(I don't know if I'm allowed to use an image of the old CD101 logo, so picture it here.)
Now, any of you who know me know that I am a rather political person, but I've tried to tamp that down for the sake of this blog as of late. Not everyone, in fact mostly no one, wants to hear my rants. So for the past few months I've kept to myself every time President Obama has backed away from a fight or Mitt Romney has contradicted himself or Ron Paul has sounded like the most sane person in a debate right up until the point when he got on a roll and started sounding completely bat-shit crazy.
What I am not going to keep quiet about is the news that CD101 (at 102.5 fm) may be going the way of the dodo. Yes, they've released their official statement about having an LMA in place with Southeast Ohio Broadcasting, but since that doesn't seem to have put things to rest, and since Brian Phillips, Lesley James, Rachael Gordon, and Tom Butler have all changed their Facebook profile pictures to the CD101/102 logo in some apparent sign of whatever the word is for radiostation patriotism, I'm going to assume, if not the worst, then something like it. Even if all the speculation is completely off base, keep reading. I'm trying to make a point here.
Like I said two paragraphs ago, I've been trying to bore you all to death with stories of my life on this blog as opposed to screaming at you about the only other thing that I think about more than myself (politics) since I got back onto this blog band wagon, but today I'd like to complain. What I would like to complain about is the fact that a handful of giant corporations own just about every source of news, television, and radio that most people are able to get their hands, eyes, and ears on. Maybe I wouldn't care so much if I was a white, conservative, Christian, heterosexual--the subset of folks who are considered the mainstream and are, therefore catered to, even if they aren't the majority. But as it so happens, I am white (though I'm 1/8 Hungarian Jew, and my grandmother who is 1/2 Hungarian Jew told me this weekend I should feel free to tell people this as well as to mention that some of my family died in Auschwitz should I ever find myself feeling a little too privileged and white) but I'm also a liberal, atheist woman of the gay persuasion who is sick of reading the latest Columbus Underground tweets about how the John Kasich loving Columbus Dispatch is buying my favorite newspaper or how some Christian media group is buying my favorite radio station.
Over the last couple years in this city there has been a wonderful push for folks to go out of their way to shop local. Take a look at the current list of members of the Small Business Beanstalk (SBB) if you don't believe there's a real passion and commitment to buying local in Columbus. Thanks to the support of local shoppers Tigertree in the Short North recently moved to a bigger space. Wholly Craft in Clintonville can be just as crowded on a Saturday during the holiday season as some of the shops you'd find in a mall. No one really wants to pay $5 for a bag of bruised apples, but we show up in Clintonville in droves every Saturday in September for the privilege of doing so.
So with all this push in this city to buy local, why is there no push to listen local? Yes, that's what I said. Take out your earbuds. Turn off your iPods. Turn your radio dial away from whatever sports talk radio station you're listening to. You already own whatever's in your iTunes cloud and you already agree with everything the die-hards are saying about the Buckeyes. Instead, tune into 102.5 whenever you can. Increase their market share so they can charge more businesses more money for more ads and buy themselves out of any future bumps in the road. Maybe this is too little too late, but I don't want to live in a town where my girlfriend and I can't speak along as Brian Phillips warns us about the perils of "tubs of subpar yogurt," or where Joe Jewett doesn't feel clever EVERY FUCKING TUESDAY when sometime between 8:45 and 9:00 a.m. he plays the Pogues, "Tuesday Morning," or where Lesley James doesn't religiously follow up the 5 spot with some new wave or gothy classic presumably just because it's what she wants to hear, or where Rachael Gordon shouldn't feel perfectly free to speak for all of us when she proclaims on air that she hates Ke$ha.
What I'm saying, like the way-too-old-to-be-such-a-fangirl I am, is I will keep listening to these people play their music at whatever frequency or at whatever website or out of whoever's basement they end up in, but until we know how everything is going to shake down, I will be listening local. I will be tuned to CD101 (at 102.5 fm).
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