Boycotting Talk Radio

I drive almost exactly an hour to work, six days a week, throughout the summer. If I stop for a donut and coffee, it's usually sixty minutes +/- five.

With being, in my opinion, a semi-frugal person (my wife might beg to differ sometimes), I refuse to pay $10-$15/month for satellite radio. I know I'd be much happier than I am now if I did.

My options for AM talk radio are pretty limited. The whole "let's-make-a-joke-at-everything" shtick (including many, many, many... fart jokes), or the right leaning 60 year old radio personalities who's very voices put you to sleep while doing 75 mph on the highway, or even the plain, old "headline & traffic" reports repeated every 15 minutes have left me sad, frustrated, and tired enough to fear flying off the side of the road and into a tree. The forensics team will have to figure out if it was from nodding off or just plain suicide.

So. I'm going to try turning the voices off for a week.

I left home this morning with the radio tuned to the normal morning show. That lasted about five minutes before I switched to the local college radio station. Impact 89 FM.

It was a lifesaver.

For fifty-five minutes early this morning I listened to the likes of: Coldplay, Gnarls Barkley, Radiohead, Oasis, Modest Mouse, NIN, etc.

It was the happiest (and most awake) drive to work in a very long time.