In Defence of Radio...

Radio, many say, is a dying art. People don't get why you would sit and listen to something when you can sit and watch and listen to something. Television it would seem blows radio out of the water. Television takes everything that radio tries to get the listener to imagine and makes them not have to imagine, it gives them an image, a moving picture. Now with modern technology and CGI, there is almost nothing left up to the imagination; we can see whatever we want, whenever someone else dreams up they can show to us.

There is still however something important, something undeniable about radio. There is something to sitting and listening quietly, being a perfect receptacle but still having the ability to move and imagine as the story or stories fill your ears. Radio unlike TV or Film has the power to put the listener inside the story, inside the action and allows them to experience it for themselves. Unlike watching an actor on a screen radio makes each person listening the actor, each person is allowed their imagination.

Radio is also piercing, its comforting and its emotional. Somehow, in the genre of "talk" radio the radio personality has the ability to connect with the people they are speaking to, the ability to see what and who they are, and respond to those emotions. As well the listener is able to connect with the personality, to see who they actually are, whether that be radio stick or not. Essentially radio is the medium where a real and palpable connection can be made between the host and listener, a connection that is absent from many other mediums.

With the inclusion of the podcast as a new way to listen to radio hopefully a new generation will see that there is real truth and real connections in radio. I want people to understand that when something is good, it is good and for me radio is good...

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Default.aspx

http://www.frostyheidiandfrank.com/

http://www.carollaradio.com/