I’ll bet Gonzales misses us. Do you? [United States Department of Justice]
WETA has abandoned news & information for an all-classical format, which means that you can’t hear us right now in the DC area. In theory, my mother and grandmother used to catch Open Source on WETA, but since it’s been three days and I haven’t heard anything, perhaps they don’t listen as often as they tell me they do.
Friend-of-Open Source Ben Walker has thoughts on the classical format here. From producer Robin’s mom — also in the DC area — we have this from The Washington Post: a lot of WETA listeners are annoyed about the switch.
What this means for Open Source: we’ll be seeking a home in the DC area, hopefully on WAMU, a news & information public radio signal broadcast out of American University. If you listened to us on WETA and miss us on the air, you might drop WAMU a line and tell them. Please. It makes a difference.
You can get in touch with WAMU here.
Why can’t DC listeners listen via streaming audio, from other stations that carry the show, e.g., WGBH in Boston? Or dowload the MP3′s? I listen to programs from all over the world that way, as well as participate in their blogs, etc.
Maybe I’m not “getting” what the problem is here but it seems to me that an old-fashioned radio station where the listener and the broadcaster are limited by their physical location is SO 20th century!
I imagine the radio stations actually pay for Open Source, therefore when they loose a station they loose some revenue. Being without a sponsor and all, it probably makes things a little tight.
The 20th century wasn’t all bad, radio can stick around for as long as it likes in my opinion. I discovered public radio several years back by accident, a wonderful happy accident while I was driving from one job to another. Listening to the radio takes some of the choice out of the equation, no need to switch songs or albums, just turn it on and relax. Like I said, I’ll keep this aspect of the 20th century.
i’ve listened to open source for two years now, all of it via podcast. to my knowledge i have never lived in a market–chapel hill, nc and now philadelphia, pa–that provides it via public radio.
are there financial implications to losing or gaining a radio station? to my mind, this seems to be the only downside to being cut by WETA.
The 20th century wasn’t all bad, radio can stick around for as long as it likes in my opinion. I discovered public radio several years back by accident, a wonderful happy accident while I was driving from one job to another. Listening to the radio takes some of the choice out of the equation, no need to switch songs or albums, just turn it on and relax. Like I said, I’ll keep this aspect of the 20th century.
That’s fine, if you can. I feel the same way about newspapers – they’re almost all going out of business or downsizing and I worry about what will replace them. Blogging hasn’t matured to the point where any blog has the scope and depth of, say, the New York Times, and it’s too much work to have to comb hundreds of different blogs to find as many grains of detail or insight as are packed into a single issue of the Times. But that’s the way it goes. If there’s a demand for professional journalism with depth of detail and breadth of subject matter, something will emerge to meet that demand.
Media today is in a state of dramatic flux. WETA was only running a talk-and-news format as a brief (2 year) experiment, but it didn’t work out so it’s returning to its classical roots. ROS is spiritually and philosophically a product of the internet and high tech, and even its name – “open source” – is a recognition of this. So, of all programs, ROS should be the least worried about having a terrestrial stake in the ground.
It’s not clear how much longer old-fashioned broadcast radio will be a viable medium. Many cars are coming equipped with satellite receivers and all the cell-phone companies are rolling out nationwide broadband networks. Currently these are all still limited WRT streaming content, but due to technological change and competition those limits will evaporate. Public radio’s core audience tends to be affluent and educated, and those people are more likely to be early adopters of new technology. I think we need to EMBRACE and LEAD, rather than fear, the changes that are happening in the media right now.
i’ve listened to open source for two years now, all of it via podcast. to my knowledge i have never lived in a market–chapel hill, nc and now philadelphia, pa–that provides it via public radio.
I listen to a TON of programming from stations whose market I’m not in. I think the MAJORITY of my “radio” listening is to stations that don’t broadcast in the eastern/central Massachusetts area where I live. And even programming that originates in Boston at WGBH or WBUR, which I could listen-to live, I usually hear on podcast because of my busy schedule. As I said above, worrying about where the radio station is sited physically is SO before-the-turn-of-the-century.
I think it is a mistaken notion that newer is always better. Although I would miss my radio terribly I rather fancy a 19th century lifestyle. Live music, silence, books…
It would be interesting to know how many folks listened to ROS on WETA, and how many simply turned the dial. And then it would be interesting to know how many folks who couldn’t get ROS on any FM radio station (over most of the world…) listened intently either on satellite radio or on podcasts. And then it would be fascinating to be able to ‘see the future’ and anticipate how the balance between these two markets shifted in 2008, 2009, 2010, etc. Am I wrong to assume most of these are ‘hidden’ statistics, very soft if collected at all? In any event, where there are folks willing to pay, content never disappears, it simply moves from one mode of distribution (or provider) to another…. The tragedy is death: when content disappears because no one wants it. (Consider the future of Lawrence Welk TV reruns as this market ages and dies off…)