Classical and classic rock. Stuck with country (harmonies are fine but I get really tired of cheating, drinking, jail, etc, as their themes) if I am desperate to hear music on the radio as I drive as no classical on the radio locally (just NPR news, etc. and I do listen to that) and the classic rock station is weak and only sometimes on the air.
The college radio station.
WRFL 88.1. The only ads are from local businesses. There is an amazing range of music genres depending on the time/day. I love it.
@LaserEyes Agreed! I live in the greater Chicagoland area and get three college stations, one community college station and a high school station. They have all enriched my life.
Classical, where it exists. If not that, then techno. My attitude towards country is mirrored by Weird Al in his Achy Breaky Song. Except it’s not just that song, it’s every damn one of them. When traveling, I tend to resort to my iPod.
We’re lucky here in DC to have two excellent NPR stations, one devoted to classical music & the other primarily news. And there’s a Pacifica station here that, among other things, plays some terrific jazz. I wish there were more information about how Meh’s radio sounds. Too many Bluetooth speakers remind me of trying to listen to decent music on early transistor radios of the 50s & 60s.
KEOM…88.5 here in Dallas… well, actually, Mesquite…high school. Student programming. But they play classics from the 70’s through the 90’s, and it’s quite awesome!
They also have interesting blurbs like pet health, ‘Star Date’ about the universe, medical discovery news, etc.
Check it out!
@Tadlem43 Too bad they are not aware of the 1960’s and the music of that time. IMHO that’s when all the real classics stem from: Rolling Stones, the Beatles, the whole “English Invasion” phenomenon, Linda Ronstadt, Bob Dylan, folk movement including Peter, Paul, and Mary, The Lettermen, The Righteous Brothers, the Beach Boys and the whole California scene music, Elvis Presley (post military), soul genre including “Little” Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, The Temptations, … (I tire). I’ll include by reference all the performers at the original Woodstock and Monterrey Pop fests.
Not to mention the whole country music scene of the time (which didn’t seem real popular above).
@phendrick They have 60’s, too, and until recently was more 60’s and less 90’s. I guess this is a newer format, but the do play them.
It’s a great station. And I like that it gives the kids a chance to try their hand at a career.
Okay so…I had a favorite radio station. “Had” is important here. It was 98.9 WMMO FM, here in the Orlando area. Their motto was “Soft Rock and Roll of Yesterday and Today”. They played a very pleasing mix of soft rock and classic rock from the late 60s to the late 80s and every single song they played was one I enjoyed, despite the massive variety. I listened to them regularly for nearly 20 years. The DJ Jay Francisco had a promise/slogan: “Always identify the songs, and NEVER talk over the music.” In the 20 years I listened, I don’t remember a single time that promise was broken.
Fast forward to maybe 5 years ago, and things started to change. Jay had left the job a few years before that, and I guess WMMO got bought out by iHeartRadio…and things were downhill from there. Both tenets of the classic slogan almost immediately went out the window. The station now routinely does the stupid DJ bullshit of bloviating over the music right up the very SECOND the artist starts singing, and now the only way to know what’s playing is to go onto their website and use the ‘Last Played’ feature. (Admittedly that second one isn’t a big deal, but that’s besides the point.) Their repertoire of music has also changed considerably though not dramatically; they’ve inserted modern hard rock into the rotation, which causes me to do something I very rarely if ever did before: turn the dial. The WMMO broadcasting transmitter used to be inside the pyramid-shaped spires at the top of downtown Orlando’s former SunBank tower; now they’re in some studio with a local attorney’s name attached to it.
It makes me really mad because I really loved my local radio station, and modernity essentially ruined it. Despite being on the same spot on the band and playing a lot of the same stuff, it’s changed for the worse significantly enough that it doesn’t feel like the same station anymore, and I no longer find myself turning on the radios to listen. I used to sit listening for hours on end while working or reading…now I barely listen at all except when in the car.
TL;DR my long-time favorite FM radio station recently got bought out by a conglomerate and they essentially ruined it.
@PooltoyWolf It happened here, too. THEY RUIN EVERYTHING. People blame all bad things on the gubmint but it’s the friggin giant corporations and hedge funds that are making everything more expensive and lousy and worse in every way.
