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Radio Presets
Speaking of radio, that music meme was going around recently and one of the questions was "How do you listen to music?" and I realized the answer for me is FM radio. I've gone through phases of cassettes and LPs and CDs and MP3s and streaming services, but it's always most consistently been broadcast radio, because broadcast radio just plain works with zero effort or decision-making required on my part.
(Even for long roadtrips, I like to see what quirky radio stations I can tune into instead of listening to music I brought, which unfortunately tends to work best when there is nobody else in the car to annoy with it.) Thirty years from now, we will all be listening to whatever thirteenth-generation media format is out there on our cyperpunk implants from our undergrounds bunkers, and I will still be listening to broadcast radio (because I guarantee there will still be broadcast radio.)
Anyway, here are my current radio presets. If you live in the DC/Baltimore metro area, these are mostly recs. If you don't, uh, this is me being smug about living in a place where I can pick up about a dozen noncommercial FM radio stations without trying very hard. :P Also most of them have internet livestreams I guess.
Noncommercial stations:
88.1 WYPR / Your NPR News Station : Basic public radio, NPR/PRI syndicated shows & some local politics/local interest talk + folk and avant-garde music in offpeak times. I grew up on this but have been listening to it a lot less lately as I have been getting less patient with media centrism. 88.1 is NPR talk in most of the US that I have travelled in. (Except within about 5 miles of many universities - it's also WMUC with student DJs in a small radius of College Park.)
88.5 WAMU / American University Radio: Similar to WYPR, often broadcasting the same content at the same time, but notable for being the home of The Big Broadcast which means if I'm out on a Sunday night I can just turn on the radio and listen to Dragnet or Johnny Dollar or Our Miss Brooks.
89.3 WPFW Jazz and Justice / Pacifica Radio: Non-NPR public radio, broadcasts the kind of jazz I'm usually not into (modern freeform stuff, although they also do old-fashioned folk jazz and blues sometimes, which I'm there for,) and the kind of justice I'm always into (leftist politics, racial justice, black empowerment, and hyperlocal politics.)
(88.9 WEAA / Morgan State University is similar, except with more mainstream music and some syndicated NPR content, and worse reception.)
90.1 WCSP C-SPAN Radio: Live, minimal-commentary coverage of Congress and other political events (including PMQs and protest rallies), commercial-free reruns of cable TV politics shows, and broadcasts of historically significant audio archives (like Supreme Court debates and presidential tapes.) I spent a LOT of high school listening to this while I was learning to drive and thus I react to the voice of Lyndon B. Johnson with the nostalgia other people my age have for Kurt Cobain. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
90.5 WKHS / Kent County High School Radio: When high school is in session, rural high school student DJs on student-run radio shows, mostly music and amazing PSAs which you can tell were created for school assignments; when high school is not in session, simulcasts WXPN, music-centric public radio from Philadelphia, including everything from super-obscure new indy stuff to 1930s era oldies (sometimes in the same show): in the late evenings, sometimes has amazing old (volunteer?) DJs who occasionally just go "it's really cold in here and I'm tired, so I'm signing off early to go home and take a nap" and then has an eight-minute song followed by dead air. The closest thing to NVCR I can get on local FM.
91.5 WBJC / Maryland's classical music station: All classical music, all the time! 90.9 WAMU is similar but I tend to like WBJC's selection better. (I still remember when I was a kid and I first encountered a book where a character was supposed to be shown to be snobby by wanting to listen to classical music tapes instead of the radio on a road trip and it had to be pointed out to me that most of the US does not have their choice of two all-classical noncommercial FM radio stations.)
Commercial:
103.5 WTOP / News Traffic Weather: This is not actually a rec, but you know you're from the DC area if the phrase "On the eights and when it breaks!" induces strong emotion in you. (99.1 WNEW wants to be WTOP for Baltimore and fails miserably, and anyway we all know that 99.1 is *supposed* to be WHFS so screw you, CBS.)
103.1 WRNR: the closest thing we have to what WHFS used to be, an actual independent music station! Mostly recent alternative/independent/local rock/pop, sometimes other music, very occasionally local Annapolis affairs.
102.7 WQSR / Jack FM : Mostly rock mixed music station, lots of oldies and classic rock mixed in with newer stuff, maximum music with no annoying DJs and long no-commercials sets, for when you just need music that you probably know the words to and nothing else.
100.3 WBIG / Big 100 : Oldies, which at this point is mostly stuff from the 80s and occasionally 90s, which *also* makes me feel very old, okay, oldies is supposed to be Elvis and the Big Bopper. (100.7 is the Baltimore oldies station, which has better and usually older music but worse reception.)
