Analog Radio

Posted by: Sajeel

The Radio Dictatorship begins...
The government in this country (UK) has announced that all non-digital radio sets will be rendered useless by 2015, and that everyone will have to buy a digital radio or access radio programming via the internet or via digital TV.

On behalf of traditional radio users everywhere, I must now proceed to use this platform to defend the so very underrated analog radio format against the tyrranny of the Digital Empire.

Aren't you going to miss the fun of going through your frequencies, finding new stations, picking up pirate intrusions and foreign broadcasts? Or accidentally receiving subliminal messages from the CIA or coded messages from other galaxies? Or just the magic of listening to that leftover background radiation from the Big Bang?

Or there's just the novelty value of analog radio - doesn't novelty value count for a damn thing anymore? Think of all the elderly folk who've lived their whole lives huddled around an analog radio; think of all the tradition - think of War Broadcasts, and of Churchill's call-to-arms booming out across static-filled radio speakers throughout the country, and the like.

For novelty value alone, analog radio should be allowed to continue functioning, even if was to become a minority medium.

The real issue here is not just radio - it's the plainly evidenced fact that we are being ruled by a Techno-Media-Political Empire that DICTATES to us what we MUST buy and do in order to keep up and to hold onto our amenities.

There's nothing actually WRONG with analog radio - it's not as if it doesn't work anymore. No, our Imperial Overseers simply want us spend our money on these new-fangled digital contraptions. Which would be fine if we were given a CHOICE; in a proper capitalist society, we consumers have a range or products to choose from and we give our money to our preferred manufacturers.

But we're not being given a choice this time. We are simply being TOLD that the old format is being nullified and we MUST adopt the new format. That is not capitalism - that is Nazism!

Okay, not Nazism exactly; but dictatorship, certainly.

What's to stop this happening again and again in the future, with other technologies? What if, one day, they decide that we should all go solar-powered and simply inform us that they're going to switch off every single electricity generator next week and we'll all have to fork out a fortune for solar-panelling or be forced to spend several months in the Dark Ages while we save up some money?

What if one day, they decide PC's are outdated and we all must immediately get micro-computers implanted into our brains - and that it's the only way we can still use computers? Do we all just go along with it like sheep into a sheep-pen?

Be warned, people! We are going down a dark path. And it all begins when thousands of old ladies (and me) are suddenly left in audio darkness one cold night in 2015 as every analog radio in the country goes dead. Multitudes of traditional radio listeners up and down the country will be glumly turning their radio tuners in-vein and hearing nothing but white noise and high-pitched whines, like something out of a horror movie about the build-up to an alien invasion.

Fight the dictatorship! Fight the power! Defend the analog! Don't let them insideously drag us towards the eventual Matrix-like digital reality that is our future...