Mildly interesting

[jon-nyc]

@AndyD said:

Maybe, or for lovers lane.

Radio for me still trumps all other car media. My kids like streaming.

I was a radio listener in the car well into the podcast era (though I’d listen to podcasts in other settings like cooking and exercising). I would listen to NPR, our own public broadcasting station. The shows I liked became unlistenable in the peak woke era of 2020-2021. It’s been years since I even turned it on. It’s now podcasts and audiobooks for me.

[AndyD]

With a country & population the size of the States you must surely have some good stations?
Anyway, we have Radio 4 and the Worldservice, Radio 3 and Classic FM, Jazz/Smooth Radio. And all the usual pop & talk stations.

My new SW/FM/AM radio arrived

[jon-nyc]

Because of our size there are undoubtedly good stations that don’t transmit to most of the country given said size.

Satellite radio is continental in scope, but I’ve never used it.

[Mik]

I refuse to pay for radio. My car has Sirius for a while, but I just don't spend enough time in the car to justify it. I can bring CDs or audio books for longer drives.

[jon-nyc]

You still have a CD player? My 2013 Honda did but not the 2021 Mazda.

[Mik]

Yep. 2019 Murano.

[Doctor Phibes]

@AndyD said:

With a country & population the size of the States you must surely have some good stations?
Anyway, we have Radio 4 and the Worldservice, Radio 3 and Classic FM, Jazz/Smooth Radio. And all the usual pop & talk stations.

I didn't really fully appreciate how good BBC radio was until I left the UK. Like Jon, I abandoned NPR due to the wokeness and left wing bias, but really it was the overwhelming smugness. Listening to Jim and Margery on Boston public radio telling each other just how smart they were every single freaking day was unbearable. Thankfully with streaming the BBC has become available to me again.

[AndyD]

It's always surprising, but I get Jon's point about the sheer size (and cost involved) of broadcasting to the US.
About 25 years ago I met the inventor of PowerPoint and he had BBC radio4 piped around his London flat, and he said he had the same in his San Francisco house!
Like me he didn't suffer The Archers, but everything else was given a listen.

[jon-nyc]

Historically the FCC issued a handful of ‘superstation’ licenses that were, IIRC, for 50,000W AM radio stations. These could broadcast regionally to an area probably the size of the UK. When I went to college in central Indiana for example, I could listen to WGN radio from Chicago. (WGN= ‘world’s greatest newspaper’ since it was originally started by the Chicago Tribune).

The most popular talk radio station in Chicago was WLS (=‘world’s largest store, since it was started by Sears back in the day. Like they say, Chicago is the city of superlatives.) but I couldn’t receive that from IN.

[Axtremus]

Connect smartphone to the car's infotainment system.
No need for CD or satellite radio subscription.
Stream stuff over the smartphone's Internet connection as long as cell signal is good.
Otherwise stream pre-downloaded stuff from the smartphone.
I stream a lot of audiobook-like programs on YouTube while in the car; for good listening experience, manually select a very low video resolution (saves data, reduce chances of having to wait for buffering because you "waste" less bandwidth on video, which you won't be watching anyway because you're streaming an audiobook-like program).

[Doctor Phibes]

@Axtremus said:

Connect smartphone to the car's infotainment system.
No need for CD or satellite radio subscription.
Stream stuff over the smartphone's Internet connection as long as cell signal is good.

The last few years have transformed driving in terms of what you can listen to. The commute is so much less unpleasant than it used to be, even if it's still not exactly enjoyable.