Ever since 1895 when Guglielmo Marconi (who has been called the father of radio) introduced the radio, broadcasters have been looking for content to send out over the airwaves.

At first, it was live musicians, singers, announcers, actors and comedians who provided entertainment for the people who crowed around their radios.  When the phonograph/record player became popular, records and then CDs replaced live musicians.

As time went on, local stations were swallowed by networks and the stops on the radio dial started to all sound the same as music was programmed according to the demographics and physcographics.

Then, campus and college radio stations broke the mold by doing it their way through individuality.  These stations started to attract listeners from the cookie-cutter stations.  Networks took notice of this and started to humanize and personalize with the introduction of talk radio and ‘personalities’ talking about anything and everything.

Internet radio took this one step further by targeting smaller, niche markets.  While the networks must generalize because of costs, internet radio can operate on a show string budget.

So, there you have it, there is room for talking about potty training a puppy along side of a discussion of aliens and the latest entertainment news.  Radio truly is ‘a something for everyone’ medium.

Welcome to RocknRoots on the web.

Welcome to RocknRoots on the Web.

For six years, “RocknRoots” was a favorite on independent, community and public radio stations across the country and a few places overseas. My late friend and partner Ann Sternberg and I delivered a weekly program of folk, jazz, blues, swing, country and all kinds of music that doesn’t get heard enough.

Now, RocknRoots on the Web continues the tradition. About three times a month, I’ll deliver a show full of eclectic music and opinionated commentary. There will be guests, sometimes playing live in the studio. There will be themes, ideas about music, explorations of all kinds devoted to American vernacular music – with an occasional journey to exotic lands.

I invite you to click on to the show, sample what we have going on here, and send me your thoughts. I’m at tom@rocknroots.org . Tell me what you’d like to hear. Tell me what you are curious about. I’ll do my best to respond, with the kind of music and commentary that made the “old” RocknRoots a staple for hundreds of thousands of listeners.

We’ll be glad to hear from you – and you’ll hear from us, right here at RocknRoots on the Web!