I wouldn’t have bought the radio if I knew it actually worked. It was a gorgeous old thing, all curves and panels, like a cathedral window. It caught my eye in the antique stores window, brass knobs glinting atop elegantly carved wood.

I immediately had plans to gut it and install Bluetooth speakers. All the classiness, with none of the fuss, I thought. Certainly the price and the handwritten “sold as-is” warning on the tag made me think it couldn’t have any functional value.

I was surprised when the storekeeper picked it out of the display and a new power cord uncoiled from beneath it, bright white in contrast to the grainy wood of the radio. Someone must have gone to some effort to get this radio working. I remarked as much to the storekeeper, but was meet with a shrug and asked if I needed a box.

By the time I got home, I was excited to try it out. I hadn’t listed to the radio since my parents used to drive me to school. I now had no need (or money) for a car, and while I thought that there must be an app for the radio, it didn’t have the same novelty.

It took me an embarrassing ten minutes and a resigned web search before I found out how to turn the radio on. I was half expecting voices from its apparent era: fast talking radio hosts, smoking between reading ads for baby morphine and housewife amphetamines. But it was a disappointingly cheerful man giving the weather report. It wasn’t even right. He said that the rain was expected to continue until Tuesday – it hadn’t rained for weeks.

I turned it on again the next day. My phone was charging and I needed some distraction while I did the dishes. It was only because my hands were wet that I didn’t change the channel when the news came on. I really didn’t want a reminder that other people were suffering when I was barely ignoring my own problems.

It was something small at first. A country called something it hadn’t been called in decades, or the name of a politician I was sure retired after a recent scandal. Something that gnawed at the edges of my apathy. But, again, it was the weather that made me take note. The rain was now expected to last until Thursday and occupants were warned that it was expected to become acidic by tomorrow, so please take usual precautions.

The signoff came so quickly that I was left wondering if it was a joke when a song came on. I looked out at the dappled blue sky, then down at the half-full sink. A smarter person probably would have figured out the situation at that point, but the dishes still needed doing and I liked that song. It was still fairly new, but I’d listened to it enough that I found myself singing along. I stumbled at some of the words in the chorus, then the next verse lost me completely.

Drying one hand, I turned the knob to find another channel. I assumed the unfamiliar version of the song was a made-for-radio version, and the differences really bothered me.

The next channel was quiet. If the static between channels hadn’t stopped, I would have gone past it. But I could only barely hear a voice. I turned up the volume and was meet with a monotonous voice reading numbers.

I did not enjoy that channel and decided to switch back and just wait out the inferior cover.

Of course, I forgot to turn the volume back down, so the static was almost deafening. I panicked and desperately tried to find the channel, rather than simply turning the radio down. I also slapped a sodden hand over my ear, so I really didn’t look dignified from any angle. Fortunately I found the first channel again and turned the volume down.

As I returned to the sink, I tried to ignore the changes to the song and just enjoy the melody. The base of it was the same, after all. It was just new lyrics.

Still, it was hard to ignore that the last verse was missing entirely. The singer holds an impressively long note near the end, that I like to try to copy, until my voice croaks out halfway. Instead, the song continued voiceless a little past the last chorus, then faded away. The radio host then came back, dedicating the song to the memory of its late singer, who died before the album was released, six months ago.

The singer that my friend saw in concert last week.

In the end, it wasn’t politics or weather or geography that tipped me off. It was a top 50 billboard artist. But that’s when I knew something was very wrong with my radio.

Part 2: https://sketchedtext.com/2023/10/21/the-broadcast-part-2/