@PooltoyWolf Yes. I’m so old that I remember when just about every station seemed like a local station. Even just a few miles outside of DC, into at least the 60s, there was at least one station that had a daily call-in program featuring the items that people wanted to trade or give away. Granted it wasn’t music from the 60s or 70s, but still I got drawn into it almost every time I listened. That sense of being connected to the local community was so much more intense.
@PooltoyWolf Back in the mid '80s, Houston’s old KLEF (classical with news and some commercials) changed hands abruptly. The staff had 40 minutes’notice. The presenter who was up last ended the hour with Mozart’s “Last Songs”, and just before the selection began, gave a terse announcement of what was next along with a statement that at the top of the hour, the station would have a new format. It went over to soft rock, if memory serves. I was listening at the time. It was jarring, mostly because we didn’t have another classical station. Not long after that, the University of Houston station switched its format to mostly classical, and inherited some of the presenters from KLEF. I suspect that they got a substantial infusion of funding from one of the oilfield tool companies to make that happen.
@Kyeh@PooltoyWolf I submit that it is BOTH the “gubmint” and “the friggin giant corporations and hedge funds that are making everything more expensive and lousy and worse in every way.”
@PooltoyWolf I use the Shazam app, it’s been REALLY helpful identifying songs. Sometimes in the store I think…wtf is that song? Even ones on TV shows often get id’d without me having to scour IMDB or something else .
I submit that it is BOTH the “gubmint” and “the friggin giant corporations and hedge funds that are making everything more expensive and lousy and worse in every way.”
Stands to reason. After all, who owns the government these days?
@phendrick@werehatrack But the gubmint gets way more blame, and the fatcat CEOs et al just keep making more and more money in the background and building their ultraluxury underground bomb shelters, or rockets to Mars.
Your description of radio in Orlando is exactly why I, elsewhere, rarely listen to any FM above about 91 on the dial.
Excepting WRR, the superb Dallas classical station.
But … I hardly listen to radio now. Mostly audiobooks and podcasts.
@f00l It makes me sad. I have so many cool vintage and antique radios that I don’t listen to nearly as often as I used to. Ditto for losing our last oldies station, BIG 810 AM, years ago. I mean I could cheat and use my own transmitter, but it just doesn’t feel the same…perhaps if I built my own vacuum tube transmitter from scratch. See also: the loss of the feeling of over the air television when the analog VHF and UHF bands were switched off nationwide in June 2009.
@f00l@PooltoyWolf
WRR still seems pretty good over WWW. https://www.wrr101.org/listen/
(Not quite in range by antenna, usually, from my home, but can sometimes get it on my vehicle radio.)
I subscribe to SiriusXM and mostly listen to Doctor Radio, powered by NYU Langone Health. When shows are on that I don’t like, I switch to BBC or listen to music, usually smooth jazz, the Beatles channel or the Billy Joel channel if it’s scheduled.
@heartny I remember in University once trying to chat this one girl up and asking her “so what type of music do you listen to” and she responds “Billy Joel” so I said, “oh so Classic Rock and 80’s”?
“No, Billy Joel,”
“Just Billy Joel, anything else?”
“No, just Billy Joel”.
She had very specific tastes. Struck me as slightly odd at the time, but good for her. She knew what she liked and stuck with it.
Now living in an area dominated by country music in many forms, and where “classic rock” is 50’s beach music, I load my iPhone with much of my 500 CD rock collection and that’s what I listen to.
Radio? I haven’t heard of Radio since I was a young whippersnapper mining coal with my pick and shovel barefoot in the West Virginia mines in the snow… never sure why it was snowing underground in the mines.
These days it’s internet radio or no radio. Nothing with ads. I’m a pandora man these days.
What do I listen to? Well… Gypsy Jazz/Hot Club Jazz is my favourite genre;
Folk, Oldies, Classic Rock, Some Pop, some country (only really old country, none of the modern country crap which is just failed pop with an accent), some show tunes, some classical music, love a Karel Komzak waltz now and then, some swing and some electro-swing, I listen to music from just about every decade there is, (very little from the 90’s- the armpit of decades where everyone sang as if they had a sore throat).
About the only thing I never listen to is Polynesian nose flutes and rap music.
@OnionSoup whilst I do still listen to and enjoy the local FM-airwave radio station, you’ve presented some intriguing genres for when I get bored with the repetition of the local broadcast and need to jump to streaming!
