My current push-media fix
I have a disdain for oldschool massmedia as most people probably know by know but modern massmedia has its merits if it adheres to serve the citizens instead of the interests of business or politics. So I have a couple of massmedia fixes for myself that I think are standing out tall and proud from the rest - that is of course personal taste.
Talk Radio:
BBC World Service - hands down. The quality of the shows the indepth information they cram into 30 minute shows the quality of guests and talkers has no match anywhere else. They try to be balanced as hell - even taking a lot of flack (recently for "siding" with Palestinians). Their economy outlook report is just telling how it is ("nobody has a clue" and "sorry is not the word bakers mean when they say it"). I LOVE the presenters all around - they have wit, speak gorgeous english and are speaking fast enough for anyone with attention deficits. The combiniation of culture, technology, politics, trivia is amazing - personally they could leave out the sports sections but its really like only shorts about sports anyway. The "from the ground" reports are greatly produced - making as much from the medium radio that you can. Listening to them is just making the stories come alive in your imagination. They integrate listeners feedback constantly replying to listener comments or just letting listener comments stand on its own (which I think is great to avoid flame wars).
The best show is "The Forum" every sunday morning. Its a roundtable discussion that gets together three people (+ the host) from a very wide array of professional fields and the intellectual discussion you can hear there are of a different kind - eye opening, amusing, high educational in value and mostly useful for the advancement and understanding of mankind.
Music Radio:
Well I listen only to webradio when it comes to blast my ears with music as I do not posses a lot of music on my local harddrives (number of songs residing locally can be counted on two hands) and since I kind of need music to get going when I am working its almost constantly on. Five stations that have chrystalized over the years as worthy of constant listening:
DubLab - if you want to hear crazy strange whicked experimental jazzy handmade urban suburban african mexican or whatever you can think of kind of music in a low bpm range with a lot of dub underneath this is the station to listen to - but be warned it sometimes gets very headfucked and there could be a rotation of shows a bit more often as you do sense the repeats quite frequently.
NinjaCuts - Ninja Tunes makes radio its almost always possible to listen to them if you like electronic music. Sometimes its really great and you wanna get up and dance - which is rather silly on your own in the office but energy it gives you nonetheless.
RadioGlitch - a bit more on the "commercial" side of electronic music its when you really need some danceble music that is four to the floor with dubby parts broken beats and lots of glitchy bitchies.
DubTerrain.net - Dubstep, D&B and Dub on the cutting edge - a bit heavy sometimes with a lot of hard D&B but good if you are in a down mood and still need to get stuff done - better then coffee. ;)
TV:
I am trying to not pollute my visual senses too much as I found it hinders my imagination and creativity but I do like very well made documentaries. The best over all documentary presentation I have found so far must be
PBS Frontline: The 60 minute shows are completely viewable in nice 12 minute chunks on their gorgeous (so a bit unnecessarily flash heavy) website. They include "learn more see more get more" links throughout the shows inside the video player to click on. For example to see a full interview if it interests you and not just the excerpt you see in the film you can just click on a link that appears when the interview is shown. Also it includes viewers comments when there is a hot topic beeing talked about. The shows are enourmously well researched and always sport this threaded story that just doesnīt let you go. The whole endeavor is people sponsored - the camera work is mostly amazing. Only quivvle I have had with it was the Hugo Chavez documentary which I thought was a tiny bit biased but the rest I saw is pretty balanced. There will be one called "Inside the Meltdown" on Feb. 17th that I really look forward :)
The only other visual tubes programming I probably donīt have to mention but I do it anyway as there are still people who have not heard about the amazing
TED talks: Taped at the TED conference this highly intellectual tribe of people try to show off positive technology and ideas and thoughts that can transform the world. The talks are short and of the highest intellectual order - you might have heard about Bill Gates releasing Mosquitos - that was a TED talk. There are many more similarely shocking and eye opening (the much cited other one is the woman who is a brain specialist had a stroke - lost half her brain temporarily and speaks about her research on herself by bringing a real brain with the spinal cord attached to the stage). No matter what topic you are into you will find something of importance to you there I can guarantee that - oh and the talks are highly addictive - lots of people have seen them all - a couple of month constant viewing that is. You will be a smarter person afterwards - guaranteed.
Now these are pretty much my main massmedia consumption patterns. I would love to hear if you have others additional ones that just stand out from the pack as something special and noteworthy. I would be delighted if you leave a comment.