I'm A Bad Person

Yesterday at lunch a coworker expressed with dismay "It sucks that Bob and Tom are gone!" The other coworker said "Is that why they weren't on this morning? They're gone for good?"

Apparently "Bob and Tom" are morning radio DJs out of Indianapolis (I had to ask) and the radio station in Nashville that broadcast their syndicated antics changed format to gospel music only and gave their show the axe. It doesn't count as much of a loss for me because I haven't listened to radio in years and they were on a country station anyway, I'm pretty sure.

I have listened to "morning radio" in the past, especially Howard Stern when he was in DC and later when he was syndicated from New York. I listened to his replacement in DC, a guy who called himself "The Greaseman" and managed to tell the same dirty joke a hundred thousand times until he discovered a racist one which got him fired for telling it. When I got satellite radio I listened to Opie and Anthony for quite a while, when the advertising breaks weren't so brutally often as they are on broadcast radio. I also remember listening to and enjoying the "Don and Mike" show out of DC in the afternoons on occasion. I would consider myself a fan of the medium in the past, but not for quite a while.

Now I occasionally switch to radio when going from CD to AUX on my car stereo and 99 times out of 100 I will hear a commercial. The one other time I always hear the same Bad Company song every time. I have no use for broadcast radio at all anymore. I exclusively listen to books on tape and podcasts. Particularly Adam Carolla, Mark Maron, Jay Mohr and Doug Benson.

What makes me a bad person is that I smiled when I heard that this show that my coworkers obviously enjoyed was going away. Why on earth would that give me any kind of satisfaction? They obviously enjoyed the program. Something about the fact that it was gospel music that replaced them too made me nearly laugh out loud. All I know of them was second hand stories of their antics, which sounded typically "morning zoo" and usually fairly dirty. Was it the irony? Was it pure schadenfreude? Maybe the re-tellings of "Bob and Tom" stories were tedious? I have no idea. I understand why it didn't make me sad, but why did it make me happy?