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The Nations Speak.

© Allan Lee

One of the great joys of the Internet is it extends your radio dial to cover the entire world. Writing this from New Zealand, which is a long way from anywhere, until the advent of the World Wide Web, we could only listen to local stations. Even Australia - a mere two hours away by plane - was beyond the reach of most people's transistors. Perhaps it's not surprising that New Zealand has one of the highest numbers of radio stations per capita in the world.

But as I write this, I am listening to BBC Radio 4 from the United Kingdom. I am, you see, a speech radio junkie. Yes, I listen to Top 40 stations just like everyone else, but I really love speech radio. Documentaries. Interviews. Phone-ins. Plays, stories, quiz shows, comedies. I love them all. And now, I can have them.

Once upon a time, most radio was speech radio. Possibly because AM transmissions made music sound muddy, the vast majority of radio was speech based. The Golden Age of Wireless, as they called it (but not at the time), consisted mostly of talking. I would hazard a guess, though I have nothing but instinct to support my theory, that most people today listening to radio stations on the web are listening to speech radio. I mean, why would you bother to listen via the Internet to an Easy Listening station in Boulder, Colorado to hear Celene Dion, Whitney Houston and the rest when you can hear exactly the same tracks without all that digital 'swooshing' on your local Easy Listening station. On the other hand, if I want to listen to, say acerbic comments on just about everything, I would tune in to New York's WOR talk radio station. Speech sounds pretty darn good, even through a 14.4K modem on a RealAudio or Windows Media Player.

Much of talk radio is based around a news format, because news is constantly changing. It's what people want to listen to, and what they want to talk about. Listening to Talk Radio 970 WFLA in Tampa, Florida, can be an entertaining glimpse of a slice of Florida life. Or find out what the citizens of Phoenix, Arizona make of the world they live in at KTAR Newsradio.

If you want a more serious take on news radio, the BBC's World Service carries some extraordinarily serious news programmes which you can access at their site .