Bonus internet radio for when I want phone radio and I'm in a building that has wifi but FM reception is crap:
Third Rock Radio / America's Space Station, the streaming (mostly alt-rock) station available through the NASA app.
Do you still listen to radio? What are your go-to stations?
(Even for long roadtrips, I like to see what quirky radio stations I can tune into instead of listening to music I brought, which unfortunately tends to work best when there is nobody else in the car to annoy with it.) Thirty years from now, we will all be listening to whatever thirteenth-generation media format is out there on our cyperpunk implants from our undergrounds bunkers, and I will still be listening to broadcast radio (because I guarantee there will still be broadcast radio.)
Anyway, here are my current radio presets. If you live in the DC/Baltimore metro area, these are mostly recs. If you don't, uh, this is me being smug about living in a place where I can pick up about a dozen noncommercial FM radio stations without trying very hard. :P Also most of them have internet livestreams I guess.
Noncommercial stations:
88.1 WYPR / Your NPR News Station : Basic public radio, NPR/PRI syndicated shows & some local politics/local interest talk + folk and avant-garde music in offpeak times. I grew up on this but have been listening to it a lot less lately as I have been getting less patient with media centrism. 88.1 is NPR talk in most of the US that I have travelled in. (Except within about 5 miles of many universities - it's also WMUC with student DJs in a small radius of College Park.)
88.5 WAMU / American University Radio: Similar to WYPR, often broadcasting the same content at the same time, but notable for being the home of The Big Broadcast which means if I'm out on a Sunday night I can just turn on the radio and listen to Dragnet or Johnny Dollar or Our Miss Brooks.
89.3 WPFW Jazz and Justice / Pacifica Radio: Non-NPR public radio, broadcasts the kind of jazz I'm usually not into (modern freeform stuff, although they also do old-fashioned folk jazz and blues sometimes, which I'm there for,) and the kind of justice I'm always into (leftist politics, racial justice, black empowerment, and hyperlocal politics.)
(88.9 WEAA / Morgan State University is similar, except with more mainstream music and some syndicated NPR content, and worse reception.)
90.1 WCSP C-SPAN Radio: Live, minimal-commentary coverage of Congress and other political events (including PMQs and protest rallies), commercial-free reruns of cable TV politics shows, and broadcasts of historically significant audio archives (like Supreme Court debates and presidential tapes.) I spent a LOT of high school listening to this while I was learning to drive and thus I react to the voice of Lyndon B. Johnson with the nostalgia other people my age have for Kurt Cobain. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
90.5 WKHS / Kent County High School Radio: When high school is in session, rural high school student DJs on student-run radio shows, mostly music and amazing PSAs which you can tell were created for school assignments; when high school is not in session, simulcasts WXPN, music-centric public radio from Philadelphia, including everything from super-obscure new indy stuff to 1930s era oldies (sometimes in the same show): in the late evenings, sometimes has amazing old (volunteer?) DJs who occasionally just go "it's really cold in here and I'm tired, so I'm signing off early to go home and take a nap" and then has an eight-minute song followed by dead air. The closest thing to NVCR I can get on local FM.
91.5 WBJC / Maryland's classical music station: All classical music, all the time! 90.9 WAMU is similar but I tend to like WBJC's selection better. (I still remember when I was a kid and I first encountered a book where a character was supposed to be shown to be snobby by wanting to listen to classical music tapes instead of the radio on a road trip and it had to be pointed out to me that most of the US does not have their choice of two all-classical noncommercial FM radio stations.)
Commercial:
103.5 WTOP / News Traffic Weather: This is not actually a rec, but you know you're from the DC area if the phrase "On the eights and when it breaks!" induces strong emotion in you. (99.1 WNEW wants to be WTOP for Baltimore and fails miserably, and anyway we all know that 99.1 is *supposed* to be WHFS so screw you, CBS.)
103.1 WRNR: the closest thing we have to what WHFS used to be, an actual independent music station! Mostly recent alternative/independent/local rock/pop, sometimes other music, very occasionally local Annapolis affairs.
102.7 WQSR / Jack FM : Mostly rock mixed music station, lots of oldies and classic rock mixed in with newer stuff, maximum music with no annoying DJs and long no-commercials sets, for when you just need music that you probably know the words to and nothing else.
100.3 WBIG / Big 100 : Oldies, which at this point is mostly stuff from the 80s and occasionally 90s, which *also* makes me feel very old, okay, oldies is supposed to be Elvis and the Big Bopper. (100.7 is the Baltimore oldies station, which has better and usually older music but worse reception.)
Bonus internet radio for when I want phone radio and I'm in a building that has wifi but FM reception is crap:
Third Rock Radio / America's Space Station, the streaming (mostly alt-rock) station available through the NASA app.
Do you still listen to radio? What are your go-to stations?
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