McRadio: A look inside the commercial radio industry in the US, and how programming formats are manufactured and automated. In other words, why commercial radio will invariably be machine-regurgitated lowest-common-denominator crap, and why you're unlikely to hear anything that's actually interesting on it:

"High concept" and "cool" do not sell ads. While listeners profess to hanker for cutting-edge esoterica and diverse programming, advertisers don't buy into this. There are numbers in safety, if you will. Consider B-101, the station that actually advertises that it plays such mainstreamers as Celine Dion and Michael Bolton. Last year, that station - a locally owned independent - generated an estimated $26 million in ad sales; it is far and away the top-rated music station in Philadelphia. "People gravitate toward hit music," Milkman says. "This is broad-casting."

(via Plastic)

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