Back in the 1980s, I used to write articles for magazines. It required a bit of traveling, something I never really enjoyed.
Back then (when there was no internet, no streaming, and limited cable), if you were a music fan and you wanted to stay current, you had two options — MTV and local FM radio. Being an inveterate R&B guy, I realized early on that MTV was racist as all hell, so that left radio.
KRQ (93.7 FM) was new to the market back then and was coming on strong. Until then, Top 40 radio had been on the AM dial. The only modern stuff you could hear on FM was obscure B sides from bands such as Jethro Tull. Those stations also had a decidedly obvious Whites-only bent to their programming.
KRQ wasn’t totally absolved of that sin, either. There was a time that “Let’s Groove” by Earth, Wind & Fire was the No. 1 single in the United States, but it was day-parted on KRQ. (Day-parting is a radio practice in which certain songs can only be played at night. “Let’s Groove” was considered to be too funky for a daytime audience.)
So, I would listen to KRQ. The presentation was impressive. Their on-air personalities were pleasant but not cloying. Very rarely were there any technical difficulties, and the music just kept on coming. At the time, I thought it was impressive that Tucson would have such a well-run operation.
Then, I started traveling, driving around in rental cars, and listening to local radio. I suddenly realized that every town had a KRQ, and they all were exactly alike. Somewhere there was a Potemkin Village pumping out guys in their mid-30s who could sound like they were really interested in what they were doing for three hours on the radio. And, much more ominously, somewhere, there was just one person deciding which songs everyone in America would be listening to.
(No longer would you have that little station in Erie, Pennsylvania, playing the new song by the local band, the Oneders, “That Thing You Do.”)
Albeit with different call letters, there was a KRQ in Chicago, and one in Houston, and one in Seattle. They all had their star guy on in the morning, and those guys all had names that sounded like they were actors in gay porn films — Sandy Beach, Scotty Sunshine, Danny Daylight.
It was disconcerting, but ultimately eye-opening. Radio chains were a thing, a homogenized big business thing.
Today, they’re bigger than ever, but there are lots of places to get music, so it’s no big deal.
What’s disturbing these days is that the aforementioned Potemkin Village is now pumping out AM radio talkers.
I’ve had to do a little traveling lately (I still hate it). I was in two cities (far apart from each other) in the past month. In the first city, I was driving to my destination, and I turned on the AM radio to see what political and social issues were riling up the White folks in that part of the country. I sincerely expected there to be regional differences. You know, like Black people being allowed to vote in the South or the government having the nerve to tell people in the West that water is a finite resource.
Alas, that’s not the case. I found the station, and all I heard was the same crap that gets pumped out here in Tucson. Biden crime family. RINO. Vaccines. Election integrity. Somewhere, there’s one guy doling out the approved buzzwords.
They all follow the exact same playbook, the one perfected by Rush Limbaugh. Know your audience, always keep them angry, and make sure that the call screener sees to it that you never, ever have to take a phone call from somebody who doesn’t agree with every single word you’re saying. A long time ago, radio talk-show hosts used to like to argue with people. It was good for ratings. Nowadays, they just want to dictate, obfuscate, and prevaricate. The audience is smaller these days, but it’s more rabid.
The day I left Tucson, I was listening to the local guy. I was going to call him to ask him how Kari Lake can be a senator since, according to him, she’s already the legally elected governor. But it would have been a waste of time. I’ve had the call screener laughing a couple times, but no way I’m breaking through that firewall of insulation and deceit.
The last thing I heard before I parked the car was the local guy praising Matt Gaetz. What could possibly get you to say something nice about Matt Gaetz? It can’t be money. There’s not enough money in the world to get a rational person to say something good about that clown. Maybe Gaetz offered to share photos of his teenage sexual conquests, like he used to do on the floor of the House of Representatives. Nineteen is still a teenager.
When I got to my destination, that local guy was lauding Matt Gaetz for having brought the House of Representatives to a screeching halt.
These guys are all the same. They all sound the same; they might even look the same. They love dictators, they hate democracy, they fight for minority rule.
They’re like the Boys from (Bolsonero’s) Brazil.
