No more radios in cars?

I see an expanding market for "dash-topper" accessories that add carplay & analog radio, among other features.

My local market has no radio worth listening to, and it's been over 20 years since I've gained a benefit from traffic advisories hosted on low power roadside transmitters.

I'm on the fence about satellite radio- every now and then I get a rental car that has an active subscription and I've found one channel I like- but I haven't found a subscription plan that gives anything close to a good price for one channel's worth of consumption.

I'd love to see the next level up- something that covers the stock touchscreen. The outer, driver-facing side could have physical switches for the driver to manipulate, the inside would have mechanical "fingers" to tap the correct areas in the correct sequences to repeat the desired control inputs into the touchscreen. Could even still include a video display for the rear vision system.

We can dream...

 

On long drives out here on West coast I go thru both AM and FM non-stop and my favorite is an am radio show near Salem, Oregon that only plays the best material from comedians live on stage.

Other than that, the level of dishonest hatred and straight up pro-oligarch corruption and xenophobic white dudes brainwashing people to support the Trump agenda never seems to decrease, always seems to increase. So all those losers trained to vote against their own interests would benefit if their next car didn't have a radio. Of course those same people made themselves so broke by who they voted for they won't probably ever again be able to afford a new car.

 

I have a $5 plan from xm

I use Radio App to listen to remote stations anywhere

 

Neat, I haven't seen that deal. Perhaps they have some un-advertised rates? Maybe worth calling them...

I've used the Radio Garden app to find good European stations.

 

i've had free xm twice, never found anything to make it worthwhile. the longer you hold out on signing up, the cheaper it gets

 

I wasn't impressed by Sirius XM. The Latin music stations I tried seemed to just repeat the same 3 songs over and over again.

I think if I were to go with a subscription of some sort, it would be Apple Music.

I don't like the targeted ads that sometimes seem to last an excesive amount of time with free versions of apps. So in reality, I only have Youtube Music on my phone, and that's only because it came with it (Android phone). I don't thing I've used it more than three or four times ever since Youtube Music came out.

I'm more of a purchase-a-CD-and-rip-it-to MP3s kind of guy. Which is getting harder to do as fewer people still rip CDs which in turn means fewer reasons for companies to keep supporting apps that either can rip CDs or play MP3s.

 

perhaps car radios will go out with a whimper

 

Well, my use for 'radio' in general is to listen to instrumental music.

As soon as I hear somebody singing, or simply talking, I spin the dial until I don't.

One day I was in a satellite-equipped rental car and I stumbled onto a channel that just plays elevator-grade smoov jazz. Which I don't usually prefer... but I didn't have to hear anyone singing or talking! It was bliss!

I kept it on that station for the rest of the long drive and liked it so much I'm now thinking about signing up.

Advertising-supported radio can't do this- they need to deliver a message, which means speech. So in that sense, 'radio' is long since dead to me.

 

I try to listen to local broadcast radio at times to get some local news. The same with local TV, which I just noticed I just missed the news I normally see. Oh well, I'm just not the type to just leave the radio or TV on, but should set an alarm or something to remind me it's news time.

At times I like listening to music on broadcast radio too, both singing and instrumental. But it seems to be very redundant, kind of like the Sirius XM stations I listened to. Also some of the creative TV channels are interesting, like ones about cooking.

However, broadcast TV and radio are dying. Our local TV repeater is scheduled to be taken down next June, so no more free TV. Now I have no way of watching the Super Bowl in 2027 and beyond. I believe they might also be taking down some local FM stations too at the same time.

 

Just go by Palisades and grab a seat at the bar.

 

I/we never sit at bars, and it would kind of mess up our family tradition of watching it from our home super bowl party. After all, my now wife and I became boyfriend and girlfriend at a super bowl party at someone's house.

Maybe we'll go to Pita's in Paradise to watch it there from a table. Or we'll just have to invent another family tradition to take its place.

 

maybe you can get it on the net

 

Ever since we cur cable TV many years ago, I have not watched broadcast TV program. I don't subscribe to any streaming either, but occasionally I watch free streaming program. I really don't miss it.

 

Maybe, but paid for of course.

A couple years ago we were doing some light remodeling and didn't have the antenna cable coming into the house. So I tried signing up for Paramount+. It worked for a few minutes, then cut out. I would shut off the computer, turn it back on, sometimes it worked for a while, other times it didn't. After about half-time I didn't get any of the game, whatsoever.

I know that things are going to streaming and continuously connected-to-the-internet devices, but personally these kinds of things never seem to work for me. It's kind of like Bluetooth. I've tried several Bluetooth devices and earphones, but have largely given up on Bluetooth as it never seems to work.

We don't really watch enough TV to justify paid-for streaming, cable or satellite either. TBH, the Super Bowl is the only game we actually try to watch. And I'm trying to limit my internet time altogether, especially YouTube.

Maybe it's for my best that broadcast TV is going away.

Music is different. I can listen to music, podcasts or audiobooks as I work.

 

I was never into football or any sports except MBL. Only sports I ever watched was Red Sox games. But after winning the championship and reversed the curse of the Bambino in 2005, I lost interest in baseball too. Again. I don't miss it.

 

When I used to make 10+ hour drives to visit my sister and niece, I usta hit 'scan' on the radio every time one station faded out, and wait till it found another station I didn't mind.

I ended up hearing a lot of country stations, a genre that's on my "kind of enjoy when hearing it, but don't usually seek out" list. In those years there was this up-n-coming young crossover artist played a lot on those stations, somebody Swift was the name, so I ended up pretty familiar with her early catalog. Turned out she was someone my niece was listening to, so we got to have that in common.

Maybe wouldn't have happened without radio....

 

Reminds me of a few observations and possible studies I have heard about.

People in the past possibly had longer attention spans and were perhaps more likely to try new things. But today people have "too many" options. No more patiently listening to songs you're unfamiliar with and not sure yet if you like them. In this day and age, f you like Taylor Swift and that's all you listen to, you can just select whatever Taylor Swift song you feel like.

The same goes with so many other things. How many of us had to eat what was on the table? If it was turkey, lamb, deer, or broccoli, that was what we had to eat. That was our only choice, unless we were allergic to it or something of that sort. But one thing that bothers me this time of year is getting together with family and every snot nosed kid getting his own special junk food he eats every day of his life because how dare anyone suggest that parents should make their kids eat what's on the table. Then add all the adults into the mix who all have their own special diets that they learned about on YouTube or some sort of special mystical vegan forum and you might as well as not even try to cook a nice dinner for the family because no one is going to eat your beef stroganoff.

 

we have an adult niece like that. at holidays, mrs b always had to make something special for her and her children. they didn't eat this and they didn't eat that. when the children grew up, they dropped all the nonsense

 

Eating a lot of beef can be a problem.

 

College and having to pay for your grub will usually sort a lot of that out.

It's like the old joke about two farmers talking about what they feed their dogs:

"I feed MY dog okra"
"OKRA?!.....my dog wouldn't eat okra!"

"Neither would mine, for the first couple of weeks."