Wednesday, February 25, 2015

COM/WRI 212 - Blog #4


In this post, we will be having FM radio vs. AM radio. For the FM radio, I chose to do B104. B104 is the Lehigh Valley’s hit music radio station. I grew up listening to this radio station with it’s playing of the greatest musical hits from the 80’s, 90’s and now. The commercials and information given out during my 20 minutes of listening felt like I was listening to the television with no picture. There were only three and a half songs that played during my listen experience, which totaled about 10 to 11 minutes. I also noticed that one of the songs was slightly sped up to make it go faster. Sneaky, sneaky B104 but I’m a Taylor Swift fan and I know when things don’t line up.
The rest of the time spent listening was to commercials and information instead of music, which is the biggest thing about radio stations. If you look at it, I spent about 50% of my time with the FM radio station listening to commercials or information. The commercials were about selling local valley events or businesses. I noticed that the station would chime in during the long commercials to make sure the consumers knew what station they were on. The news given out by B104 was more celebrity news than nation or local news. I learned about Kylie Jenner buying a new house for her and her potential boyfriend, Tyga. Things I don’t really care about but hey people like it and consume it.
For the next 20 minutes, I listened to WTKZ. This AM radio station is a sports radio station based out of the Lehigh Valley. I enjoy listening to this radio station especially during baseball season. This was the complete opposite to the FM radio station I listened to previously. It was a lot of talking about sports with the sprinkle of weather and major traffic problems around the Valley. There were about 5 to 6 minutes of commercial and information. This is was a little over 25% of the time spent listening to promotional on local sporting events with the Phantoms or Iron Pigs. The information was entertaining to me but to someone who isn’t a fan of sport especially Philly sports wouldn’t care for it. By the end of the time, I realized why I didn’t listen to this station as much as something like B104. The hosts always say something silly about the Phillies trading or keeping certain players or getting players from other teams and I find myself shaking my head. The hosts always find the negative in everything or say something silly that leads me to believe anyone who loves sports could get a job talking about sports.
I learned something from both radio stations I listened to. On B104, I learned about celebrity news and on WTKZ, I learned about possible trading information the Phillies are looking into. Both were entertaining to me, but the information I learned from WTKZ was more interesting to me then the news from B104. I did enjoy the music on B104 since WTKZ is just a talking station. Now if there was a radio station that played today’s hits with baseball news, I would be set for life.

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