Made redundant

While visiting my daughter Elena a few weeks ago in Boston, I had her place to myself for a few hours while she and my wife left to engage in the retail form of mother-daughter bonding. I thought I would take the opportunity to check out some major-market public radio and tune in WBUR or WGBH and see what they were up to. At first I thought there were just too many buttons and doohickeys on her stereo for me to find the fm tuner—but it turns out there wasn't one. And no clock/radio in the bedroom—and no kitchen radio/CD combo, no boom box, no shower radio. No radio! If she hadn't stolen my favorite Django Reinhart CD when she left town, I'd worry that I had raised some kind of changeling cultural mutant.

As it turns out, she does listen to a little radio--even NCPR—on her laptop. Back when Al Gore and I invented the internet, we had theorized that one consequence might be that people would want to listen to what they wanted to listen to, when they wanted to. But no radio?—ouch! She gets the news from websites and headlines email—she gets music from sharing and download sites; she gets recommendations via web and IM and the murmur network of an active urban scene. In other words, she gets what I get from radio, elsewhere. Just as living a block from the Davis Square T has replaced her need for a car, broadband in the home coupled with an iPod Nano has replaced most of the need for a radio. And she is one of a growing legion. Hang it up with the buggy whip?—I don't think so. But it does underscore the necessity for anyone who is serious about having a future in broadcasting to provide services that are not duplicated or available in the growing elsewhere of new media. The next generation does not listen to network pass-through stations. The network content is—well—on the network, anytime they want it. In the new world, you have to be making your own. And you have to put it where they want it, when they want it. But just for luck, I've put an iPod fm tuner add-on on Elena's stocking-stuffer list.