Scott Simon Interviews Dick Biondi on Weekend Edition

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

David, for some of us that is a hard pill to swallow. Why don't people understand the world the way we did!!!

Then I think for a few minutes. We used to go out in street and round up enough people to play some baseball or some touch football.

Today parents in this house load up their precious child and drive 15 miles this way to a cheer-leading training school. The people in the next house to the right load up their children and head for figure skating lessons in a rink 22 mile the other direction. And the people in the next house to the left load their children and head for Saturday morning youth activites at a mega-church 26 miles away in yet another direction. And at that church hundreds of other parents arrive from every direction of the compass, driving an average of 18 miles each.

And we sit here in the doldrums wondering: Why don't young people today understand 'community' the way we did when we grew up!!!

And we wonder why broadcasters program in such strange ways. And then a guy like you comes along, pulls back the curtain, and let's us take a look at life as lived in the year 2013. Wow. I can hardly wait for the 2017 version of this lecture and presentation. I think in the morning I shall order a supply of t-shirts emblazoned: "I AM A Luddite.

 

[davideduardo]

And we sit here in the doldrums wondering: Why don't young people today understand 'community' the way we did when we grew up!!!

I think one of the reasons that definitions have changed is that we live with more fear, so we like the safety in online communities and such.

As a kid, I'd go out and explore. I don't know of any parents of 8 to 12 year olds that would allow their kids to wander around today, even in a "safe neighborhood". Going many places after dark scares us adults, too.

And if we were not scared before, watching a few episodes of "Criminal Minds" or somesuch program will make you lock your doors and arm the alarm system.

Add in the knowledge that there are sex offenders living somewhere nearby, and we can go online and map the assaults and robberies in our vicinity and we can easily become paranoid. So FaceBook is our refuge.

Add to that today's short attention spans (if you can't say it in 140 characters, it is not worth saying) and any interest in attending a long, tedious city council meeting looses interest fast. So there is no involvement in the community because it's not fast-paced enough since our benchmark for pacing is "Grand Theft Auto" and our heroes are avatars.

It ain't global warming that'l get us. It's apathy.

(To end on a lighter note: a friend had a real experience during which he was told by a student that "appathy" is what folks study to be able to write "apps" for smartphones and tablets.)

 

[TheBigA]

1. The vagueness of the time frame "...as it used to be" will cause older demos to think of radio many decades ago, while younger ones will think of periods of months or, at most, a few years.

The irony here is that the older respondents disagreed with the statement to a higher degree than younger respondents. That apparently surprised Kassof, who noticed most younger respondents were too young to remember radio before consolidation. But older people feel radio IS like it used to be. I'm not surprised, given the preponderance of formats that favor boomers, like talk, news, oldies, classic rock, and public radio. There really seems to be a bias against radio programming for people in their 20s, so I'm not surprised they're unhappy. But none of this has anything to do with local staffing or providing companionship. In fact, it's been my experience that people in their 20s find the idea of people on the radio providing companionship to be creepy.