Why FM Radio Is For Not Only The Brainwashed, But The Brain-Dead

Simply put, FM radio is only as intelligent as the lowest common denominator in the USA. Take it from someone who worked in it, off and on, for over 20 years, in market sizes from 214 to 60: the program directors are usually the most jealous, have biggest egos, yet the lowest IQs in the business.

They control what comes out of the mouths of the other jocks in the rest of the station's dayparts to which you are listening. They control EVERY song that gets played in the 24-hour rotation, while so many think that (fill in the blank) dj is playing something that he/she was in the mood to hear.

They are famous for underestimating the audience, anticipating that the average listener is as clueless about culture, history, or anything meaningful on this planet as is he.

It is what has destroyed fm radio, in my opinion, besides a lot of bad business decisions made by bean counters who weren't satisfied with the way mom and pop-owned stations were doing things.

Take for example WMMR. The "wild and crazy" midday jock there is some Wavy Gravy wannabe. He is one of the few jocks that tries to address something of substance--the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

WHAT???? you may shriek. I know, I know. Some aging boomer is left standing in an active-rock format outside of Philly, and he's surrounded by brilliant things like tits and asses from the girls gone wild in the radio audience, (average lowest common denominator-types, of course), offers to attend a BBQ with Papa Roach, concerts, baseball games, and Facebook and Twitter links...and he tries to introduce the Middle East Problem to the same Neanderthals who can't even find their own country on a world map!

Just what is the nature of the discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian issue that "Pierre Robert", who keeps you rockin' through the lunch hour every day on WMMR, wants to expand upon? Well, he points the hungry-for-learning WMMR listener to a blogger account with two supposedly "unbiased" residents in Gaza and Israel for further learning.

Frankly, it's the biggest bunch of NOTHING that I've ever run across. The Gaza resident never even brings up Hamas, or how they are placing their gun systems in civilian apartments in Gaza, hiding behind adolescent boys when firing at the Jews, or the history of the conflict at all. The Israeli writer says nothing of importance, either, except that war is bad.

Can the average WMMR listener even recite the wars that have been waged against Israel for the past 60 years? Can they name the amounts of nations that ganged up against the one, lone, country? How about the origin and definition of the disputed territories?

The answer is "no" to all of the above questions, I'm sure, despite the fact that you don't have to be a poli sci major to know the answers, much less a college grad. I knew the answers to them well before I entered college. I picked up newspapers and read them from a young age because my conscience told me that it was important to learn these things that change history and challenge my country.

(And it also wasn't because I had a teacher in public school who opened my eyes to these things, or even parents who instructed me to search out these answers. My teachers were mostly liberal or had shallow understandings of these issues, no doubt because their college teaching programs taught them to ignore the reasons why America is great. I remember in 1978 hearing one of my teachers explain why we weren't studying Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone: today's teachers, she explained, weren't to accent the more romantic elements of our country's origins for fear of making the participants into heroes, you see.
As far as my parents go, both never went to college. My mother is very intelligent, but missed out on a lot of formal education. She is an avid reader, however, to this day. My father was a monosyllabic country bumpkin who resented me for my vocabulary and depth from an early age, and constantly made fun of me for it. I left my house at 17, and never looked back.)

After reading them both for painful blog after blog, I began to suspect that this is all a ruse, designed to make the average idiot listener of WMMR believe that both sides are to blame in this conflict.

Which, by implication, makes the reader think that there isn't a clear side for which to support.

Again, this is exactly why I left this industry--weak idiots only interested in keeping the masses stupid and selling cars in the meantime after every three songs.