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What are your favorite community radio stations?
I'm a big fan of community radio, freeform if I'm being picky. I'm curious...
- Which stations are my fellow Tilderinos listening to? (I'm particularly interested in non-English speaking stations)
- How are you listening?
- More generally, are people even listening to much radio any more? If not, why is that?
To get things started, my own answers are.
- WFMU, dublab, Resonance FM, rrr.
- Generally I set up an alias per station with fish shell and stream each link via cvlc
- As I'm posting I guess it's obvious but yes, I listen to the radio almost daily. It's a nice break to have one less thing to make a decision about (what to listen to) while avoiding having to listen to top 40 and discovering all sorts of new music I'd otherwise likely miss out on.
KFAI Community Radio in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (I should mention that I don't live anywhere near Minneapolis. I'm just a fan of some of their shows.)
I generally download podcasts of the specific shows I want to listen to. In particular, I like Crap From The Past. I believe the station also has an app you can download, and you can listen via the web.
If I'm driving and haven't set up specific podcasts to listen to, I'll listen to the radio. NPR is my first choice, but I'll listen to local pop, classical, or jazz stations if I'm not in the mood for news. The reason is that commercial radio is terrible. It's crammed with ads, and they play the same music over and over. I used to love commercial radio, but it became so homogenous in the 90s and beyond that I can barely stand it anymore. Talk radio that's actually on the radio tends to be fairly trashy and more often than not is right-leaning. So I avoid the radio when I can. I have a bunch of podcasts about a variety of topics (science and skepticism, music, comedy, etc.) and they can easily fill all of my time. It's a bummer because I feel like I'm not as connected to my local community as I used to be without listening to the local radio and watching local TV. But the quality is so poor, I doubt that it would be the same as what I used to have.
KFAI looks great, thanks for sharing :) I've come across "crap from the past" before but hadn't until now realized it was a KFAI show.
If you're looking for other radio shows available as podcasts I can recommend Wake with Clay Pidgeon over at WFMU. He plays a good chunk of older records as well as some newer releases. He's also a really entertaining guy. Who knows, perhaps you'll find something in it that piques your interest.
Commercial radio is bad, agreed. It's unfortunate that not every city has a decent community radio presence. As you alluded to, a lot can be lost in its absence.
Oh wow! That does look pretty good! Thanks for sharing!
https://phauneradio.com/en/