I don’t like driving through red-on-the-radar downpours and I loathe the route through Northwest Indiana on a holiday weekend, but I otherwise enjoy summertime road trips.
Already, I’ve racked up a lot of miles around the Midwest, for business and family visits. Some people might think it’s no fun driving around a van with a busted CD player, no auxiliary cord hookup and without a satellite radio.
But when I’m driving through small towns, I realize how much I love local radio. I’ve tuned into local talk shows that don’t mean anything to my own life, but which I find interesting. I like hearing the sounds and stories of morning DJs, who have an uncanny similarity in tone. And who can resist a special program like rebroadcasts of an entire Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 program from the late 1970s or 1980s that air on some stations on Sunday mornings?
Despite all of the fuss and buzz about digital, there is still a spot for local radio in people’s lives. It’s not that unlike the weekly community newspaper, in the sense that many of us like to hear about things that pertain to our lives in terms of proximity and familiarity.
We’re lucky in our community to have access to a full radio dial, where we can tune into AM and FM radio and listen to a plethora of talented radio personalities, including those like WGN Radio’s Wendy Snyder and Frank Fontana and WLS’ Steve Dahl, who reside in our area. We’re also fortunate that we can listen to a hometown station like WLTL, 88.1 FM, featuring the talents and voices of students at Lyons Township High School.
One LTHS and WLTL graduate who is making a name for himself in local radio agrees that this is a medium that has a certain and important place.
“I think there’s something special in this day and age, when everyone is entertained in a visual sense, about being entertained by something that is just audio,” said Brandon Herman, currently a student, host and station manager at WONC, the radio station at North Central College in Naperville.
Herman got into radio when he was young.
“I listened to a lot of talk radio as a child and found it fascinating,” he said, adding that the medium itself is distinctive and rewarding. “With radio, there is something special – it’s you in a room, talking to a microphone to people.”
The young radio host recently assembled a veritable who’s-who of Chicago radio to talk about the late, great WLUP-FN after it went off the air earlier this year.
“I was lucky to get the roster of names that I did, and we were able to get people on from across the decades of The Loop”, Herman said.
As for the future, Herman says: “Everting is adapting, and I believe that no matter what, there will always be a place for radio. It’s not the same as it was before, but there’s a place for it.”