Radio Silence: Tuned Out to the Slow Death of American Radio

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Have you listened to the radio lately?

I’m not talking about The Beatles Channel or Yacht Rock Radio on SiriusXM, and sports radio or NPR don’t count either. I’m talking terrestrial FM radio—the stale, cookie-cutter wasteland where the same 20 songs are played on an endless loop, interrupted only by several drive-time minutes of mind-numbing ads repeated after every three or four songs.

It’s an aural form of waterboarding—predictable, relentless, and just when you think it’s over, more overplayed hits, inane banter, and obnoxious commercials—an auditory hellscape, a sonic dumpster fire, an insult added to the unavoidable injury that is slow-moving bumper-to-bumper traffic.

FM radio in 2024 is plagued by many issues, not the least of which is its extraordinary talent for driving away listeners by transforming itself into a relic of monotony. What once felt like a dynamic, community-centered medium has devolved into a bland, repetitive grind—a place where patience goes to suffer and wher…