The Tao of Sat

The death of Tony Bennett, as well as the death of Ed Ames two months earlier, has reinforced something I've come to learn and appreciate in the past four years.  Satellite radio, or "sat," is no longer a pleasurable luxury.  It's become a necessity. 

All of the music you'll ever want to hear is on sat.  Rock, jazz, country and western, rhythm and blues, classical - you name it.  But practically none of the music you want to hear is on terrestrial radio anymore.  Some of it is still lurking about on a couple of little radio stations in rural and suburban or exurban areas, but just try to get a clear signal for it - especially if the station you're seeking out is a low-wattage FM station.  Thankfully, satellite radio has restored the natural order of the musical universe in broadcasting.  Whereas many forms of music are not profitable enough for commercial radio anymore, you can find any and all of them on sat.  Even Muzak.

This is especially true for singers of Bennett's and Ames's generation.  I challenge you to find a station in your listening area that still plays big-band jazz, which was Tony Bennett's specialty, or traditional pop, which was Ames's forte.  In the New York area, we had WNEW-AM playing big-band music and traditional pop, but that went off the air long ago when Michael Bloomberg - this was before he entered politics - bought it and turned it into WBBR-AM, a financial-news station.  Another New York station with a big-band/traditional pop format, WQEW-AM, flipped to a kiddie format after Disney bought it.    What happened to big-band/traditional pop radio is now happening to rock radio, of course, and  stations that play current hit singles are playing songs that aren't rock music.  They're not soul music or country music, either.  As far as I'm concerned, they're not even music - they're rap and electronica.  I don't need to tell you again what has happened to rock radio in New York City, but perhaps I ought to tell you what happened to soul radio.  WRKS-FM, from 1994 to 2012, played R&B for those of us who appreciated music made by black performers who still believed in vocals and arrangements; no more of that hip-hop stuff, as it had been playing in the past.  But in 2012, that station went off the air in favor of an FM simulcast of ESPN Radio's New York AM station.   

New York has a "country" station, but the music it plays is more exurban than country, with heavy drums and highly mixed electric guitars - certainly nothing Willie Nelson would recognize.  Oldies?  Sure.  WCBS-FM, New York's long-time oldies station, gave up on the Beatles and Motown and instead concentrates now on only songs that were hits after Jimmy Carter left the White House.  And of course, WNEW-FM, where rock lived, plays the sort of light, lightweight pop ballads that you would always listen to WNEW-FM to get away from.

So, satellite radio is the only way to go.  You know what would boost President Biden's popularity in the polls?  If he proposed a federal subsidy to help people buy satellite radio subscriptions.  I have a theory - and I'm at least being partly serious here - that a lot of the people who gathered  in Washington on January 6, 2021, were ticked off that their favorite rock or country station got flipped to a hip-hop format or, possibly even worse, hot adult contemporary (all that Ed Sheeran!), and, angered by the takeover of their favorite radio stations by corporate-America coastal elitists who think everyone likes to listen to Olivia Rodrigo, descended on the Capitol and stormed that building in the hope of taking out the first Democrat who actually likes that stuff.

Obvious solution - get them sat! 

Sirius XM not only have rock and country channels, they have channels that play Tony Bennett and Ed Ames.  Really.