A listener question we could not resist
Someone asked why the station says the time so often. The answer turned out to be more interesting than expected.
A listener wrote in to ask why we say the time so often. It is a fair question. Every phone in Taiwan knows the time, and knows it better than we do.
The honest answer is that radio has always been a clock. Before it was anything else it was the thing that told a household when to leave. That habit outlived its necessity, but it turns out to be useful in ways nobody designed: it tells you the station is live, that somebody is in the building, and that what you are hearing is happening now rather than an hour ago.
There is a practical reason too. A great many people listen while driving, cooking or halfway out of a door, with both hands busy and no screen within reach. For them a time check is not decoration.
So it stays. Keep the questions coming — they are more interesting than most of the things we plan to talk about.
