I always wanted to understand how all this mass media got made, who was making it and what machinations affected what we could watch and listen to. That’s what fueled my interest in radio, why I got into college radio, and why I learned video production. I spent some time in graduate school studying the political economy of the media, only to realize being a professor wasn’t so much for me. I produced a weekly radio show exploring both the policy and grassroots angles of media for seven years, and now I blog here about radio.

And, really, until I got out of college I always felt a little bit alone in my interest in the behind-the-scenes of broadcast media, rather than being interested in the shows and programs themselves, like normal people. Graduate school and the rebirth of academic consciousness about media ownership and control in the 1990s showed me that I wasn’t so strange, at least in this interest. At the same time, aside from the short-lived Brill’s Content, there didn’t seem to be much in the way of a mass media publication or program that consistently looked at media that wasn’t intended for a strictly academic or industry audience.

Then I heard NPR’s On the Media. I’m not sure when that first happened–the program went national in 2001, but I think it was a few years before my local affiliate picked it up. Anyway, I recall initially being skeptical of the premise, expecting the program to sound like a radio version of a local media column, covering the coming and going of various executives and on-air talent, reviewing new program line-ups, ratings and the like.

In a manifesto for the program, co-host Brooke Gladstone explains that one of the reasons why she abandoned the typical media beat was that,

I would be asked to do a three-and-a-half minute piece every time Tina Brown passed wind (or so it seemed to me.) I wasn’t interested in that, and I lived in one of the half-dozen zip codes where people genuinely cared about Tina Brown [former New Yorker editor-in-chief].

Instead, she writes that,

I wanted to show how the media sausage is made.

That explains why when I actually heard it, I was pleasantly surprised.

As someone who produced a weekly program that attempted to be critical of the media establishment, I can say that On the Media is more establishment than not, but still critical. At the same time, OTM stands out from a lot of other public radio programming in that Gladstone and co-host Bob Garfield clearly have a point of view, and aren’t afraid to call “bullshit” when they see it.

As employees of NPR and WNYC, the nation’s largest public station, the staff of OTM are themselves part of the media mainstream, yet I think they manage to make the most of their insider status to nevertheless raise serious questions of ethics, truth, and even sometimes, justice. To me, they are credible when they do this because the staff of OTM is also willing to cop to their own oversights, mistakes and prejudices. One of my favorite episodes is from 2003, which they called “Pulling Back the Curtain,” in which they explain and demonstrate how editing, and editing decisions, result in the show you hear each week.

For my taste they focus too much on fine points of journalistic practice and propriety, whereas I would prefer a more systemic analysis of the media system, ownership and the effects of the profit motive. I recognize there’s a need to stay topical, but their frequent analyses of how the print and electronic press covered a particular news story, again, seems more like inside baseball than a more trenchant investigation into why the press chooses to report the way it does.

Still, those are actually minor quibbles with a program that provides more consistent reportage, analysis and criticism of our media system than anything else in broadcast. Sure, FAIR’s Counterpsin does a good job of picking apart mainstream news coverage every week from a progressive perspective, and programs like Democracy Now do frequent analysis of the mainstream media from a social justice point of view. Nevertheless OTM is on the case every week, and through its more conventional public radio approach to reporting often provides a few opinions that I might not otherwise have considered. For instance, I found their show on the music industry last year to be truly informative and penetrating, despite the fact I consider myself pretty deeply into the topic.

OTM’s approach is definitely one of tough love. The staff doesn’t want the mainstream media to collapse and die out. I believe they just want it to be better, and provide greater service to an informed public

KOME Sticker

Recently I was tracking some college radio news when I ran across Greg Blouch’s website, “Radio Sticker of the Day.” Immediately I was taken back to my junior high school years when radio station stickers were a hot commodity. My classmate Ricky Kanazawa would spend most of our English class time focused on a stack of bright yellow and black KOME stickers and an exacto knife, carving up new, inspired, psychedelic creations. I’m not sure if Greg has tapped into this aspect of sticker art; but his website is a testament to the most visible radio station branding that there is.

KISR Sticker Courtesty Greg Blouch

I dropped Greg a note to find out what fuels his obsession for radio station stickers and learn more about his website, “Radio Sticker of the Day.”

It turns out that his fascination with stickers began in the 1980s, around the same time that my friends and I were plastering KOME, KSJO, and KMEL stickers (with a picture of a camel on them) all over our notebooks, windows, and Pee-Chee folders.

