TennesseeTicket.com

You love the 80's. You are like a friend of mine whose iPod and iBook are chock full of "rad" tunes from the decadent decade that arguably should have remained forgotten. Your favorite radio station is of course "The 80's Channel."

Or, you love your Country. I mean, there is nothing better to you than to hear Toby Keith or that "Redneck Woman." WUSY is where you get your Big and Rich fix.

Perhaps you have a taste for the harder stuff, and you jam to Rock105 every chance you get (especially during the segment with the best title I've ever encountered, "Tie One On Tuesday").

Or, maybe your paint-thinner-addled mind can't keep up with anything more modern than the mullet-shaking sounds of "classic rock," but local stalwart KZ-106 just doesn't play enough Marshall Tucker Band (I mean, come on, man, how could there be too much Marshall Tucker?), so you find Thunder 101.9 to be as comforting as a "kolbir" (translation: cold beer) and a joint after a hard day of roofing. Plus, they run NASCAR, every race. On the radio. You can't see the wrecks, but you can hear the screechin' tires.

Do you know that ALL of you are listening to the same broadcaster? And that you're sharing identical playlists with countless others in Tulsa, Fort Wayne, Greeneville, Scranton and Grand Island?

Do you know that radio used to be local? New Orleans had a sound, and Memphis, just upriver by boat, had a different sound. Further on up, there was St. Louis, and then Chicago. Detroit, New York City, Los Angeles. All different.

I'm not suggesting that radio's relative homogenization is out of sync with things in general; after all, the outlet has merely comformed to the product, and both are driven by the market (although there is the chicken/egg conundrum related to producers and consumers). I remember listening to my Dad talk about growing up in a different radio era, when one got excited at the onset of nighttime because one could tune in stations from afar (his favorite happened to be WSM out of Nashville). Now, if I were able to choose radio from a different point on the map, I'm not sure I could tell the difference.

Of course there are exceptions, and our own WUTC (88.1 FM) is a notable one. The internet in part replaces the erstwhile nocturnal superstation, since we have more options there than what our FM antennae will gather. And, it should be noted, the means by which we experience recorded music are changing at an ever-increasing pace. (Side note: I had my first experience trying to operate an iPod the other day. Someone handed it to me with it already playing; but when the song I needed to learn for a wedding was over, I had not the foggiest clue how to turn it off. These days I don't mind showing or even exaggerating my age. It's becoming its own badge of honor, just as my youth once was.)

All this is to simply remind the community that an ever-larger percentage of our entertainment intake is coming at us from a constantly consolidating set of sources. I'm sure most of us are fine with that, even when we know. I just don't have an accurate picture of how many actually realize it. We grew up with a Cold War (or post-Cold War) mindset that included abhorrence at the thought of state-run media with its handful of stations pumping out innocuous drivel, yet conglomerate-run media are dishing up "clear" "imitation gruel" (apologies to The Simpsons) for all of us, and we largely lap it up in earnest. Does anyone else see the irony in that?