I have this somewhat battered, well-traveled GE Superadio III in my office. Most days, if it’s not tuned to WRCT at 88.3 or WPTS at 92.1, it’s on WZUM at 101.1 FM.
The Superadio was extremely popular with radio buffs about 10 or 20 years ago, to the point that (if I remember correctly) when it finally went out of production in the early 2000s, it was put back into production due to popular demand. There were even shortages reported by stores. For a while, they were selling for ridiculous prices on eBay.
The reasons for its popularity were excellent sound quality (instead of a single speaker, it’s got a massive woofer and a separate tweeter) on both AM and FM. In fact, on AM, there’s a “wideband” switch which enables many AM stations to sound almost as good as FM. (Without getting into too much technical mumbo-jumbo, it’s a definite case of “garbage-in, garbage-out” — if the AM station is transmitting a sufficiently good signal, the Superadio will sound pretty darn good. If it’s all crunched and compressed, it won’t.)
Anyway, I can’t pick up any AM stations inside the steel and concrete building in which I work. On FM, I’ve noticed the Superadio has a tendency to drift off frequency.
What that means is that sometimes, I’ll be listening to 101.1 FM and without me going near the radio, it will quietly drift over to 101.5 FM.
As you may know, 101.5 is WORD-FM, a Christian station. One minute, Ornette Coleman is wailing away on his saxophone; suddenly and imperceptibly, some dude with a Southern accent is going, “… IS WHY THE LORD COMMANDS YOU TO REJECT THE MODERNIST GOSPEL OF WOKE!”
To say it’s jarring is an understatement.
Occasionally, for research purposes, I’ll spend some time listening to WORD-FM, and I’ve got to tell you, even for someone who went to Episcopal pre-school and 13 years of Catholic school, WORD-FM is an excessive amount of Jesus. I don’t like all-sports radio and I’m not sure I like all-Jesus radio any better.
In case you think that WORD-FM is owned by a church or some other not-for-profit charity, it isn’t — it’s owned by Salem Media Group, which is traded on the stock market and is tied with Audacy (the currently bankrupt owner of KDKA) as the fifth-largest radio station company in the U.S.
Salem also owns WPIT (730) and WPGP (1250), a far-right conservative talk-radio station that brands itself as “The Answer,” and it’s definitely “The Answer” if the question is, “what Pittsburgh radio station sounds like it’s being translated from 1930s Germany”?
Salem recently signed Lara Trump to its podcast network. That’s enough to make you wish for a power outage.
Until last year, Salem also owned Regnery, the book publishing house that prints titles by such literary luminaries as Ann Coulter, Ted Cruz, Newt Gingrich, Josh Hawley, Michelle Malkin, Sarah Palin and Mike Pence.
(These are books, as the saying goes, not to be taken lightly; instead, they should be thrown, and with great force.)
In other words, Salem is part of the single overlapping circle of Republican politics and conservative Christianity in America. There is no daylight any more between MAGA and fundamentalist religion and corporate greed; it’s one big continuous grift.
Although Salem Media itself is currently losing money ($31 million during the three months that ended Sept. 30, 2023, and it was recently de-listed from the NASDAQ after its stock price fell under $1 per share), the top executives are crying all the way to the bank. Give me that old-time religion, it’s good enough to make Salem’s chairman of the board the 14th-highest paid executive in the broadcasting industry.
I wonder if anyone’s radio ever drifts the other way? Like, is there someone in Pittsburgh who’s getting some old-time Free Will Baptist Gospel drummed into their head from 101.5 FM, when their GE Superadio drifts over to 101.1 FM, and suddenly they’re hearing a Blossom Dearie record and their whole day becomes brighter.
Hallelujah! They’re saved from the eternal damnation of dreary corporate Jesus-talk radio.
From the No One Could Have Predicted This Would Happen Dept.:
In other news, a Utah man has been barred from attending school sports after “belligerently” accusing a 17-year-old girl of being transgender — even after being told the student had submitted their birth certificate.
“I wasn’t born yesterday, I know that’s a boy,” he said, according to the Salt Lake Tribune’s website.
As soon as we had conservatives policing transgender people from using public restrooms and playing sports, it was obviously going to be a short slide to policing non-transgender people (particularly young women and girls) who don’t look “pretty” or “feminine” enough.
Tolstoy said “happy families are all alike,” and so are fundamentalists and fascists.
The History of Scabby the Rat: The AFL-CIO posted a short history of “Scabby the Rat” on social media the other day.
Scabby the Rat, as you probably know, is a scrofulous-looking inflatable rodent who shows up wherever strike-breakers cross picket lines.
These days, I’ve heard rumors that Scabby the Rat has gone respectable and high-class. He edits a certain Pittsburgh newspaper.
It’s my understanding the Mr. Scabby has a few cronies working at a certain Pittsburgh newspaper, as well.