Reply #2: I agree that national broadcasting is the most likely reason for

[Enthusiast]

the loss of regional accents. We now have a more national culture in entertainment. The Southern accent has really been watered down.

When I visited Canada on a fishing trip in the early 1990s the pleasant Canadians said they loved my accent. I had no idea that I had an accent. They said I sounded like country music singer Ferlin Husky. This was news to me because "those people" from Tennessee, Kentucky and the like always sounded so Southern and foreign to me. I bet we, me and you, would be shocked at how we sounded to one another. You would probably sound totally Bostonian to me.