Five days a week, the radio is tuned to KQAC, a listener-supported all-classical station in Portland OR (also available streaming). No ads, only the occasional pledge week when they solicit donations between musical programs.
On Saturday mornings, the classical station focuses on opera (not my favorite) so I switch to KMHD, a station broadcast from a local community college that plays jazz, again with no (or very few) ads.
On Sunday I switch to KINK, a Portland staple since the 60’s. They play (from their website) “a wide variety of music, including adult album alternative, rock, acoustic, folk, pop, blues, reggae and new age”. They do have ads, but I tune in and endure them just for old times sake.
If my Tardis weren’t malfunctioning, I’d go back to the 60’s in Dallas, and listen to KLIF 1190 all day long, as I did when I was in school there then.
/
I used to listen to the classic rock station but the repetition ended up getting to me after awhile. Not really anything new and different coming to those stations, y’know? I listen to the new pop station more often just because of the newer variety
WMNF
@yakkoTDI correct answer!
@yakkoTDI I should add that I also listen to triple j out of Australia. Great variety and no commercials.
Weird as hell middle of the night local AM radio
Local public radio
Classical and classic rock. Stuck with country (harmonies are fine but I get really tired of cheating, drinking, jail, etc, as their themes) if I am desperate to hear music on the radio as I drive as no classical on the radio locally (just NPR news, etc. and I do listen to that) and the classic rock station is weak and only sometimes on the air.
The college radio station.
WRFL 88.1. The only ads are from local businesses. There is an amazing range of music genres depending on the time/day. I love it.
@LaserEyes Agreed! I live in the greater Chicagoland area and get three college stations, one community college station and a high school station. They have all enriched my life.
Classical, where it exists. If not that, then techno. My attitude towards country is mirrored by Weird Al in his Achy Breaky Song. Except it’s not just that song, it’s every damn one of them. When traveling, I tend to resort to my iPod.
Sports Radio 96.7 / 1310 The Ticket
KUVO - public radio jazz and news
Wish 107.5
@tweezak TIL there’s another Morissette woman who sings. I only knew of Alanis before.
Sports talk
We’re lucky here in DC to have two excellent NPR stations, one devoted to classical music & the other primarily news. And there’s a Pacifica station here that, among other things, plays some terrific jazz. I wish there were more information about how Meh’s radio sounds. Too many Bluetooth speakers remind me of trying to listen to decent music on early transistor radios of the 50s & 60s.
@gertiestn Harmon-Kardon makes some that sound outstanding, but they’re a lot pricier than this.
KEOM…88.5 here in Dallas… well, actually, Mesquite…high school. Student programming. But they play classics from the 70’s through the 90’s, and it’s quite awesome!
They also have interesting blurbs like pet health, ‘Star Date’ about the universe, medical discovery news, etc.
Check it out!
POPSOCKETS! SPROCKETS! DAVY CROCKETT! AWESOME!
@Tadlem43 Too bad they are not aware of the 1960’s and the music of that time. IMHO that’s when all the real classics stem from: Rolling Stones, the Beatles, the whole “English Invasion” phenomenon, Linda Ronstadt, Bob Dylan, folk movement including Peter, Paul, and Mary, The Lettermen, The Righteous Brothers, the Beach Boys and the whole California scene music, Elvis Presley (post military), soul genre including “Little” Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, The Temptations, … (I tire). I’ll include by reference all the performers at the original Woodstock and Monterrey Pop fests.
Not to mention the whole country music scene of the time (which didn’t seem real popular above).
Don’t today’s kids get any education?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@phendrick They have 60’s, too, and until recently was more 60’s and less 90’s. I guess this is a newer format, but the do play them.
It’s a great station. And I like that it gives the kids a chance to try their hand at a career.
It depends on my Mood,
Meh-tal
Story time! (TL;DR at the very bottom.)
Okay so…I had a favorite radio station. “Had” is important here. It was 98.9 WMMO FM, here in the Orlando area. Their motto was “Soft Rock and Roll of Yesterday and Today”. They played a very pleasing mix of soft rock and classic rock from the late 60s to the late 80s and every single song they played was one I enjoyed, despite the massive variety. I listened to them regularly for nearly 20 years. The DJ Jay Francisco had a promise/slogan: “Always identify the songs, and NEVER talk over the music.” In the 20 years I listened, I don’t remember a single time that promise was broken.
