Maybe video didn’t kill the radio star — but huge corporations kind of did. No longer does radio champion cultural revolutions or even sick tunes — for the most part, it consists of top 40, classic rock and country. That’s it.

But how did we get to this cultural dry spell? Because radio wasn’t always this awful. It first started as a way of communication — Morse codes with dots and dashes. But in the 1920s, radio started playing music, and thus it became a harbinger of many cultural revolutions: jazz and rock ‘n roll and yes, even disco.

In the ’60s, it was even used as a way to sing about political discourse, as musicians wrote songs about the state of their nation that were played on the radio. It changed the way people thought about things and was a place for both independent music and top 40.

That begin to change in the ’80s, when radio stations began to be gobbled up by corporations. When the 1996 Telecommunications Act deregulated radio, it gave corporations the ability to buy hundreds of stations — and so they did. At that time, before the internet became such an important part of everyday life, whoever controlled the station essentially controlled what people listened to.

There’s actual science behind the fact that more people listen to a song, the more likely they are to enjoy it. Not to get all Big Brother over here, but essentially, by playing the same top 40 crap over and over again, radio is tricking listeners into thinking overproduced gimmicky pop stars or men yodeling on about tractors is real music.

The cultural revolution of the ’60s has been replaced by Meghan Trainor telling us how we should all be jealous of her, and the worst part is, people buy into it. They listen to the radio, they buy her single, they go see her live and pay a ridiculous amount of money for it.

Syracuse is good case study because, in fact, there are no good radio stations and three country ones. Because yes, we really do need to hear about cruising in classics from bands like Florida Georgia Line. And if we keep listening to it, it actually sounds kind of good.

There’s no way to undo the death of radio. We’ve got to bury it and move on. But we can support independent stations that play good music. NPR isn’t just a good source of news. And even here at Syracuse University, our college radio station is starting shows this week. And just talking to DJs at the station, one can see a variety of shows: pop, punk, weird bird music and everything in between. It is radio as it should be: a microcosm of different sounds and ideas.

And so, for the love of God, before you turn on that radio to listen to Rihanna, or Drake, or Lady Antebellum, consider going local first. Music doesn’t have to be AutoTuned and awful. Let’s start the cultural revolution — right here at home.

Emera Riley is a junior magazine journalism major. Her column appears weekly in Pulp. You can email her at elril100@syr.edu.

Published on October 4, 2016 at 9:54 pm