The Death of Local Radio

Last night, we had a severe thunderstorm blow through the area.

The good news, the oppressive humidity is now gone.

The bad news, at about 10:45 last night, right in the middle of THE OFFICE, the power went out.

Living in the city, normally the power would come right back on after a few minutes. It is never out too long. But, it didn't.

With no TV, and my little (soon to be obsolete) portable TV's batteries dead, I had to rely on my AM transistor radio.

I tune into the main AM station in my area.

At first, I got the Emergency Broadcast System's warning of the storm, and where it was. And then it went back to normal syndicated programming. I waited until the 11 pm news break for more details of where the power outages were.

The 11 pm news came on, and it was only the national news. There was no local news. I don't think that there was anyone even at the radio station. It was all probably run by a computer.

Not to sound old here, but in the old days, wouldn't there have been a local overnight DJ telling us what was going on with the storm, and how widespread the power outages were? Isn't that what radio is for?

They then went back to syndicated programming. And what was the programming? COAST TO COAST, a nightly conspiracy / paranormal activities show. What was the topic? I swear, it was about how space aliens could trigger an attack, make it seem like it was caused by terrorists, and how it would cause WWIII and the eventual destruction of the earth.

The power outage continued all night. When I woke up this morning, still no power. By then, the local morning DJs were on. Their program however is so rigidly structured that it takes 20 minutes of listening to sports, headlines, and traffic that only then did they get to the news (to say a tree fell at the end of my street and thousands of homes were still without power).

So, the moral of this story, local radio is pretty much dead. And we should spend more time worrying about space aliens than thunderstorms.