Is the future of radio without radios? It’s looking like it.
When I was a teenager I worked in Atlanta broadcast, first at WAKE under the watchful eye of the incredible Bill Drake — later in his career he made Boss Radio in California a legend. Then on to WPLO AM, which had one of those newfangled FM signals. FM was what we teenagers called long-hair music, at least until the Beetles came along. Mozart and Beethoven were on tape that was forever breaking, which sent the FM side into dreaded dead air because I was the only guy in the building. Their solution was, for my Saturday and Sunday night shifts only, to simulcast the show on AM and FM, which the FCC frowned on. That made me one of the first jocks to play rock on FM. Left that for college and a career as a journalist and author.
Nowadays my broadcast adventures are limited to network TV interviews about politics and my books and weekly drop-ins with Tommy G Show — on New Jersey’s WCTC, and Internet channels like TuneIn. The Internet allows us to broadcast from wherever I am in the world at 5 pm, Eastern Time, on Fridays. That includes the bush of Africa, the wilds of Alaska, Paris, Rome and the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, among others. Sometimes I even go into WCTC’s studios and host three hours of afternoon drive to remind myself what we’re doing.Radio remains my favorite medium.
My mother was visiting recently and wanted to hear the 5 pm broadcast so I asked Alexa to call up Tommy G on the Sonos speaker. Instantly, there it was, in my kitchen, sounding great. I’ve grown fond of asking Alexa for things: the news from my favorite networks, the time and temperature and the songs I want to hear when I want to hear them. I like to try to fool her by requesting some obscure one-hit wonder from the old days. She usually wins.
On the originating end the technology continues to change and evolve but basically you still need talent and technical expertise to put it all together. There is going to be a bigger change on the receiving end. In any room in my house I have radio at voice command.
When this technology is bundled into vehicles, we will have the best of radio without a radio set. You pay a fee for the WIFI and the world is your oyster. You’re in control.
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