Having made a number of cross-county road trips in the past couple of months, I have made a number of observations about the state of car stereos and of commercial radio in America.
- Commercial radio seems to have a play list of about 100 songs.
- Billy Joel is surprisingly popular still, although only about 3 of his songs get airplay.
- Modern English must be collecting significant royalties from its American hit back in 1982.
- Wow! Are there are lot of Christian talk radio and music channels or what!?!
- With digital stereos, the art of fine-tuning the radio to get that station that is just beyond broadcast limits must be dead. There is no way to choose any settings but those offered by the digital overlords inside our radios. (This last point makes me just a bit sad. Some aspects of old technology really are beautiful.)
In the interests of scientific probity, I must confess that my survey did not include country music stations. As a general rule, I avoid those like the plague.
I tend to keep to the left of the dial, although in recent years even that has fallen victim to commercial radio.
If one’s car stereo includes the option of selecting mono during FM reception it is possible to pull in further away stations.
Exciting, eh?
Even on digital radios, I always prefer the knob control for tuning (as opposed to the button style).
Something about turning a know in one direction to go up and another to go down is far more satisfying than just pressing one or another button to surf.