Comments on: On Radio: Strange Bedfellows

By: Bill Kirkpatrick

Bill Kirkpatrick — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 16:12:04 +0000

Thanks, @CollegRadio4evr. Thanks, too, for alerting me to the Carleton decision (Carleton opted out of Clear Channel’s offer, the first station that I’ve heard of that did, although I’d be interested in learning if there are more: http://apps.carleton.edu/carletonian/?story_id=814065&issue_id=814035).

–Bill

By: Bill Kirkpatrick

Bill Kirkpatrick — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 14:59:44 +0000

Good question, Cynthia. My students don’t drive much (residential campus) and geographically they’re located in a radio black hole. But I’m guessing nonetheless that they underestimate how much radio they actually listen to. I know a fair number of them listen to WDUB, the college station here, but perhaps they don’t think of that as “real” radio at all. I think the discourse of radio as an “old” medium to some extent masks their consumption habits even to themselves.

But beyond that, I’m sure your hypothesis about the intersection of class, region, and ethnicity is spot on. In that regard, it reminds me of danah boyd’s work on the class differences between MySpace and Facebook: long after it seemed like FB had crushed MySpace, there were still millions and millions of active users of MySpace. It was just that those users were overwhelmingly of different socioeconomic, ethnic, professional, or regional backgrounds than the people who had moved to FB.

That’s why I tend to give some credence to the Arbitron survey cited in my post, kind of like I believe the reports that lots of people with Tivos don’t skip through the commercials. My experience as a privileged, white, tech-oriented media consumer is far from typical.

Thanks for your comment!

By: collegradio4evr

collegradio4evr — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 21:32:50 +0000

it is disgusting how clear channel is trying to make college radio corporate. Clear Channel makes these college stations sign an exclusivity clause, ensuring that only iHeartRadio can access the stream. How is this providing more awareness for college radio? Shouldn’t college stations seek to be on more college-centric streaming apps rather than one heartless, corporate streaming app?

I’m trying to expose this on Twitter. Find me: @CollegRadio4evr

By: Cynthia Meyers

Cynthia Meyers — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 01:12:32 +0000

Every semester I poll students, asking if they listen to over-the-air radio. These are students who don’t buy CDs, newspapers, or many movie tickets, and who consume tons of online media. Every semester I am surprised by how many of them can name a local radio station they listen to. This semester, 20 out of 23 claimed to listen to an over-the-air station. They seem to be listening *in addition* to other audio media, like Pandora, Spotify, etc. So what could account for this if your students are not listening to over the air radio? Class (these are first generation students)? Ethnicity (many are latino)? Region (NYC has lots of radio stations, but they listen to the same 3 or 4)? And yes, many of them listen to iHeartRadio, kind of the best of both worlds for them…..