Nashua Paper Urges No BusRadio

September 16, 2008

EDITORIALS
Published: Tuesday, September 16, 2008

 

BusRadio proposal should be silenced

 

KEY POINTS:

BACKGROUND: The Nashua Board of Education is again considering installing BusRadio on its 86 school buses.

CONCLUSION: Exposing this captive audience to the radio ads that accompany this national programming is not in the best interests of either the district or its students. One of the downsides of settling the contentious Nashua teachers contract earlier this year has finally reared its ugly head.

 

The administration now has enough time on its hands to once again consider installing BusRadio on some or all of the district’s 86 school buses.

We thought that was a bad idea when it first came up in the spring of 2007, and we still believe it’s a bad idea today.

BusRadio Inc., based in Needham, Mass., uses a Wi-Fi network to provide what it describes as "age-appropriate top-40 music" to school districts across the United States.

In a typical hour, students would hear 52 minutes of carefully screened music, four minutes of advertising and four minutes of public safety announcements