Fast forward to maybe 5 years ago, and things started to change. Jay had left the job a few years before that, and I guess WMMO got bought out by iHeartRadio…and things were downhill from there. Both tenets of the classic slogan almost immediately went out the window. The station now routinely does the stupid DJ bullshit of bloviating over the music right up the very SECOND the artist starts singing, and now the only way to know what’s playing is to go onto their website and use the ‘Last Played’ feature. (Admittedly that second one isn’t a big deal, but that’s besides the point.) Their repertoire of music has also changed considerably though not dramatically; they’ve inserted modern hard rock into the rotation, which causes me to do something I very rarely if ever did before: turn the dial. The WMMO broadcasting transmitter used to be inside the pyramid-shaped spires at the top of downtown Orlando’s former SunBank tower; now they’re in some studio with a local attorney’s name attached to it.
It makes me really mad because I really loved my local radio station, and modernity essentially ruined it. Despite being on the same spot on the band and playing a lot of the same stuff, it’s changed for the worse significantly enough that it doesn’t feel like the same station anymore, and I no longer find myself turning on the radios to listen. I used to sit listening for hours on end while working or reading…now I barely listen at all except when in the car.
TL;DR my long-time favorite FM radio station recently got bought out by a conglomerate and they essentially ruined it.
@PooltoyWolf
It happened here, too. THEY RUIN EVERYTHING. People blame all bad things on the gubmint but it’s the friggin giant corporations and hedge funds that are making everything more expensive and lousy and worse in every way.
@PooltoyWolf Yes. I’m so old that I remember when just about every station seemed like a local station. Even just a few miles outside of DC, into at least the 60s, there was at least one station that had a daily call-in program featuring the items that people wanted to trade or give away. Granted it wasn’t music from the 60s or 70s, but still I got drawn into it almost every time I listened. That sense of being connected to the local community was so much more intense.
@PooltoyWolf Back in the mid '80s, Houston’s old KLEF (classical with news and some commercials) changed hands abruptly. The staff had 40 minutes’notice. The presenter who was up last ended the hour with Mozart’s “Last Songs”, and just before the selection began, gave a terse announcement of what was next along with a statement that at the top of the hour, the station would have a new format. It went over to soft rock, if memory serves. I was listening at the time. It was jarring, mostly because we didn’t have another classical station. Not long after that, the University of Houston station switched its format to mostly classical, and inherited some of the presenters from KLEF. I suspect that they got a substantial infusion of funding from one of the oilfield tool companies to make that happen.
@Kyeh @PooltoyWolf I submit that it is BOTH the “gubmint” and “the friggin giant corporations and hedge funds that are making everything more expensive and lousy and worse in every way.”
@PooltoyWolf I use the Shazam app, it’s been REALLY helpful identifying songs. Sometimes in the store I think…wtf is that song? Even ones on TV shows often get id’d without me having to scour IMDB or something else
.
@llangley I used to use my Google Assistant but for some reason that doesn’t work anymore
@werehatrack Wow…unreal.
@phendrick
Stands to reason. After all, who owns the government these days?
@phendrick @werehatrack But the gubmint gets way more blame, and the fatcat CEOs et al just keep making more and more money in the background and building their ultraluxury underground bomb shelters, or rockets to Mars.
@PooltoyWolf
Your description of radio in Orlando is exactly why I, elsewhere, rarely listen to any FM above about 91 on the dial.
Excepting WRR, the superb Dallas classical station.
But … I hardly listen to radio now. Mostly audiobooks and podcasts.
@f00l It makes me sad. I have so many cool vintage and antique radios that I don’t listen to nearly as often as I used to. Ditto for losing our last oldies station, BIG 810 AM, years ago. I mean I could cheat and use my own transmitter, but it just doesn’t feel the same…perhaps if I built my own vacuum tube transmitter from scratch. See also: the loss of the feeling of over the air television when the analog VHF and UHF bands were switched off nationwide in June 2009.
@f00l @PooltoyWolf
WRR still seems pretty good over WWW.
https://www.wrr101.org/listen/
(Not quite in range by antenna, usually, from my home, but can sometimes get it on my vehicle radio.)
