Observing World Radio Day, Feb. 13

For #WorldRadioDay I will listen to replay of @cbcradioq from this AM&the midnite edition of @cbcasithappens. Thx to my @tuneinradio app!

— Philip Turner (@philipsturner) February 14, 2013

For years I’ve been a fan of listening to the radio, and that’s only grown over the past couple years, with the welcome option of being able to listen to distant stations over the Internet. Although radio remains a terrestially-based news, information, music, and cultural medium, innovations and apps such as TuneInRadio mean it is no longer limited to the reach of a signal and the sensitivity of an antenna, much as I also enjoy that kind of listening. Nowadays I may as readily listen on my IPod Touch or my IPad to a radio station from Wellington, New Zealand, Winnipeg, Canada, or Cleveland, Ohio, as I listen to a station like WNYC, here in my home base of New York City.

I was excited when I heard this morning (on the radio) that UNESCO had “declared Feb. 13 World Radio Day to recognize the crucial role radio plays in organizing and informing communities.” For an hour this afternoon NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” devoted their program to discussing the role that radio plays in people’s lives in many different countries. The Twitter hashtag #WorldRadioDay has gotten a work out all day today, including in the above tweet of mine. Did you listen to radio today?