Want Some Cheese With That Whine?

When I first moved to this area, there were two Christian radio stations. At least, two FM stations that played Christian music (part of the time--neither one played music 24-7). One of them had a bad tendency to play any hymn in the hymnal sung by whichever tabernacle choir... The other one played more contemporary stuff, but they had a bad tendency to have a talk show on when I really just wanted to listen to music. To be honest, it never made much sense to me: How much do you have to pay somebody to introduce songs and play them? Shouldn't that be less expensive than paying somebody to interview guests (I'm thinking, perhaps erroneously, that even somebody who shows up on a talk show to promote their latest book or whatever, is still entitled to a royalty payment for being on the show)? Eventually that station beame a 'Christian Talk' station. Fortunately, the other station updated its playlist at the same time--but they also had a lot of hour-long preaching programs and talk shows and what-not that seemed to come on when I wanted to listen to music.

Then the Christian Talk station moved to the AM band, and the parent company brought in a whole new station that just played music. Very quickly after that, another company started a new station that played just music. Wow! Now we're getting somewhere. Now the first station started out with a very limited playlist, but it was slowly growing. To be honest, the second stations playlist wasn't much better, but it had the added disadvantage of being listener supported. I'm not against listener supported radio in and of itself, I just find pledge week annoying. Especially a radio station that claims to be doing God's service, but feels like their semi-annual pledge week needs to be eight to ten days and done more than twice a year. I say disadvantage, but, again, the first radio station was supported by commercials. Even though I live in a large metropolitan area where there are a lot of religious people, a lot of the comercials that they played didn't seem to fit well with a Christian audience (most of them were at least innocuous, but, laser hair removal?).

In any case, it worked out okay, as far as I was concerned; I could listen to one station, and when I got annoyed at pledge week (or even just being reminded every few minutes that they were listener supported and you don't have to wait until pledge week to make a donation) I could switch stations. Then if I got annoyed at the stupid commercials (or hearing the same eight songs played over and over), I could switch back. In other words, I wasn't entirely pleased with either station, but, between the two, life was good. A lot of people that I knew complained about the first station: Their commercials are stupid. They keep playing the same songs over and over. They play all eighty's music (this from people whose knowledge of the eighty's is limited to what they learned by watching "That 70's Show"). I personally never understood what all the whining was about. Yes, most of their commercials were stupid (but given a choise between stupid commercials and almost constant begging for money; I don't know. I'd say it's a toss-up), and they did have a very limited play list, and most of the songs that they played were geared toward a somewhat older audience (but the other station played almost exactly the same songs). The biggest annoyance to me was that it always seemed like whenever I had had enough of one station and switch, the other station was playing the song I had just heard.

Eventually, the first station closed its doors. I was not happy, but a lot of other people were. And, again, I didn't understand. If you don't like it, don't listen to it. If you really prefer the listener supported format, then listen to that. Most of these people don't even seem to have noticed that, since the commercial radio station went away, the listener supported station has gotten much worse. Something about not having competition, I think.

Really, I think the point is that murmering and complaining doesn't do anyone any good. When Moses was leading the Children of Israel through the wilderness, they kept talking about how much better it was when they were slaves in Egypt...