Scan and Seek

I’ve been doing a fair bit of traveling lately, which means listening to unfamiliar radio stations. The pre-set dials for my car radio obviously don’t work once I’ve left the range of my local stations.

That leaves me at the mercy of the “seek” and “scan” buttons. As I drive through most communities, this means that I bounce from country to rap to “lite rock” to “hard rock” to oldies, with very little else in the way of music. In a few of the larger markets, I might pick up a jazz or classical station, and, rarely, other sophisticated sounds. I have a difficult time describing what I am looking for because I have a hard time with labels. It would be nice to say “I like (insert label)” and have the listener understand what I am talking about. Unfortunately, what I am looking for doesn’t fit so well into any such category. I like interesting sounds, unpredictable tempos or melodies, interesting lyrics. I tire of music that seems to come out of someone’s formula.

When I cannot find any interesting music, I try the local talk radio shows. Perhaps I should not have used the word “local”, since I don’t think any of these shows are produced locally anymore. You can pick up the same program anywhere.

I can only listen to these programs for a limited time – due to my limited tolerance. The sports talk shows are the worst. It never ceases to amaze me how (or why) people can speak for hours (and days) about nothing. Callers might argue with the talk show host about whether “Jones” is a better quarterback than “Smith”, as if the argument could ever be won or that the argument really matters. I’ve often thought that if people put the same energy analyzing cancer that they put into analyzing a football game, we would have cured the disease by now.

Political shows are almost as bad, except that there is little argument with the host. No one seems to all these shows unless they agree with the host. Of course the other explanation is that the screeners don’t let anyone else through.

In rural areas, a surprising number of stations are devoted to religious programming. I was raised as a Baptist and I am used to Sunday morning services and Bible school, as well as Wednesday evening prayer meetings. But I cannot fathom religious sermons 24 hours-a-day, 7 days-a-week. Yet there must be a market or else these stations could not remain on the air.

Sometimes I listen to a religious station for a laugh. I listed to a program this week where two commentators discussed the evils propagated at universities. One complained that universities have a hidden agenda and the other complained that they teach homosexuality.

I’ve seen a number of college catalogues and I’ve never seen a class entitled “Homosexuality 101”. I also wonder what this “agenda” is. Is it published somewhere or is it a vast conspiracy?

My dial flipping usually ends up at a public broadcasting station. The news is more in-depth, and there are often some interesting features. Depending upon the hour, I might pick up one of their music features – Celtic, Blue Grass, Cajun, or anything else that is not played over-and-over on the radio. I even listed to an NPR program devoted to Broadway show tunes, even though I detest musicals. It was, nevertheless, an interesting change of pace. But public radio can get a bit stilted and bland at times. I have this fear of falling to sleep at the wheel.

I tend to cycle through the scan and seek buttons for up to an hour before I get bored. The, frustrated, I turn to the best button on the dial – the off button.