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
The BBC is funded by the TV licence in the UK. If you are a UK resident and watch any live TV or the BBC Iplayer streaming service then you are legally obliged to pay for the licence - £175pa so about the same as a Netflix subscription.
The advantage of broadcasting elsewhere globally is soft power. Spreading UK centric viewpoints and some jolly good propaganda the former colonies, what what? Also for psychical media and merchandising income. Dr Who, for example, is very popular globally for some reason and so they make a lot of money selling plastic crap relating to that.