Technology Quote by Casey Kasum

Kasem is arguing for radio the way a seasoned DJ argues for a good hook: not with theory, but with lived pattern-recognition. The line is built on a repeated prophecy of death that never quite lands. Television was supposed to be the executioner; before that, “talking movies” were. By stacking those failed predictions, he turns panic into punchline and makes endurance feel inevitable.

The subtext is less about radios than about how cultures misread new media. Each technological leap arrives wrapped in a conquest narrative: the new thing will replace the old thing, full stop. Kasem quietly counters with a different model: media ecosystems don’t behave like firing squads; they behave like crowded stages. Radio survives because it does something the shiny replacements can’t replicate as efficiently: it’s intimate, ambient, and portable. It doesn’t demand your eyes. It slips into commutes, kitchens, late-night loneliness. That’s not nostalgia; it’s a format advantage.

Context matters. Kasem wasn’t a professor of communications; he was a voice people invited into their weeks, a curator of mass taste who understood companionship as a technology. When he says radio “keeps getting stronger,” he’s also defending the role of the human mediator in an age of bigger screens and louder spectacle. The statement is optimistic, but it’s not naive: it’s a reminder that “obsolete” often just means “no longer center stage.”