One thing that kind of knocks me out is that there are still college radio DJs. I know because I sometimes listen to college radio on the web. Some are better than others, but a bunch of school-level stations have them.
The reason this seems crazy to me is that disc jockeys barely exist in American radio as a whole now. The 1996 Communications Act led to a round of consolidation, at the end of which you saw formats and playlists become nationalized, where once they'd at least nominally been decided on a local level. It's only gotten worse since then. The idea of a flesh-and-blood human being sharing music that's just made an impression on them and expecting to be paid for doing so must strike executives as madness.
But hey, if that situation ever changes at least there's a reserve army of record spinners.
1 comment:
That's an interesting observation, one I hadn't considered but obviously true. I'd forgotten about how much the passage of the new regulation changed so much we'd been used to for so long - local radio AM and FM were wiped of the broadcast map in a hurry. The Act allowed for the monopolization of the media industry. It's probably one of the most easily ignored topics that people should be made aware of. Considering the Web was initiated that same year I guess many of us were distracted by the new and shiny.
It's good the colleges still have radio DJs. Wasn't WFMU originally a college station?
I found an article on 3500 whose author agrees with your take on the subject and adds some detail.
https://www.35000watts.com/the-telecommunications-act-of-1996-killed-local-radio/
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