How to Conquer Time and Space!
A short while ago, I took part in a discussion on “The Sense and Benefit of WEB Pages for Radio and Television Stations”.
Some of the people I met who still had their doubts were quite competent and famous. Another participant, who is almost all the time travelling around the globe for an American world trust, was quite happy:
“I can hear Bayern 3 all around the world!”
“Heute im Stadion” (“Today in the Stadium”, the Federal League Soccer reports, Saturday at 3 p.m.) is “live” all around the world. German soccer fans listen to the reports from the football stadiums of the federal league no matter where they are and what they do: while they eat breakfast, while they have their laundry washed, during lunch or dinner, or else on their night watch. No matter which continent they are currently living on.
I am currently on a ship near Norway. Even here, I could (if I so desired) listen to current reports of Bayern 2 (and in theory all other radio stations of this world).
The answer to the question if the web makes sense for radio stations is quite simple:
Information starts surpassing the borders of space and time!
To me, that sounds quite sensational. Regardless of place, you can listen to any station you wish to, provided they offer their program on the internet! For quite some time, internet radio stations functioning through WLAN have successfully done their job just like normal radios. Using them, you can receive an “endless” number of radio stations.
And even if a program has been recorded in the past, I can still listen to it as podcast. Whenever and wherever I so desire. That is a little like the stars shining down on us from a long time ago.
When we still had nothing but short, medium, long and ultra-short waves, that was unconceivable. In those days, we recorded programs on our cassettes and later labelled them. How many fruitless attempts we made! How often did malfunctioning cassettes and tapes drive us crazy? Again a jumble of twisted tape! Or else, we got angry because the cassette recorder did, after all, not automatically start recording at the time we had programmed it to.
I once tried to get a few old programs from my past. No way! Even the big German television stations had nothing left in their archives.
Today, everything gets recorded for eternity. The archives of today will provide an excellent portrait of our times to later generations. And everything is centralized and can be loaded at any time! I wonder what influence this will have on historical research.
Personally, I prefer current programs. For me, the element of surprise and the feeling that I am hearing people in a live-program talking into the airwaves are important.
This is also why I am the only person in our family who does not own an MP3 player. As a compensation, I carry a normal, small ultra short wave receiver almost all the time. I am very selective about using it. Constant background music is my idea of hell.
So far, I have not downloaded a single podcast. Whenever I feel I would like to do so, I change my mind quite fast. After all, I know beforehand that there will, again, never be time to listen to it.
🙂 And besides, I prefer being a hunter to being a collector.
Well, and if ever I will change my mind or have more time, then this, too, is not a problem. After all, everything is centrally available at all times and places.
RMD
(translated by EG)
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