It's a sad state of radio these days, what with pretty much two media outlets - ClearChannel and Infinity - owning most of the top 20 markets and who knows how much of the US radio market total. Then you have colleges and universities who tried to make a go of their stations - many of whom became NPR affilliates and promptly were taken over by professionals instead of being run by the students - now selling said stations to private owners, a la Johns Hopkins University's WJHU here in Baltimore being sold to a private owner and becoming WYPR, "Your Public Radio".

So where is the hope? What is absolutely essential for good radio? What are the presets on your stereo or car radio? If I was to come to your town, what would you say is/are the station(s) I need to listen to? And are there any radio personalities you think are radio gods?

I'll recommend anything from the BBC Radio stations, both analogue and digital. You can find them here.

This opens up a new window: listening to live shows requires either Media Player or RealPlayer; listening to archived material (from 7 days ago) requires Real Player. If this doesn't work, try the BBC Radio homepage and take it from there.

As for radio gods, I can only offer two words: John Peel.

Other stations to try out while in Britain include:

Xfm
Virgin Radio

(both available over the 'Net, too.)

In terms of great talk radio hosts, I've always wondered what happened to the great James H Reeve. I listened to his fantastic show on what was then Talk Radio (before Kelvin Mackenzie ruined it all and relaunched the station as talkSPORT) then sometime in the summer of 2000 he disappeared from national radio. Where is he??!

Anyone who comes to Dallas has to check out the under-advertised 89.3 KNON. They play just about every type of music you can think of, at various times during the day. I mean, there are different programs, each playing a different type of music. For example, between 12 and 4 pm every weekday it's "Latin Energy" and the music is rap and dance, and some of it's in Spanish. In the mornings there's a talk program, and then some R&B. Just after midnight is the heavy metal show. Last night I was in the car listening and it was all rap music, and during the commercial breaks were ads for dance clubs. Driving home sometime after 2am, I decided to see what was on this station, and obviously a different program was on because they were playing Slayer! Unfortunately, not too many people know about the station, beacuse the only form of advertisement it gets are worn, faded bumper stickers which aren't seen very often.

"The Voice of the People". I was listening to the Dungeon (KNON's heavy metal show) last night, too. (In part. After awhile, I switched to listening to the Edge.) On Sundays, when I'm home, I'll listen to "Beyond Bows and Arrows", KNON's two hours of American Indian music. I love it. But why wait until you get to Big D to listen to it, when you can do what I do (since I live in Illinois) and go to KNON's website and listen to it while you're on the computer?

All Eyez on Me - Tupac Shakur

"But then music's an open door." - "Music Must Change" - the Who

I thought XM was the way to go in satellite radio. But, Sirius had signed both "Radio Chick" Leslie Gold (she's on the air now) and Howard Stern (who starts in January 2006, but there have been deals floated to get him there earlier.)

Favorite deceased DJ

Wolfman Jack

And when it comes to "favorite radio personalities," I'm going a few hundred miles north to mention Baltazar and Goumba Johnny, the morning crew from 103.5 KTU in New York City. That station is one of the few things I really miss about living in New Jersey for most of last year.

One thing these guys would do was called "War of the Roses," in which people can find out if their husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend is cheating on them. It works like this: one of the radio guys calls up the suspected cheater and pretends to be from "Red Roses dot com" and says it's a new website, they're letting people send roses for free as a promotional thing. The trick is, we want to find out who the person wants to send the roses to. He or she will give a name, then say what to write in the note, and this is inevitably followed by the jilted lover coming on the phone, and then there's the nasty (but often hilarious) argument between the two.

Unfortunately you can't listen to the station over the internet anymore.

"Radio Chick" Leslie Gold has deserted satellite radio and will do a show for K-Rock, once Stern leaves (his last show on K-Rock before departing to satellite radio is 12/16/05.) Former Van Halen front man, and NYC paramedic in training David Lee Roth will replace him.
K-Rock itself will become a talk station on weekdays, and rock music on weekends. I wonder how that will fly, as NYC's WNEW-FM tanked big time when it switched to talk in the late '90's.

One thing these guys would do was called "War of the Roses," in which people can find out if their husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend is cheating on them.

They do the same thing on a station in Kansas City, 96.5 the Buzz. It's even called "War of the Roses". I wonder if the Buzz stole the idea.