As someone who pulled the plug on residential Internet, I have naturally clung onto broadcast radio. It occurs to me that tuning into broadcast content gives a rare media source where you are not tracked. There is no digital footprint on your listening.
Tor (along with a couple even more obscure technologies like i2p) are the only viable cloud-sourced ways to escape consumption tracking. Tor is indispensible but it’s not as traceless as tuning broadcast signals. And Tor users are plagued with access discrimination.
Yet broadcast radio must be struggling. They likely lost copious listeners to the Internet. Seems like there is a missed opportunity to promote their stations and privacy along with it. Radio stations should inform people that tracking online is not just to advertise but it’s also used for personalised political manipulation.
Duckduckgo’s privacy theatre demonstrates that privacy promotion works. But DDG relies on trust and it’s rife with scandals. OTA¹ broadcasts do not rely on trust. Promoting privacy would have a long-term self-promotion effect. That is, as listeners come to develop their value of privacy more, their listenership becomes stronger.
Some (most?) stations likely also stream online. But they could still play a different jingle on the broadcast service, no?
¹ OTA: over the air
Yeah it’s a bit annoying how BBC keeps mentioning their digital services. They want you to have their content and they want to track you. But I think their top priority is just that you tune in one way or another. Offgriders give them the advantage of undivided attention. They don’t have to compete very hard for the attention of those without Internet.
OTOH, BBC is a special case because they get nothing from broadcast ads. I don’t even know how they are funded. Sure they get tax funded in the UK, but what’s their incentive to broadcast in continental Europe which apparently does not fund them?
(edit) a lot of FM and DAB stations have no digital resources that would track you (extremely basic websites without even a schedule). Some stations seem to have no web presence at all. So in those cases it would be interesting for them to emphasise their privacy alignment.