Mornings Are Broken

How do I feel about morning radio? What has been referred to as "drive time" was always my "time to wander around my classroom time." I no longer wake up to the radio. The alarm I set is on my Google home assistant. On mornings that both my wife and I are getting out of bed at the same time, I ask Google to play me something off Al Gore's Internet. We hear music, and the chatter between songs is the conversation we are having as we prepare to go about our day.
The idea of a "morning show" in which a little music is played and a little traffic news is discussed and a taste of national and local events are ruminated upon is one two which I surrendered many years ago. I accepted that listeners might want or need some kind of chat to begin their day. I shuddered to think that one of the local stations had become part of the Howard Stern Radio Domination Network, but I needn't have worried. Howard took his peculiar brand of talk to the satellite and our airwaves were once again peaceful and quiet. But only for a moment. Syndicated sounds from across the country came swooping in to fill the void. That comfortable relationship that I had once endured with Dave Morey on KFOG was replaced by a series of cleverly matched voices chosen to stir my brain cells in a manner I had not been accustomed.
I stuck with KFOG primarily because it meant I didn't have to tune the analog dial I had in my classroom for all those years. This fall when I returned to start a new school term, I quickly tired of the babble streaming from the speakers and retreated up the frequencies until I landed on a place that gave me one voice followed by a little music, followed by that same voice with a little bit of music. It sounded like a radio show.
This lasted a couple of months. Then suddenly I was gifted with another voice on this station. Now there was both chit and chat. There were "segments" with discussions of roommates and shopping and boyfriends and the incidence of music became more spread out. Apparently there was a lot more roommate, shopping and boyfriend concerns than I had originally imagined. Music? That was to take us to the top of the hour.
So I went back down to KFOG, only to discover that The Woody Show had taken up residence at that frequency. Plenty of surveys and contests and "can you believe this?" And music to take us to the top of the hour. I surrendered. Now there is noise coming from the corner where my radio sits. I try not to pay attention to the types of noise, just make sure to turn it off before I go outside for yard duty. If I want music, I'll ask Google.