Over the years he’s accumulated around 12,000 stickers and largely credits the Internet for making it easier for him to contact stations. His site only features pictures of stickers that are in his collection. I love that attention to detail! On to the interview:

WYSO Sticker Courtesy Greg Blouch

Jennifer Waits: How did you get started collecting radio stickers and what was your first sticker?

Greg Blouch: When I was 13 years old our family moved from Middleport, New York (in the western part of the state near Niagara Falls/Buffalo) to Celina, Ohio.  I was homesick and wanted to get my hands on something that reminded me of New York.

My favorite radio station had been 107.7 WUWU which was an offbeat, almost freeform, rock station heavy on the new wave music of the time (this was around 1982/1983.)  I wrote to the station and asked for a sticker which I promptly wasted by slapping it on a book cover for school.

WUWU Sticker Courtesy Greg Blouch

My obsession really began after I found a book in the library with station mailing addresses and started sending out self-addressed stamped envelopes with a note asking for decals.

My success rate was only about 50% but it was fun to get an occasional surprise in the mailbox…and it still is.  The Internet and the ability to write to stations instantly has helped the collection grow tremendously.  About 90% of my stickers have been acquired since I  got online in 1997.

Jennifer: How many stickers do you think you have?

Greg: I’ve tried to count them more than once but got bored and gave up.  My guesstimate would be somewhere around 12,000 different stickers.

KMLE Sticker Courtesy Greg Blouch

Jennifer: How do you find your stickers?

Greg: I subscribe to 100000watts.com, a subscription-only website with updated information on every radio station in the United States and Canada.

I find station websites through the 100000watts database and email every one of them going state-by-state (I’m currently canvassing my own state of Ohio, next is Oklahoma.)

I always offer to send a SASE but usually they just mail them to me.  Every once in a while I’ll venture overseas and email foreign stations but the return rate is much lower.
I also trade stickers with a small group of like-minded hobbyists and am a member and column editor of Decalcomania, which is a newsletter for radio enthusiasts and radio promotional item collectors.

Jennifer: What’s the strangest promotional item that you have from a radio station?

Greg: I received a whoopee cushion from a rock station in California, a fishing lure from KARP in Minnesota and a condom packet from Germany, but the strangest might be a bar of soap from Earlham College’s WECI in Richmond, Indiana.  The station logo is engraved into the bar itself.

I have a few boxes of non-sticker stuff…lots of keychains, magnets, mugs, t-shirts, pens, buttons, mousepads and on and on.

WECI Sticker Courtesy Greg Blouch

Jennifer: Do you ever visit radio stations?

Greg: Rarely.  I annoy the receptionist at the Dayton Clear Channel cluster every few months and ask for stickers but that’s about it.

Jennifer: Have you ever worked at a radio station?

WWSU Sticker Courtesy Greg Blouch

Greg: I did college radio for three years at WWSU which is Wright State University’s station.  While still in college I answered an ad that my future wife saw in the paper looking for air talent for a brand new radio station.  I threw together a tape, got an interview with the PD and somehow got hired.  I was the night jock on WZJX “94-5 XRock” which was Dayton’s first commercial alternative station.  This was 1993/94.

I was on the air about 35 hours a week plus a little bit of production and promotion work as well as being in school full time.  It was a tough schedule to pull off but a great experience where I learned that I like radio but didn’t necessarily like working in radio.

Speaking on the air never came naturally to me but I think I faked my way through it fairly well.  When the ownership group sold the station and flipped it to Oldies it was both a disappointment and a relief that I was no longer in the biz.  I got a steady civil service job and never attempted to get back into radio.

WZJX Sticker Courtesy Greg Blouch

Jennifer: What do you love about radio?

Greg: So much of my love for radio is music-based and now that I’m on the curmudgeonly cusp of 40 I find it hard to listen to a lot of it.  It’s either songs I’m burned out on or styles that I can’t get into.

I fully admit that my musical tastes are permanently stuck in the 1980s and early 90s.  I do love good sounding production and a DJ who sounds like he’s into what he’s playing and is doing more than reading liners.

Jennifer: What kind of radio do you listen to? (college? commercial? music? talk?)

Greg: As far as terrestrial radio goes, it’s almost all college/non-commercial and sports talk radio these days.  I love college radio because it’s usually music you don’t hear everywhere else, presented by kids who are just being themselves in all their unprofessional glory.  It’s refreshing.
My job allows me to listen to a few hours of podcasts a day.  Most of it comes from WNYC, KCRW, WBEZ and a whole lot of individual NPR shows.

