Mondays with Mike: Hear hear

We have kind of an aural household. As in, there’s lots of sound most of the time. It’s live radio, streaming radio, or the squawking of Beth’s computer. It’s Siri on Beth’s iPhone reporting her blood sugar levels, or the time of day, or the current temperature and weather forecast.

Never out of style.

I guess that’s predictable given Beth’s predicament—sound is more important to her than the average bear. But that’s not the whole story.

The world, awash in a sea of visual media, seems to have gone audio crazy. There’s more audio content than ever. That’s not all good, because every Joe and Jane Schmo seems to have a podcast … whether or not they have anything to offer. And really, aren’t podcasts essentially TiVo-ed radio?

As someone who was present at the creation of the World Wide Web, I’m completely awed by the staying power of radio. TV didn’t kill it. The Internet didn’t kill it. Streaming just extends it. Somehow, it thrives.

Beth uses Alexa to stream a great station (KOZT) we found when we visited Mendocino, California a few years back. And to the fantastic New Orleans jazz station, WWOZ. Over the old-fashioned broadcast airwaves, Beth never misses Fresh Air on WBEZ, our NPR station. As a result, she’s always ahead of me in terms of popular culture and literature. Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me is a Saturday morning habit, though we sometimes waver and tune in Saturday Morning Flashback on WXRT.

I became addicted to WSCR over the pandemic. I stayed away from it until then (we called it sports hate radio)—but the on-air people humanized themselves during the pandemic. While none of the sports teams were playing, they began talking about, you know, things other than sports, because they had to. And they were good at it. I’m kinda missing those times. Now it’s back to spending hours talking about the same sports non-story ad nauseum. (Who are the Cubs going to trade? Are the Bears moving to Arlington Heights? I really don’t give a rat’s ass.)

My guess is that radio’s appeal is something like reading’s appeal. I think more thought has to go into writing or audio production than to producing TV, and as a result, it’s a richer experience than watching flickering images. Of course, there’s plenty of crap on the radio, too, especially the hateful political monkey hosts.

But if I want a quick hit of news, I can always tune in WBBM and get the story in a quick 30 minutes, without some freakish TV footage of a bear running loose in San Diego or the like.

A toast to Guglielmo Marconi, and long live the radio!