Who listens to radio?

In my younger days, I listened to radio a lot, starting off with an FM Top 40 station (actually, I guess the proper name for the format these days is "CHR"). That station had a block of oldies at some point on the weekend, and I eventually came to realize that I liked the oldies better than I liked the new music, so I started listening to an oldies station instead. An oldies station that was on AM. I may have been the only kid in junior high who listened to AM radio. In high school, I switched back to FM, this time picking a rock station (the people who brought you "CHR" would call that format "AOR").

Then, in college, I switched to the "adult album alternative" format (you guessed it, "AAA"), and stuck with that in three different cities. Then I moved to Los Angeles, and there is no true AAA station. I could go back to one of the formats I listened to in the past, but I hate 60% of music being played on CHR stations these days, I hate 40% of music being played on rock stations these days, and worst of all, that AM oldies station had a huge playlist that has spoiled me for most other oldies stations.

So I never listen to the radio, and that's only a slight exaggeration, because the most radio I've heard over the last year has been at Supercuts while I'm getting my hair cut, plus the week when my car was in the shop and I was renting a box on wheels. I listen to CD's most often. Sometimes I listen to the DMX channels on my digital cable. My main source for new music is the bands that perform on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien." I recently put a much larger hard drive into my computer, and I'm currently converting all my CD's into MP3 files in order to make my computer into a giant jukebox.

Today, as I was leaving for work, I realized I didn't have any CD's in my car. My drive to work is less than 10 minutes, so this wasn't a big problem, but I'm so used to listening to something that I panicked and turned the radio on...to an all-news station.

During that drive to work, the radio shut itself off twice, which mystified me until I figured out that the CD player was thinking a CD had been inserted, which causes the radio to turn off. I assume this problem was caused because after 3-plus years straight, the CD player just couldn't believe there wasn't a CD inside. (On the bright side, the power antenna got a much-needed workout.)

Anyway, the new issue of Entertainment Weekly arrived today. One of the letters to the editor was a response to a recent article about satellite radio, written by someone from Clear Channel, an evil conglomerate that owns half the radio stations in the U.S., offering up the sentiment, "You don't need satellite radio to hear variety. Go ahead, listen to your local college radio station. Listen for 30 minutes. You'll come back to a Clear Channel station. You'll be back. You'll always be back. [Evil laughter]"

I, of course, took this as a slap in the face, because I used to do college radio. But what I really want to know is how the entire Clear Channel corporation felt about the letter, given that they are an investor in one of the two competing satellite radio services (and, in fact, some Clear Channel local radio stations are available on the service). If my commute to work was substantially longer than it is now, I'd seriously consider getting satellite radio, because I'm told they do have AAA stations, not to mention oldies stations with wide playlists.