncommercial stations in other programming mixes. It's a pretty recursive outcry. He's giving up on radio because commercial stations are too commercial? "Pop" music is a creation, a definition, of the commercial world. If Staples lived somewhere else, somewhere lacking the variety of nonsubscription and noncommercial broadcasting we have here, his editorial would punch harder. But he lives in Brooklyn; the only reason for him to put a CD player in his car is if he can't live without corporate-defined "popular" music in a particular mix while he's driving--if he just can't wait twenty minutes for PLJ to play Avril Levigne or Evanescence or Matchbox Whatever's "Unwell."
It was cool that Jonathan Schwartz could share Staples' essay with such a large, dual audience. And yes, radio is too corporate, too homogenized, too market-tested, too corrupt; like all media these days, most of it seeks to brainwash us. But it doesn't take that much to resist. And the very fact that Schwartz was on those airwaves, through those carriers, on a show like his, to be reading Staples' words, belies the concept "death of American radio."
Also on the front page of the Times online, a cartoon diagram: "What Was Found in Sammy Sosa's Other Bats," in which one of the items is "Only known videotape of Tina Brown's American Idol audition."
Oh, if only.
Lastly (update): I mentioned that cartoon at our Sunday seisiun, and someone said, "Gee, I wonder who the Times plagiarized that from," and I felt a surge of anger on the Times's behalf. The New York Times has more editorial integrity in one pica than most right-wing media has in total. I didn't lay into the guy; he was just trying to make a current-events wisecrack, and it wasn't worth pointing out the inaccuracy of the gibe. But I'm hurting for the old grey lady.
