

I think a lot of the job is a hold over from a pre Internet era. Yes, stations do you have to regularly state what channel you’re listening to, but before the Internet DJs provided pretty useful information regarding what was playing. You couldn’t just look up on the fly the lyrics of a song to find out the name or the band, or if they were playing in your area.
DJs used to give listeners that information, and potentially provide additional context or similar bands that would be of interest. It was hard to get that information at the time. I know some relatively young people who still listen to DJ morning shows, but they listen for the skits And humor, not for the music insights. At this point, I don’t think there’s really much need for them, but I imagine nobody wants to be the first to fully get rid of them. I imagine people are upset about this, but I don’t know that they would be any less upset if they just decided to do away with DJs altogether.
Very true. I remember people listening to a local station not because of their music, but they had the best traffic coverage. It was the generic top billboard songs station, so maybe that skewed perception, but plenty of people only tuned in on their way to work for the traffic and would listen to other stations if given the option otherwise. I totally forgot about that.