Media during lockdown

Lockdown trickles into many aspects of life! In normal life, I do a fair amount of listening to the radio, and I buy the Saturday newspaper every week. It takes me about a week to read it so it works out quite well. And does that still hold? It does! But still it's different.

The newspaper is a lot thinner than usual these days. The travel section is now minute and incorporated into the main section. For obvious reasons. Funnily enough, 'the Guide' seems the normal size, even though all cinemas and theatres and art galleries are closed, and TV is probably even more of a collection of repeats than radio is. The main paper is mainly about Covid-19. Also for obvious reasons! I still manage on one paper per week though. I suppose I read less. And the most surprising thing is: I now read the sports section! I normally don't. It tends to be all about people kicking or whacking a ball around (and then some moving fast in various ways, and several sports that still aren't covered by these wide definitions) and that doesn't interest me. But now it's about the societal role of sport. What is society like if it's not there? Do people miss it and if so, how much and why? What do they replace it with? What sport is still going and should it? Is it justified to slag off footballers for their big wages, now that the contrast with medical staff has come into such sharp focus? How do the various clubs deal with the current situation; does the burden get spread?

The radio is different too. Most gets to my house straight from someone's spare room! And live interviews tend to involve a window and a microphone on a rather long stick. It is a bit restricted, and the sound quality has suffered. We all hear people cutting out for a bit in video calls; now we hear that on the radio too. And the place is full of repeats! Understandably. And I often only half listen to the radio while I'm doing something else; in that sense, it's quite convenient everything gets repeated. If I hear it three times I may have actually heard the whole thing!

As I now work full time on my laptop I have also shifted my attention to my CD collection. I am still in a bit of a music limbo with no satisfactory solution for playing music. My laptop tends to stay in the office! I don't want to bring it down to double as a stereo. But given that I spend a lot of time with it I now am using it for playing music after all. Mainly when I am doing a task that allows listening to something but not focussing on it. I have been pulling lots of CD's into my iTunes library. And now I can listen to them at my leisure! It's been a lot of Tori Amos.

When lockdown lifts, will all of this go back to as before? I suppose the newspapers and the radio will get back to normal. I might still listen to a bit more of my music for a while. But one day I should sort out the music situation. I've been dragged into the 21st century so I should manage that!

The travel section: one page, staying close to home