It’s not just your iPod that lets you take your music with you. Thanks to the internet, your favourite radio stations can follow you around the globe, too. I find it strangely comforting that I can be in New York and tune in to Classic FM and hear Jamie Crick or Mark Forrest, or alternatively access BBC London, where I can hear local news and travel reports, including of those inevitable delays on the Northern Line.
By the same token, you can reach out to the world from Britain, and bring it to your comfort and privacy of your headphones. Radio, for many years the poor cousin of mass communication to television, is asserting its even wider reach and resonance as never before - it is now able to claim both a truly global audience, yet maintain its individuality and independence that makes the listener feel like they’re part of a private conversation with it.
The internet, of course, famously caters for segmented interests “on demand”, and thanks both to the “listen now” and “listen again” functions of radio websites, you can get both a simultaneous live experience of the world out there - it’s wonderful to sit at home and find out, for instance, that “right now in Central Park, it’s a quite lovely evening” - but also rewind to past ones. Unfortunately this last function isn’t universally available, but downloads may be available instead for particular items only.
There are two unique New York radio brands that both tap into the city’s cultural zeitgeist and provide it with its own heartbeat and soundtrack, too. Just as the New York Times sees itself as a national paper that happens to be based in New York, so the flagship radio station it runs, WQXR (accessible via www.wqxr.com), positions itself, in its own words, as “the nation’s pre-eminent classical music station” - one that is not only “an intimate companion” for its listeners but also providing “a distinctive entrée to New York’s broader cultural life”. Hourly newscasts come from the paper’s newsroom, you can also download podcasts of weekly international and business reports, as well as weekly round-ups of the latest pop releases and books from New York Times critics. Strangely, the theatre, film and restaurant reviews have not been updated online since May, so it currently means we are still hearing Ben Brantley speak his review of Deuce, a play that closed in August.
New York’s Public Radio station WNYC (www.wnyc.org), which calls itself “the most listened to public radio station in the United States” and has made history when in 1941 it became the first radio station to announce the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, has a strong arts strand. Online now is a report on the Katherine Hepburn papers that have recently been acquired by the New York Public Library for the Performing Rights at Lincoln Center, including an account of her arrest for speeding in the state of Oklahoma during a tour of As You Like It, when she told the “extremely handsome and extremely irritating and drawling” arresting cop that pulled them over, “I am sorry I did not have a week to take off and kick him, and if I ever found an Oklahoma car in Connecticut I would flatten all the tyres”. Studio 360, produced by WNYC and broadcast nationally, is a weekly programme about the media, arts and culture that can be heard also on studio360.org. You can also currently hear an interview with Norman Mailer, who died last week, that was conducted back in February.
But beyond the routine chart and talk stations that proliferate on the official FM and AM airwaves, the internet is also now providing an invaluable opportunity for more dedicated programming to evolve away from them. WPS1 Art Radio (www.wps1.org) is the internet radio station of PS1 Contemporary Art Center and the Museum of Modern Art, offering live and pre-recorded discussions and interviews about art and artists. At Playbillradio.com, there’s a host of Broadway-related interviews to download, including up-to-date backstage visits to the now-previewing production of August: Osage County, the upcoming Mark Twain premiere Is He Dead?, and a survey of the career of a different Broadway composer every week.
DETAILS
WQXR - www.wqxr.com
WNYC - www.wnyc.org
Studio 360 - studio360.org
WPS1 Art Radio - www.wps1.org
Playbill Radio - www.playbillradio.com
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