FM radio always sounds frenetic, with an increasingly disturbing degree of horror vacui. With the exception of late-breaking reports like fires, murders, and vehicular accidents, AM sounds generally narcoleptic, in spite of its thin veneer of scratches and static. AM radio, after all, has been relegated to a certain function and status. The equation seems to be: FM radio = sosyal = English-speaking jocks + ads in English; AM radio = masa/jologs = Filipino-speaking jocks, although this paradigm is already being threatened by the recent emergence of stations like Love Radio and Energy FM, which have successfully transposed the AM format in FM territory with their own brand of hyperactivity and unprecedented decibel levels. There are more demographic divides: FM is for the young, the hip, and the cosmopolitan. AM is for the old, the probinsiyano. Which probably explains why there are seldom commercials about livestock feed and swine-deworming medicine on 99.5 RT. And the ads heard on AM sound like they've been done on an old cassette tape recorder.

But the difference is this: when you listen to FM, most of the time you want to strangle the DJs, especially when they–in their thick, impregnable American accents– provide expert opinion on...things.�� When you listen to an AM commentator, you want to share a beer with them. It's always preferable to listen to beautifully constructed Tagalog sentences than bwarsh-bwarsh English wherein "like" and "you know" are punctuation marks.

Most people listen to AM radio only when they're threatened by floodwaters and typhoons (As a kid, I had associated Joe Taruc's voice with the notion of classes suspended). What they fail to realize is that AM is more than just sleepy commentators, traffic reports, hysterical religious preachers, and Engelbert Humperdinck classics. AM radio is an aural kaleidoscope no iPod can ever match.

Inquirer columnist Rina Jimenez David was right when she pointed out in a column–a few days after Ondoy–that all you really need in the world is a battery-operated transistor radio. By "transistor," of course, we'd instantly think of AM, where everything still sounds majestic even through cheap, tiny, tinny speakers. And by this means: no techno-house music, no progressive metal, no nothing that you'd put above a dance floor for everyone to groove to.