I started listening to The Bob and Tom Show circa 1998. The Windows System Administrator at the firm where I worked listened to the radio show every morning. The local classic-rock radio station had recently subscribed to the syndicated program. They quickly grew on me.
Bob and Tom seemed to follow me around. When my wife and I moved to El Paso (side note: never move to El Paso. What a shit hole.), I quickly found a station with Bob and Tom. And two years later when we moved to Austin, I found yet another station with Bob and Tom. It stayed that way for about a year, and then the local station decided to go with their own morning radio team. It was their loss, and mine.
I think that was the point when I quit listening to open-air radio. That is not to say I never listen to the radio when in the car. Sometimes my wife is with me, and doesn’t want to listen to the Metallica that will probably be left in the CD player permanently (see my Death Magnetic posts). Or maybe I am trying to find some news or weather info and need to listen to the radio. Other than those cases, I have purposefully quit listening to the radio.
I quit radio at about the same thing I did three things:
- I purchased my first iPod that conveniently plugged into an audio-in port in my Element.
- I subscribed to Audible.com. I started listening to audio books on the way to work.
- I subscribed to BobAndTom.com. For a few dollars a month I continued to listen to my favorite morning radio show without needing my office radio.
These three things did in the radio. Why listen to bad disc jockeys playing back music? Why not listen to music I like, or books I like? In my car I listen to audio books and music from my iPod, instead of the radio. At work I listened to Bob and Tom in the computer and music from my iPod.
Bob and Tom is how I pictured the way Internet radio should be when it was first developing in the mid-to-late 90s. I thought that it probably would not end up free, but would probably be inexpensive. I thought that independent content would become big, with extra goodies. All they had to do was follow the DVD model. Sadly, Internet radio became a wasteland because of lawsuits and the RIAA.
Bob and Tom have really followed the model I imagined, and I think listeners like me have benefitted. By the time I get to work in the morning their show is nearly over. Around 9 am I go to their pay section and start download the four, 45 minute clips of the four hour show. Why only 45 minutes? They have cut out all of the commercials! That’s right, for my $6/month I get to download and listen to the show when I want, and I don’t have to listen to commercials. By 9:05 I am happily listening to the first “hour” of the show. When I am done listening to the show I can either plug-in my iPod, or I can listen to a “best of” Bob and Tom stream that is available 24/7.
Bob and Tom are nationally syndicated to about 150 radio stations. I would imagine that the vast majority of their audience listen on one of those stations. But for me, all I need is an internet connection. Its too more radio and big media companies didn’t get it, and still don’t get it.
