"[Local radio is] what made Detroiters different from Clevelanders or Bostonians."
"The old way is over. Gone. Extinct. Swept away. Shattered into a million little pieces. The Digital Age has brought us an incomprehensible number of choices and has parked us into our own, self-defined worlds. To the extent we share it, we might be in synch with someone in, say, Cleveland or Boston."
"With podcasts, with iPhone libraries, with satellite radio, the Golden Age of Audio has replaced the Golden Age of Radio."
This is an interesting piece on local radio in Detroit. It touches on something I've thought about before — the social graph created by audio has shifted from local networks created by local radio to nationally and even internationally connected ones created by a mix of streaming services, satellite radio, and podcasts (among other things). That's amazing from a consumer choice point of view (you can find content on anything!), but the shared local experience, and the local identity that flows from that, is being slowly muffled in the process.
posted by matt in Saturday, May 3, 2025