And then I listened closely.

I love radio. I live in Seattle. But for the past five days I've been in central Washington, because we have family and property in Yakima. One of the givens of the radio biz is that major market stations sound better than small market stations. Well, after listening closely to small-market radio for the first time in a long time--motivated by the realization that I'd just decided to focus a whole branch of my blog on radio--I'm here to tell you that this is one given we can give back.

Major market radio isn't better anymore, if it ever really was. Both locales suck, in very much the same ways. I hear the same plastic-voice over-processed hyper-edited station promos and "imagers" on Seattle stations that I hear driving past apple orchards and tumbleweeds. The only difference: I guarantee the plastic dude in Yakima is getting a lot less money. I hear the same quality know-nothing news-talk guys in both places. I hear the big-city talker pronounce the Port of Seattle miserably managed without a syllable of factual supporting argument. I hear a small-market, alleged professional sports talker fumble player names his callers pronounce correctly, and read a newspaper sports column--all of it, for over ten minutes--in that glazed voice you hear when radio guys go into autopilot reading mode--words sent direct from eyes to mouth without passing through the brain. No clue how to phrase what he's processing, scanning one word at a time, no commitment to meaning or emotion. No attempt to adapt the material to his voice, or vice versa. Except maybe to throw in a gratuitous "Now..." or "Ya know..." as if that would make print syntax sound vocal.

I hear the same ghastly commercials, where a plastic radio guy auto-reads some furniture guy's overstuffed not-for-humans copy, three hundred words a minute at full cry with tight-echo and blaring background-music, mixed like a wall-of-sound rock track, everything at equal volume. And I hear the same hard-sell-high-claim spots with legal "fine print" that's digitally de-breathed so completely that it's indecipherable even by a meth smoker. And I hear six or more of these horrors in a row. I hear this crap in the big market and the small markets, on a single two-hour hundred-and-thirty-mile drive.

Is anybody in radio listening to their own product? Are any advertisers or timebuyers listening? Could you-all really believe this medium is as good as it can be? Is it not a miracle that this industry is still in business and producing money? Could it be that everybody in this food chain thinks U.S. commercial radio is just great the way it is? Does it really take full-bore market research to figure out that listeners would appreciate fewer commercials in a row? Is there a sane person left in radio?

And now, on top of everything, only one officer of a court in the entire country is willing to do the minimal light reading necessary to document the putrid core of radio station music programming? Who knows? Maybe, between yet another payola upchuck and a tsunami of new media competition, real radio will make a comeback. We can hope.