Radio Envy

I spent last week in LA and southern california and although the weather was fantastic, I did not come back with a tan.  That's because I don't tan, I burn.

But I did come back with some serious radio envy.

LA's radio rocks!

And NY's radio sucks.

Here in NYC, I have two options for radio. 

WFUV 90.7 which I cannot recieve with any quality most of the time in Manhattan
WBGO 88.3, a great jazz station but I am the only one in the family who wants to listent to it.

Everything else on the NY dial is programmed garbage as far as I am concerned.

In LA, I also had two favorite radio stations, but they are so much better than my two options in NYC.

Indie 103.1 - a great indie rock station with a strong signal that I could get all over LA
KCRW 89.9 - a better version of WFUV.  The Morning Becomes Ecletic show alone makes this station fantastic

In addition to these two stations, I regularly found other stations playing music I wanted to listen to in LA.  This never happens in NYC.

I imagine this has something to do with the fact that people in LA live in their cars, but I still think there is something really wrong with this picture.

As regular readers know from my exploding radio posts, I sure hope the bandwidth upgrade that is coming with the conversion to HD radio fixes this problem.

Comments

[Charles]

Fred,

Based on wild assumptions about your taste in music I reckon you should have a listen to the mp3 stream from, bFM:

http://www.95bfm.com

It's eclectic, irreverent, and plays lots of new new stuff. Best little radio station anywhere :)

[abby]

also, try listening to www.kexp.org - especially john in the morning's show!

[Mike D.]

I strongly second the kexp.org suggestion. No commercials... ever. Best radio station... ever. No need for any other stations... ever.

[Donald Roll]

Fred,

Agree with your NY choices, never could figure out why NY radio is so bad. A really great station here in London is 6 Music from the BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/6music/. This is a digital only station. DAB terrestrial broadcasting is really starting to take off here with a wide range of choices. When are you coming over to check it out?

[Josh]

If you didn't know this, you can webcast and podcast KCRW @ http://www.kcrw.org/.

[Tony Alva]

Jackson and I have been ranting about this content issue everytime you bring it up in the context of HD radio, exploding radio, etc... Radio will have boundless bandwidth to parse content to, but will struggle to find anything worthy to broadcast until existing program models are casted aside, especially in NYC. Even Atlanta has better radio than NYC for cripes sake!

It's no wonder iPod's rule in NYC...

[peter]

Since all of those stations stream (Indie 103/KCRW/KEXP) at least we do not have to move to LA.:)

Instead of all of this noise about Satellite radio; why don't we have a browser in our cars so we can have satellite-sourced streaming radio? We have an NDA in place; don't we?

[Jason]

KCRW is the reason I moved to the people's republic of Santa Monica! You know you can get it on iTunes? You should get that Radio Shark device and "Tivo" it dude!

Or, just buy a place on the beach here... you know you want to. I got a great place to play ball too... Mark Jackson of Knicks/Pacers fame plays there! He threw a pass to me the other day that was so fast that even though I caught it, I was so in shocked that I did that I could convert the layup!

You guys would love it here.

Oh yeah, I'm moving back to NYC... :-)

[jackson]

I'm thinking of changing my handle to 'Blue In The Face' because I have gone on about this endlessly for years now, and as such I have come to the conclusion that the future of radio depends upon those who have the balls to get in the game for the right reasons and do the right things. At the office, one can easily stream radio from any of the above listed stations, but many folks only listen in the car, and for them, currently, it's a pain in the ass. In time it won't be and we'll all podcast and stream the content we want, but for now, in New York at least, it's a sad state of rdio indeed.

[scott partee]

I noted the Atlanta nod above. It's true. Atlanta actually has better radio than any other city I've ever spent much time in -- although it's been a decade or so since I've hung out in LA.

One thing that makes Atlanta's radio so special is actually two things: WREK and WRAS. Georgia Tech's and Georgia State University's radio stations. You will not find more diverse radio anywhere, and in the case of 88.5 (WRAS), it's the most powerful (wattage-wise) student radio in the nation. When I spent a summer in Colorado, I could pick up WRAS in Tennessee as I drove back to the ATL.

WRAS is one of the most influential college radio stations in the nation, and can make or break "college chart" albums (this was even the subject of an in-depth article in Playboy Magazine). After a recent-ish revolt by the African American student body (woefully under-represented in the "all indie rock" format), the station now features a lot more cutting edge hip hop, dancehall, reggae and other types of music. WREK is famous (infamous, some might say) for featuring punk rock, noise, avant garde, out there, free jazz and bizzaro music a lot of the times, but hip hop shows on this station will turn you onto stuff people won't be catching for years.

You can stream WREK, which many of my East Coast friends do, but not WRAS.

[Will Grier]

I would like to know if Pablo is still
work at WRAS. And how I can send our
music to you in hope's you will play
it,then put it ( ON AIR )
Thank's for all the help you can give us
Will Grier griwilli@peoplepc.com