I'm a radio guy. I've loved radio since I was old enough to twiddle the knobs on the old vacuum-tube console my parents had.
FOR CLOSING IN on five decades, I've listened to the radio, been entranced by the magic of the radio and, eventually, did my bit in creating some radio magic myself. (Though, I'm sure not many people fondly remember the faux, on-air FCC raid Darryl "Cowboy" Young and I staged during the rock show on WBRH way back there then. We thought it was funny at the time.)
For these and other reasons, it breaks my heart -- and enrages me -- that what Nanci Griffith sings about in "Listen to the Radio" no longer is true -- at least the part about "when you can't find a friend, you've still got the radio." At least for the most part.
The corporate leeches have fired all your friends on the radio. Though you maybe could be friends with Data in a Star Trek world, it's not going to work out with HAL 9000 . . . hiding out in some Cheap Channel server room.
All that's left for us to do is rage against the machine -- and the bastards who, in the name of the bottom line, thought it was a substitute for our friends on the radio.
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