Tuesday, August 29, 2017

Radio, radio

I have to admit that, even though it's happening in my backyard, it's only within the past couple of weeks I learned the sale of WBRU was even a possibility. Now it's actually happened.

The first effect I'll feel is that I've changed the tuning on my clock radio, since I'd been waking up to 'BRU for the foreseeable past. It's on a classical station for now. In the future, who knows?

In a way the Brown student community was foolish to let the station go. While it's easy to conceive a time in the future when a good digital-only stream has as much influence or more than a terrestrial radio station, I don't think that time is quite here yet. Then again the level of actual student involvement seems to have been pretty low for a while.

2 comments:

susan said...

That is pretty depressing news all right - WBRU was always a great radio station when we were there too, albeit that was a while ago. Now it's going to be a Christian broadcasting station I'm not surprised you'll have to retune the clock radio. Things that may be acceptable when one chooses are not necessarily welcome at ungodly hours.

I agree with you that digital streaming doesn't have the stabilty of radio waves. Then again, we're big believers in redundancy and see much danger in counting on ephemeral connections.

On another note, we were sorry to see that your move wasn't an entirely happy one. Keep us informed.

Ben said...

No one I've talked to is happy about this decision. It leaves a niche empty and makes the local media scene less diverse. (In an artistic sense. Not claiming any great ethnic diversity.) It just seems like a poor decision all around. Lot of buck passing, I'm sure.

Well, for now I'm back where I was before. I'm still looking for full-time work, but some opportunities are better than others.