Comments (0) Best Radio Station for Music - 2002
The one you program yourself
Readers' Choice: KDHX (88.1 FM)
If you've been a reader for any length of time, you know our predilections and our biases (full disclosure: three full-time RFTers have staked claims on KDHX time slots). The simple truth, though, is that for all its glory, the FM band has its limitations: mainly, those who own the stations, who, until very recently, controlled the airwaves. Because these stations are businesses created to make money, they're conservative. But that's changing: In ten years, the volume of sound available on the Web will equal the volume of text, and it'll be beamed into microscopic satellite dishes bolted just outside your eardrum, and all you'll have to do is twitch your earlobe to change the frequency (Kenneth). We're getting there: satellite radio, Web radio, iPods, 300-CD changers, MP3s out the ass. We've got music, and we can program it ourselves, thank you very much, with the click of a mouse; program directors, our ass. We want Top 40? Got them, in a weekly e-mail delivered to our portalstep. Of course, this is corporate America's nightmare, because they've yet to determine how to make money off this template. Boo-hoo. Good riddance. The great stations, those like KDHX and KWUR, will still thrive, because they've got the passion, if not the cash. But still, the best radio station for music is, and will be even more so soon, the one you program by yourself, for yourself.
