Why radio towers matter

The Washington Post ran this piece recently about the aging demographics of NPR and the fretting this is creating for those who want to keep public radio going.

A lot of the talk about adaptation has involved growing podcasts, like Serial and other listen-at-your-convenience products.

And then there's this:

"...NPR has to strike a sometimes awkward balance with its digital forays. By sending its programs directly to listeners via digital means, it risks bypassing and even competing with the stations that broadcast those shows — and supply the dollars that enable NPR to produce them in the first place... 

...The bad news, however, is that the radio part of public radio may be in slow and irreversible decline, a fate faced by newspapers, TV stations and other kinds of “legacy” media in the digital age."

This is the stuff that makes me most fretful. 

Why does broadcast radio (as opposed to digital) matter? It's cheap to access, and almost anyone in the state can get a signal. At its most basic, you just need a $15 Walkman and some batteries. Meanwhile, tons of rural areas don't have broadband internet or a good signal for those smartphone data plans. 

And unlike newspapers, there is no literacy requirement for radio. Radio is the only thing you can access while driving or doing other work, so it's time-neutral. Until we have an infrastructure that eliminates the digital divide entirely, the analog is a vital and uniquely accessible source of news, information, and even community connection.

I'm not saying NPR doesn't need to do some real work to figure out how to stay relevant to younger listeners. But it would be terrible to lose the radio waves part of radio, or see it cheapened and hollowed out and emblazoned with advertising to the point that many newspapers have been--because if people don't want to access a service, it's as good as removing it entirely.