WBRU was never as bold as it wanted to consider itself. Switching from a standard rock format to an alternative one around the start of the 90s, it kept to a pretty predictable course.
Still, it wasn't a bad station. It was depressing earlier in the year when the station sold its place on the dial. The wavelength was bought by a network of Christian stations that are largely indistinguishable from city to city. I dropped that station immediately. A lot of religious programming seems to operate on the assumption that Christians have no taste or discernment, which could be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
'BRU has returned as an online only station. Actually that's not the whole story. It plays on the air too, but it's signal is fatally low for today's market. I can't play it on the radio, and probably only people who live within a few blocks of the transmitter can. It's now a collaboration between Brown and, I think, AS220.
I'm not sure I heard a DJ's voice when I surfed to its website today. If anything the selection has gotten a little broader. This was one of the songs I heard, which I approve.
Not sure I'll become a heavy listener. I would probably set my clock radio to it if I could
Still, it wasn't a bad station. It was depressing earlier in the year when the station sold its place on the dial. The wavelength was bought by a network of Christian stations that are largely indistinguishable from city to city. I dropped that station immediately. A lot of religious programming seems to operate on the assumption that Christians have no taste or discernment, which could be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
'BRU has returned as an online only station. Actually that's not the whole story. It plays on the air too, but it's signal is fatally low for today's market. I can't play it on the radio, and probably only people who live within a few blocks of the transmitter can. It's now a collaboration between Brown and, I think, AS220.
I'm not sure I heard a DJ's voice when I surfed to its website today. If anything the selection has gotten a little broader. This was one of the songs I heard, which I approve.
Not sure I'll become a heavy listener. I would probably set my clock radio to it if I could
2 comments:
It's sad to hear that WBRU has pretty much disappeared along with so many others of the open air broadcasting systems. There were definitely some years when it was a lot of fun. Internet broadcast sites, whether video or podcasts, are definitely valuable but it seems to me that what's been happening is that as smaller stations (and print media) have been taken over by large corporations the internet too is also becoming more uniform, more boring, and losing the wealth of 'flavors', the richness conferred by the diversity of previous times.
A few days ago I happened across a discussion between Camille Paglia and Jordan Peterson on the topic of Modern Times. It's a bit long but I found a lot to agree with when listening to their conversation. If you have some time to listen to it even the first fifteen minutes provides some thought provoking material.
Once it became clear that the internet was going to displace a lot of other outlets such as print and broadcast, a lot of people were chill with it because they thought it meant more voices would be heard, there would be more of a variety and diversity of opinions. Or at least websites would be cheaper to run and harder to bully than newspapers, say. This was misplaced optimism. The same forces that have caused print magazines to shutter are also at work in the digital realm. The process is just a little different.
And cultural memory isn't that strong either. There are things young people accept as normal or at least unchangeable that aren't, or at least shouldn't be.
Post a Comment