BCE Inc. is selling off 45 of its 103 regional radio stations as it cuts nine per cent of its workforce, including journalists and other workers at its Bell Media subsidiary.
BCE Inc. is selling off 45 of its 103 regional radio stations as it cuts nine per cent of its workforce, including journalists and other workers at its Bell Media subsidiary.
The radio company playbook:
How did we take such an amazing thing as having music beamed into the air around us for free and enshittify it to the point that nobody believes it has value?
Thank God there’s still the CBC. For now at least
When I go to France, I’m amazed at how many clear TV channels you can get over the air for free. Same with radio stations. And every region has their local little thing going on alongside the big players like Virgin or whatever. I never met anyone there that had a cable subscription.
To me, this is one sign of a healthy democracy because information and entertainment isn’t blocked behind paid subscriptions and not all sources are manipulated by mega media corporations to provide biased information and opinions.
Are you sure the tv channels are free? I’m only familiar with Germany: you can get a ton of channels as well but you have to essentially pay a tax for having a tv.
Well it’s “free” in the same sense that healthcare is “free”. Everybody contributes a little bit.
Yes in France they have the same kind of tax.
Because streaming music, podcasts, and audio books exist, and basically everyone has a smart phone.
Radio is dead no matter what the stations do.
This is probably a factor as well but I know many tradesmen and the like still just listening to radio. New guy doesnt like the song? Too bad, its what the station played. I also like to listen to local stations while driving, camping or fishing to get weather or traffic updates.
Out in the tractor radio is pretty much the only option, cell service comes and goes over the hills but the radio is always there for you!
I mean you could get a bluetooth speaker and download some music but then you’ll have to decide what you want to listen to and thats a lot to ask some days.
I actually run my own streaming setup where I stream off my computer through VPN, local buffering on the phone, it works really well in the truck where service is usually not interrupted for that long.
However a lot of people don’t realize just how many hours of music you can burn through when you’re putting in 12hr+ days in the field or even the mental effort in picking what to play next when your eyes are up front (I don’t run autosteer on anything). So just turn on the radio and get the job done!
Fuck man you are right and the scary thing is, are we going to say the same thing about the internet in 10 years?
As someone who’s been using the internet for decades, I’m saying this about the internet now.