Wednesday, June 30, 2004
. . . And the Hits Just Keep On Comin'
You've heard how great satellite radio is--mostly because it's free from the market pressures and corporate imperatives that have turned over-the-air broadcasting into mind-numbing mush. Well, I've been playing around with Internet radio lately, specifically a website called Live365.com, and I'm hooked. Live365 says it has 14,000 stations from which to choose, everything from streaming audio of over-the-air stations to hobby stations running out of people's basements. And with all those stations, the choices make satellite radio look like basic cable. I have been going back and forth between a classic jazz station, one that's all British white-boy blues, and one that's all Hammond organ jazz and funk. Also on my favorites list are two stations that broadcast nothing but airchecks from the classic Top 40 era. I have to listen to three or four minutes of innocuous advertising spots per hour, but subscribers can listen commercial free. So far, I haven't been asked to pay anything for the service. And if I had a little more disposable income, you can bet I'd be running my own station, too.
Recommended Reading: Via Salon's "Right Hook," an astoundingly vicious column about Fahrenheit 9/11 and the people who go to see it, from radio host and sometime Fox News contributor Hugh Hewitt. Hewitt seems to think the film will sink John Kerry, although the process by which he believes this will happen is as convoluted an exercise in reasoning as he accuses Fahrenheit 9/11 of being.
Reading Hewitt's rant (and ones from Michael Savage and Ann Coulter also quoted in "Right Hook" today), I can't help thinking we're headed for a season of unparalleled ugliness as the November election approaches. And you gotta wonder if the wingnuts won't simply refuse to accept a Kerry victory, if it happens. They've already demonized Kerry and his supporters as not just unfit to govern, but unfit to live in America. Some of them (Savage in particular) have characterized people like us as unfit to live, period. Exactly why do we think Hewitt, Savage, Coulter, and their ilk would accept an election result that goes against their wishes, if the alternative is serving under such a unbearable yoke?
You've heard how great satellite radio is--mostly because it's free from the market pressures and corporate imperatives that have turned over-the-air broadcasting into mind-numbing mush. Well, I've been playing around with Internet radio lately, specifically a website called Live365.com, and I'm hooked. Live365 says it has 14,000 stations from which to choose, everything from streaming audio of over-the-air stations to hobby stations running out of people's basements. And with all those stations, the choices make satellite radio look like basic cable. I have been going back and forth between a classic jazz station, one that's all British white-boy blues, and one that's all Hammond organ jazz and funk. Also on my favorites list are two stations that broadcast nothing but airchecks from the classic Top 40 era. I have to listen to three or four minutes of innocuous advertising spots per hour, but subscribers can listen commercial free. So far, I haven't been asked to pay anything for the service. And if I had a little more disposable income, you can bet I'd be running my own station, too.
Recommended Reading: Via Salon's "Right Hook," an astoundingly vicious column about Fahrenheit 9/11 and the people who go to see it, from radio host and sometime Fox News contributor Hugh Hewitt. Hewitt seems to think the film will sink John Kerry, although the process by which he believes this will happen is as convoluted an exercise in reasoning as he accuses Fahrenheit 9/11 of being.
Reading Hewitt's rant (and ones from Michael Savage and Ann Coulter also quoted in "Right Hook" today), I can't help thinking we're headed for a season of unparalleled ugliness as the November election approaches. And you gotta wonder if the wingnuts won't simply refuse to accept a Kerry victory, if it happens. They've already demonized Kerry and his supporters as not just unfit to govern, but unfit to live in America. Some of them (Savage in particular) have characterized people like us as unfit to live, period. Exactly why do we think Hewitt, Savage, Coulter, and their ilk would accept an election result that goes against their wishes, if the alternative is serving under such a unbearable yoke?
