mobilene

The current WBOW isn't actually connected to the OG WBOW, which was on AM at 1230. It went off the air in 2001 after the owner was convicted of some pretty awful crimes. Another company resurrected the call letters on FM some years later.

In commercial radio, DJs haven't selected the music in 40 or more years. I used to show up for my shifts to find a printed playlist from a software product called Selector. I had to follow it.

Local community is probably irreparably damaged. But I was a kid with niche interests and I didn't start to find my people until the Internet entered my life in 1989.

Not controversial, not even within the DJ community.

Who knows why we landed on our system of 3 and 4 letter call signs, but we did. Plenty of stations use them only when they have to: in the top of the hour legal ID, which is "<call sign> <city>," such as WZZQ Terre Haute.

<waves frantically> Hi! How did we overlap at WMHD and never run into each other?

I'm the OP, and I'm surprised to find this article on HN at all, let alone the front page!

Many comments are focusing on music but the thing I tried to get across in the article was that good radio wasn't primarily about the music, it was about fun and connection. A good DJ kept you from just turning the radio off when you heard that same hit the fourth time today -- you wanted to keep listening because the DJ made it fun. It made homework and hobbies feel a lot less lonely. A Spotify playlist sure as heck can't do that.

I find myself irritated by this article because its headline is about how blogging has collapsed, but you have to get into the article to find that it's only the blogs that were gaming SEO to make a buck that have collapsed. Those blogs deserved to die.

I've had a personal blog for 19 years. I write about my special interests: old cameras, old roads, old buildings. And whatever else comes to mind. My search traffic has been steady for years.

I was in testing for 17 years before moving back into Engineering. I have spent my time in Engineering leading teams to push quality left. But I think it's better to say "quality is a system" than to say "engineers own quality." What are you building into your SDLC that makes sure quality happens? Testing is just a part of that, and not even the biggest one.

I miss the energy of being in the office, but I do not miss the commuting. If I could commute in 15 minutes or so each way I'd strongly consider an in-office role. OTOH, the ease of the home office is very nice.

We do the same here in Indianapolis and my read is that it's about cost containment. Our tax base here really doesn't fully support city services. And then more people move to the high-tax-base suburbs for better services, and the cycle repeats and gets worse.

When I rode the city bus as a teen in South Bend, IN, in the 80s, there were some designated bus stops. But buses worked on a hail model anyway. You could be on any corner on the route, and as the bus approached, you'd just stick up your arm and it would stop. It was really efficient. But I suppose that works best in a small city like South Bend.

Having a graphic file of your signature is hella useful. I did it the old school way thirty years ago -- I signed my name on paper until I liked it, scanned it, created .gif and .bmp files. Still use that.

I completely understand the kind of mind that would catalog such a thing.

This wouldn't be my thing to catalog, but I'm glad somebody did it.