I am failing to see the attractiveness of monitoring McDonalds or Wendy's drive thru windows. Am I missing something here? I find public service monitoring quite sufficient for my curiosity. But what do I know?
I used to wonder the same thing. I realized though that a LOT of people listen to them as is evident by the number of questions that pop up just on this site asking about it.
So about 7 years ago I started plugging in business freqs in my scanner and just like monitoring public safety, it is boring as heck for hours on end until that one exciting or funny thing happens. The difference in monitoring public safety is that most of them know people are out there listening so it is more likely for something exciting to happen than something funny. On business (including fast food) they don't normally know that anyone can hear them so it's more likely to hear something funny than exciting.
But as Marshall alluded to, just about anything that can be monitored has it's merits and niche listening audience. I listen to a little bit of everything from Mil Air to MacDonald's and everything in between and normally can find something on the scanner that interest me. Unlike the hundreds of channels of television that I have at my disposal.
Draf