Radio vs. Internet

[beige_alert]

Why I don’t listen to broadcast radio. (Because I get better ham radio reception sometimes.)

Comments

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

Broadcast radio is much less dumb than broadcast TV. Most radio listening is in cars, and reaching cars by broadcast makes more sense than reaching homes.

[beige-alert.livejournal.com]

My point really was that the reception I get is always really bad, no matter where I live or what radio I'm using. Maybe I'm listening to the wrong stations, but I'm hardly going to listen to rap music just to get a stronger signal. Nowadays it seems to make much more sense to just download audio on the Internet, put it on my MP3 player, plug that into the car stereo (I have a cassette adapter), and listen to that, at whatever time I want to, with pause, fast forward, and rewind, without static or the signal cutting in and out. It's really more a matter of marveling at how badly broadcast works given the great expense that goes into it, though. Tens of kilowatts and a many-hundred-foot tower, and yet I can't listen to it. I don't know what the engineers think the intended listening area is, but I would have guessed that, for example, a University's radio station would include the campus in the listening area. Maybe we need some broadcast technology newer than pre-WWII. That might help. There is satellite radio nowadays, which I understand people are generally happy with.