20 February 2007
LATE: NPR and the Radio
I listened to npr yesterday during the morning. I feel it is just like CNN or some other major world news program on the television. Obviously the big difference is that radios are more portable and can get to a larger audience only if people would actually tune in. They make the news on npr somewhat catchy with their political game shows but it certainly isn’t for everyone. Reading the Communications in History I found it amusing how ham radio users would send military soldiers on missions that didn’t exist. I remember in middle school I actually got to become a licensed ham radio operator. A few kids got in trouble for horsing around just like in the old days. But then the whole Titanic thing happened and although it wasn’t the radio, the whole idea of congesting air waves in times of emergencies reminds me it isn’t that amusing. It is hard to realize how the radio got families together back then. I mean they would eat dinner and tune in to their favorite network programs and just enjoy a good laugh. The only parallel to that in the present is the television but it seems there is one in every room of the home so it doesn’t even bring us together in terms of our physical presence.
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3 comments:
Well, back then it's easier to imagine why the radio was so big. Just like the tv today, we gather around what we have. All they had was radio. I think it's interesting to think about why radio news like NPR has become old fashioned. It's just news, why do we need television? I think it's about the negative projections of television news. They always give us what we want, the disasters or bad news and we can see it. Where as radio we have to listen to discussion. But I think the radio can be better, fox 4 news will only show certain stories on it's broadcast. You can't necessarily get everything there is to get from tv news. A story on tv might be 30 seconds where as on the radio it might be a few minutes. I don't know, maybe I'm just rambling.
I like your comment how the changing technology, in this case the move from a central radio to any number of televisions in a house, is serving to seperate us. It seems like technology has not only connected us in new and innovative ways but also alienating personal interaction. I imagine alot of it has to do with convenience. After all, why should I spend the time to visit a friend when I can just reach in my pocket and give them a call from a cell phone. Or perhaps even worse, send a text message.
I remember visiting my grandparents who live in an area this is not very technologically savvy (the most high tech gadget in alot of houses was an answering machine). They would walk down the street to a friends house "just to chat." I couldn't help but feel a bit embarassed knowing that I've used my cell phone to call one of my roomates that lives 10 feet away from my room.
Yeah the difference today is that you can still make false comments all over the net. Most people reading the internet though, know that everything is not true. They will check several sources until they actually believe something. It seems that people who were sitting around the radios in the day thought everything was actually truthful. I wonder if after the first couple of times if they acctually caught on and realized that a certain person was always lying. Then maybe they could trace it and find out who was making these false accusations.
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