Word: radioed
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...character of those conventional radio signals responded to the weather and time of day in a way that satellite transmissions don't. Late at night, if the skies were clear enough to make out every star in the Big Dipper, the empty spaces on my AM dial would suddenly and mysteriously fill up with broadcasts from a thousand miles away. Minneapolis' WCCO, the powerful station that I grew up listening to and whose chuckling, easygoing announcers shaped my identity as a Minnesotan, reached out to me late one evening in eastern Washington as I sat parked on the shoulder...
Tornadoes were touching down all over Iowa, but I wouldn't have guessed it from listening to satellite radio. Outside, boiling up on both sides of Interstate 80, black prairie thunderheads sizzled with greenish lightning. Inside my car the only sound was that of an E! Entertainment biography of celebrity rock-widow Courtney Love. I reached for the dial and turned to CNN, then Fox, then NPR. But because all the news was national rather than local, not a single voice I came across could tell me that the town near the next exit--where I'd reserved a motel...
When I bought a new car equipped with Sirius satellite radio, I had no idea how the technology would alter my sense of the passing American landscape. With its clear, unvarying signal, which seems to arrive from a spot beyond the moon, and its vast profusion of music, news and talk shows, the medium places you at the center of everything, even when you're in the middle of nowhere. The problem is that the center of everything is not an actual, inhabitable place but a floating media mirage, an invisible digital bubble of information located somewhere in the fifth...
...used to feel different out there on the road. Until just recently I measured my progress on cross-country driving trips by the rise and fall of radio signals that strengthened as I approached a town and fuzzed away as I entered the countryside. The airwaves were jumpy, uncertain and alive, a patchwork of distinctive accents and peculiar regional interests. I knew I was getting close to Texas from the twang of steel guitars. I realized I might reach Omaha by suppertime when I started hearing crop reports. Often, when I was traveling through North Dakota, the only voices...
Satellite radio never fades, which is why I subscribed to the service in the first place and why I'll maintain my subscription despite the fact that it often makes me feel as though America were a high-tech hologram and I were a futuristic ghost. This feeling struck me acutely during a yawn-inducing 10-hour drive from Montana to Colorado via Wyoming. Except in feeble, quivering bursts, normal radio signals can't conquer that barrenness, but thanks to some wonderful gizmo in outer space, I was able to stay in touch with the most minute developments...