Jennifer: What are you favorite radio stations?

WOXY Sticker Courtesy Greg Blouch

Greg: I could pick up WOXY from Oxford, Ohio when they were on 97.7 FM so I regularly listen to the Internet version.  I like listening to my old stomping grounds of WWSU although, at only 20 watts, it can be a tough catch. 

WYSO from Antioch University in Yellow Springs is a solidly quirky NPR affiliate.  My favorite might be 6 Music which is the BBC’s “alternative” digital radio station.  I especially like Roundtable, where four music geeks meet to hear, discuss and judge new music releases.

Besides the aforementioned WUWU, my favorite station from the past would be Toronto’s CFNY in the 1980s.  A friend would send me tapes of the station which had tons of cool music, about 30% of it (by law!) consisted of mostly-unheard-of-in-the-States Canadian artists.

WFMU Sticker Courtesy Greg Blouch

Jennifer: What can a sticker tell you about a radio station?

Greg: Hmmmm…not much.  I guess the only answer I have is that you can tell it’s a Clear Channel station because they often use the same logos for their stations across the country.  The blandness is kinda sad.  A single generic logo for all their “Kiss” and “Mix” stations…only the frequencies on the stickers are different.

Jennifer: Anything else?

Greg: If anyone out there has any stickers to swap, I’m always looking for a trade.  Email: radiodecals@gmail.com

Thanks to Greg for sharing his radio obsession with me and for turning me on to some more stations. Your sticker is in the mail…

Previous Radio Obsessives:

Garrett Wollman’s Radio Tower Quest

Jose Fritz’s Arcane Radio Trivia

Favorites list on the Public Radio Player 2.0

The new 2.0 player breaks new ground by integrating on demand listening to hundreds of public radio programs, both national and local. The Public Radio Player is a collaboration between all the major public radio organizations led by the Public Radio Exchange, which is itself an innovative (but not the first) online archive of public radio content from member stations, networks and independent producers.

I’ve tried out live radio streaming to my iPhone a few times, and while it’s cool to listen to a distant station while riding the CTA home, I found that it sapped the hell out of my battery. If you want to listen for much more than an hour you need a steady source of power–a car adapter would probably suffice. More frequently, however, I’ve enjoyed the convenience of listening to podcasts, which is how I enjoy most of my favorite weekly programs.

But listening to podcasts requires some degree of forethought, making sure you subscribe and/or download programs in advance to your computer, then synchronizing them with your iPhone. You can also download podcasts directly to your iPhone from the iTunes store, but it’s not the most convenient process. You have to pick through quite a bit of chaff, you can’t search only podcasts and there’s no bookmarking function to return to your favorites.

I spent part of the afternoon trying out the new Public Radio Player 2.0 and I am quite impressed with the on demand playback. First and foremost, on demand programs are downloaded to your iPhone as they play, not streamed. This means that you don’t need to keep a constant edge or 3G connection for the duration of the program, only until it finishes downloading to your phone. That means it’s less of a drain on your battery life. It also means that you won’t lose your program in the middle when your commuter train goes into the subway.

Second, there’s an impressive inventory of programs available for on demand listening. Though I had to work a little hard to find a couple of my favorite programs, WNYC’s On the Media and WBEZ’s Sound Opinions. I could find neither program by browsing, though On the Media showed up in a search. I couldn’t find Sound Opinions at all.

And, crucially, the Public Radio Player 2.0 has a favorites list of both live and on demand programs.

To me the real innovation comes from the ability to easily listen to your favorite public radio programs on demand without having a computer at all. The favorites function makes it much more convenient to pick up daily programs as they become available. Though most daily public radio programs don’t post their podcasts until most affiliates have aired, if you’re that anxious you can still probably find a live stream.

I’m also glad to see that community radio stations are included, like Madison’s WORT. In my brief survey today I wasn’t able to identify any local community radio programs available for on demand, although the national daily news program Democracy Now–which primarily airs on community stations–is there. That may change as more stations embrace podcasts and learn to make them more accessible.

The survival of radio will depend on seeing the medium is broad terms and embracing both the traditional live, linear form and the newer nonlinear on demand world. These worlds don’t have to compete, and noncommercial radio is showing the right side of the dial how it’s done.