[LOBO]I’ve been following Adam Carolla since the Doctor Drew Pinsky Loveline days.
Indeed, as a former truck driver I used to schedule loads around catching the show: midnights in 2003 had me picking up loads from angry sleeping chicken farms and so forth. Today I own an unlicensed archive of thousands of hours of the audio.
The fact that his new show –one that six years later I could listen to live locally every weekday- was cancelled as of Friday was frankly heartbreaking.
But there were some cool and redeeming facets to the event.
Firstly, the show wasn’t cancelled due to lack of ratings or the management and wage disputes that are common in the talk radio spectrum. The home station simply caved into the bad economy and went to a fully automated top 40 format. It was a matter of numbers. And Adam could have –as is also common in the talk radio format- spent his last two days on air bashing his soon-to-be-former employer.
He didn’t. He spent the last two shows taking calls from fans, saying goodbye, and trying to get his newly-unemployed crew jobs. He let them read their resumés on air.
But -maybe more importantly- he went on to announce a desire to begin pioneering a uniquely internet-based presence.
This hit me in a weirdly patriotic kind of way. I don’t think we need to go to video stores anymore. Paper is dead. Telephones are obsolete, and above all corporations, special interest groups and marketing executives do not control anything anymore: these economies are entirely self-perpetuating monarchies choking on their own dwindling DNA fumes, and the failure to recognize this is half the reason America is caught in it’s own fiscal quagmire.Since the advent of the internet, we have no business –literally- in these entities anymore.
Already a fan, I’m once again impressed by Adam’s unique insight: I think he represents the finest of the modern day “American Spirit.”
-And I’ll be watching AdamCarolla.com with keen interest.
