It is so easy to hate terrestrial radio these days. No matter how many stations you scan, AM or FM, it’s difficult to find one on which you can land without moments later wanting to take a sledgehammer to the radio. The politics are angry and irrational -- left and right. The music hasn’t changed in 30 years and it seems to repeat every hour. Local news and talk is virtually non-existent. Ditto for humor. The smartest radio guy of the last 20 years, Howard Stern, escaped more than two years ago and is better than ever in the unshackled environs of Sirius Satellite Radio. Who screwed up radio? Will today’s generation of young people even care in a few years, what with the glut of alternatives before them, from satellite and Internet radio to iPods and cell phone broadcasting? I suspect these are just of the few issues I’ll be discussing today with my guest, , author of Right of the Dial: The Rise of Clear Channel and The Fall of Commercial Radio. Alec Foege • • • •