Opinion
 

Radio stations are floundering

Mason Lerner
Opinion Columnist

If FM radio isn't quite dead, it is certainly killing me. It was confusing enough when 95.7 suddenly switched from country to easy-listening jazz and completely messed up my channel-surfing rotation, but today I have decided that I have finally had enough. It was not one specific incident that pushed me over the edge but rather hearing one specific song one time too many.

Now obviously the overplaying of a song is not a new plague on our FM dials. The fact that only a handful of artists are allowed to dominate the major popular channels is clearer than any Clear Channel radio channel by a long shot. In fact, Clear Channel's control of more than 60 percent of the United States' major rock stations is a big part of what led me to institute the "No Ja" Rule in my car last summer.

The beauty of the rule is in its simplicity. Basically, anytime a station plays a Ja Rule "hit," I immediately switch the channel. Sadly the plan backfired because, more often than not, it eventually became difficult to drive with one arm. It seems that the more buttons my free arm frantically pushed to escape the moaning rants of Ja Rule, the more stations I found that seemingly couldn't get enough of the guy. It got to a point where I would rather hear the mating call of two whales backed up by some Yanni than hear Ja Rule and J.Lo express their thug love for each other.

Which brings me to Dec. 5, the day that I officially abandoned FM radio forever. It was the overplaying of Jay-Z's half-hearted attempt to re-create (re: cover) a song first made famous by Tupac Shakur. Tupac's original version of "Me and my Girlfriend" was deep in allegory, originality and seemingly authentic emotion. The newer, Jay-Z version, which is being force fed down all of our throats over and over again, is just deep in the symptoms of what ails popular music today.

As if playing the same, tired playlist ad nauseam isn't bad enough, something makes disc jockeys think that we actually want to hear what they have to say. How many times can we listen to Atom Smasher flirting with an underage girl? If guys like him would just stick to spinning music, maybe we could hear a little Hendrix on the radio between our daily doses of Matchbox Twenty and the Goo Goo Dolls. Wouldn't a taste of some all-time great music make the ride to work in the morning more pleasant than the typical Sam Malone babble fest?

I am a capitalist and I understand that only economics can ever affect the kind of change necessary to solve my drive-time musical dilemma. I can only hope that broadband eventually forces the radio industry to completely overhaul their on-air strategies, forcing a drastic change in radio as we know it. I guess I could finally go buy a tape deck or CD player. Either way, until I solve my problem, don't be surprised if you pull up next to me at a stoplight and see me singing to myself.

Lerner, a senior communication major, 
can be reached at mhlerner@yahoo.com.