July 21, 2026
FM or RIP?
It's a shame what's happened to radio
Listeners are fighting over whether radio lost its soul decades ago or never had one
TLDR: A former radio host says modern stations lost the fun, local charm, and human touch that made radio special. Commenters turned that into a brawl: some mourned a lost golden age, others said radio has been awful for decades, while a few insisted small local stations still keep the spark alive.
An ex-disk jockey looked back at his radio years — from awkward college shifts in the 1980s to lively call-ins and local fame in the 1990s — and basically declared: today’s radio just isn’t fun anymore. His complaint is simple enough for anyone who’s ever twisted a car dial: stations now feel more corporate, less personal, and built for advertisers instead of listeners. But in the comments, the real show began, and wow, people had feelings.
One camp got instantly nostalgic. They argued that old radio had a magic streaming can’t fake: the thrill of hearing a great song and knowing some actual person nearby chose it for you at that exact moment. That human connection was treated like a lost art, with commenters mourning the death of the local voice and the friendly DJ. But then the anti-nostalgia squad crashed the party. One blunt reply basically said, “Hold on — radio has been bad for ages,” insisting that even in the 1990s it was mostly ads, repetitive playlists, and disappointment. Another went even harder, declaring that good radio died in the mid-1980s, which is the kind of timeline fight guaranteed to start an intergenerational comment war.
Not everyone was ready to hold a funeral. A few users rushed in with survivor stories, shouting out gems like WBER as proof that live, personality-driven radio still exists if you know where to look. And then there were the younger commenters, politely shrugging and admitting they basically skipped radio entirely because they grew up with MP3 players. Brutal. The verdict? Radio didn’t just change — it became a full-on memory battle, with everyone arguing over when the magic died, and whether it was ever really alive in the first place.
Key Points
- •The article is an updated version of a piece first published on 30 July 2009 about the author’s radio career and later reflections on the medium.
- •The author worked in radio for nine years and signed off for the last time in 1994.
- •He began at college station WMHD, where he learned programming, broadened his music selection, and improved his on-air delivery.
- •He later worked part-time at WBOW and then at WZZQ in Terre Haute, where he gained professional experience and interacted with listeners through requests, contests, and events.
- •After moving to Indianapolis, he did not continue in radio and attributes part of radio’s later decline in appeal to advertiser-driven formatting and industry consolidation following deregulation.