Time & Perspective Quote by Casey Kasem

Radio’s great trick has always been its ability to look obsolete while quietly cashing checks, and Casey Kasem is basically giving the medium its victory lap. The line is pitched like calm industry common sense, but the subtext is defensive: people keep predicting radio’s death, and the numbers keep refusing to cooperate. That opening, “As you know,” isn’t just conversational; it’s a rhetorical move that recruits the audience into an insider consensus. If you already “know” the facts, then the conclusion isn’t an argument, it’s a shared reality.

The slyest detail is the nod to “Dot-Com advertisers.” Read in context of the late-1990s/early-2000s boom-and-bust, it’s a flex: even the new economy, the one supposedly built to replace old media, still had to buy time on the old dial to reach mass listeners. Kasem frames that as proof of durability, but you can hear the cultural anxiety underneath: radio isn’t trying to be the future; it’s trying to remain unavoidable.

Calling radio “a survivor” is intentionally human. It turns a business story (revenue trends) into a character story (resilience), which is classic Kasem: the warm narrator who sells continuity. Coming from an actor best known for guiding audiences through pop rankings, the statement carries a DJ’s worldview: formats change, fads burn out, the audience stays. The medium endures by being ambient, local, and cheap to buy into - less glamorous than the internet, more dependable than it wants to admit.