I used to also like to listen to KVIL when visiting there, but that was quite a while ago, and I’m not sure their current format resonates with me, when I’ve checked it. (Was great when Ron Chapman was there, IMO.)
https://tunein.com/radio/ALT-1037-s36035/#
or
https://www.audacy.com/stations/alt1037dfw#
Smooth Jazz or bluegrass
@famwelch That’s an interesting combo. I respect that.
Howard 100
I subscribe to SiriusXM and mostly listen to Doctor Radio, powered by NYU Langone Health. When shows are on that I don’t like, I switch to BBC or listen to music, usually smooth jazz, the Beatles channel or the Billy Joel channel if it’s scheduled.
@heartny I remember in University once trying to chat this one girl up and asking her “so what type of music do you listen to” and she responds “Billy Joel” so I said, “oh so Classic Rock and 80’s”?
“No, Billy Joel,”
“Just Billy Joel, anything else?”
“No, just Billy Joel”.
She had very specific tastes. Struck me as slightly odd at the time, but good for her. She knew what she liked and stuck with it.
Ham :ham:
or 
)
(lol; the closest available is
Okay, I’ll admit I don’t actually have a ham radio of my own. But I’m surprised no one else here has brought it up yet.
Now living in an area dominated by country music in many forms, and where “classic rock” is 50’s beach music, I load my iPhone with much of my 500 CD rock collection and that’s what I listen to.
Real, live, local DJs are still the best! They bring so much personality to the airwaves.
If we had a classic Hip-Hop around here, that would be amazing. But around here we have I Hate Radio, and one classic rock station.
None, no radio. I don’t miss commercials or DJs. Ripped discs or streaming, thanks.
WDRE and WLIR were great stations. Now I stream 103.1 the Wave. I also listen to pop radio as listening to the same 40 year old music does get tiring.
@adr5 oh man! those were the best!
Radio? I haven’t heard of Radio since I was a young whippersnapper mining coal with my pick and shovel barefoot in the West Virginia mines in the snow… never sure why it was snowing underground in the mines.
These days it’s internet radio or no radio. Nothing with ads. I’m a pandora man these days.
What do I listen to? Well… Gypsy Jazz/Hot Club Jazz is my favourite genre;
Folk, Oldies, Classic Rock, Some Pop, some country (only really old country, none of the modern country crap which is just failed pop with an accent), some show tunes, some classical music, love a Karel Komzak waltz now and then, some swing and some electro-swing, I listen to music from just about every decade there is, (very little from the 90’s- the armpit of decades where everyone sang as if they had a sore throat).
About the only thing I never listen to is Polynesian nose flutes and rap music.
@OnionSoup Thanks, I’d never heard of nose flutes before and some of this is pretty rad.
@OnionSoup whilst I do still listen to and enjoy the local FM-airwave radio station, you’ve presented some intriguing genres for when I get bored with the repetition of the local broadcast and need to jump to streaming!
@OnionSoup
@werehatrack Funny, and very true… made me think of this though:
@OnionSoup I have that Spice Girl dress. I used it for a Scary Pumpkin Spice costume one Halloween.
@OnionSoup @werehatrack fun montage. Now I can’t unhear it.
Five days a week, the radio is tuned to KQAC, a listener-supported all-classical station in Portland OR (also available streaming). No ads, only the occasional pledge week when they solicit donations between musical programs.
On Saturday mornings, the classical station focuses on opera (not my favorite) so I switch to KMHD, a station broadcast from a local community college that plays jazz, again with no (or very few) ads.
On Sunday I switch to KINK, a Portland staple since the 60’s. They play (from their website) “a wide variety of music, including adult album alternative, rock, acoustic, folk, pop, blues, reggae and new age”. They do have ads, but I tune in and endure them just for old times sake.
If my Tardis weren’t malfunctioning, I’d go back to the 60’s in Dallas, and listen to KLIF 1190 all day long, as I did when I was in school there then.
/
@phendrick If you ever get your Tardis fixed, could you help me locate mine? I can’t remember when I parked it.
WOVM
I used to listen to the classic rock station but the repetition ended up getting to me after awhile. Not really anything new and different coming to those stations, y’know? I listen to the new pop station more often just because of the newer variety
WKRP.
@llangley And, back in the day, WIOD out of Miami. That shit was hilarious. Rick and Suds, Neil Rogers, on and on. Good times
@llangley The only one I can recall was WQAM.