Our View: On The Radio

Is radio relevant anymore?
Gary Hanna of Brewster thinks so. His Salt Air Broadcasting is acquiring three iconic Cape Cod radio stations: WQRC, WKPE and WOCN, all part of long-running Cape Cod Broadcasting. The stations will augment Salt Air’s current station, WGTX, which broadcasts on both AM and FM.
The move comes several months after Cape Cod Broadcasting sold the region’s only classical music station, WFCC, to a Tennessee-based Christian broadcasting network.
We obviously have a soft spot for radio. Several of our staff members worked for local radio stations, and radio was a chief source of both entertainment and news for many of us in decades past. We still have the radio on at our office, tuned to local stations so we can keep abreast of what’s going on throughout the region.
It seems, however, that radio is less and less relevant for much of the population, even though it is more available than ever, thanks to internet streaming; you no longer have to be in range of a radio signal to listen to any given station. But many people have turned to podcasts instead, preferring the ability to control what they listen to rather than leave it up to anonymous programmers. Even carmakers see radio as no longer a necessity in vehicles; federal legislation is pending to force automakers to include AM radios in all new vehicles.
We welcome Hanna’s efforts to keep local commercial radio alive and hope that the stations, long favorites of Cape Codders, will be community focused and continue to carry local programming and news. We are also grateful that the stations weren’t swallowed up by a national media, venture capital or investment firm, as all but three of the Cape’s newspapers were. We have a soft spot for local, independent ownership, and wish Hanna well as he carves out his own niche in our local media landscape.