Not sure if my post belongs here, but my thoughts on just being a listener in the old days. Old for me now.
What a great site, hats off to the curators and industry people who are keeping the history
alive. I've lurked a few times when something in the news happens and now decided to put a few thoughts into the mix.
I love radio, since a very early age and my first jelly colour radio shack transistor I can't go to sleep without it, never thought about being anything but a consumer
of radio. I guess now I could become my own radio station if I wanted to just listen to myself talk.
My mum used to say there is only one thing free in the world - the sun. I think radio (batteries not included) is a close second,
at least radio pre-internet days. Vancouver was the market I grew up in the 70's and 80's. Great memories.
Canucks radio with Jim Robson, intermissions with Big Al - when the team stunk he's talk up another sport, when could that happen today?
Down(Dean) Hill, (TDM) Tedium shlock rock stuff on CFOX, Pat Burns smoky voice on CJOR, the Sportstalk wars, Cullens old radio dramas, I
think I remember he broadcast for a time from a mall in BBY - yes?
CISL we called it Senile, I could pick up radio from sanfrancisco on a good night and listen to a ball game, hook the stereo up with the TV cable
you get even more choices? WOW. I remember checking out CO-OP vancouver one day - think it was called Pigeon square?
What a scene - inside and out. And the cool factor of listening to CITR and hearing all the music corporate radio wasn't allowed to play.
I moved away in '91 to what now is a Pattison/Vista market. I became a CBC listener. I learned after summer road trip across canada
a few years later that our stations weren't unique at all, they had the same name and jingles and bumper stickers we had at home.
How cheesy was that they just copied us? Little did I know it was the begining of the end. Beige was in. The hard drive was going to rule.
I was always a dial changer, now it just lands more often to CBC. This past summer I had alot of outside work that meant full days of radio
listening. Low tech radio. It's immediate, it's today, it's just there. Music side is just white bread and bologna after a few hours however.
Time to insert the USB stick for a while or back to CBC. The older demo station had just broken Roxy Roller as a new cancon hit (I assume)
so it was in heavy 2x daily rotation, the younger demo station had a BTO song on daily playlist. I thought both were 30+ years old
but who's counting.... except for the CRTC I guess.
I'll always be a consumer of free radio. Hopefully there will always be free radio. Maybe free market radio will be the next step....
Like Uber for the airwaves.