We briefly return to the Great Car Talk Debate in this post. I lean towards the argument that public radio stations shouldn’t recycle old editions of the popular show, now that it has ceased new broadcasts. Radio Survivor’s Paul Riismandel put it very well in his commentary supporting Ira Glass’s objection to the idea. “I […]
This American Life creator Ira Glass, has gone on public record in the public broadcasting journal Current declaring that stations should drop Car Talk when hosts Click and Clack retire this fall and the show goes into reruns. Or, at the very least, Glass thinks stations should push the show into late night, moving out […]
Car Talk is certainly one of the most popular, in addition to long-running, syndicated public radio programs in the US. Last week the hosts, Tom and Ray Magliozzi, announced that they will retire from the show in the fall, although the program will continue on by reairing segments combined from the 1200 episodes in the […]
I recently rediscovered a National Public Radio (NPR) article that addressed a 2014 study by the National Science Foundation (NSF) on ‘Public Attitudes and Understanding’ of ‘Science and Technology’ in which only 74% of those surveyed thought that the Earth orbits the Sun. To rephrase and reframe that statement, that’s approximately 26% of the population of the United […]
The New York Times has a nice feature story on the latest wave of Low Power FM radio stations sweeping the country, thanks to the Federal Communications Commission’s licensing spree of 2014 through this year. Authored by Brett Sokol, it surveys LPFMs from Brooklyn to Los Angeles. The piece even quotes little old me saying something. To […]
For the last six months the community around struggling community/public radio station KUSP in Santa Cruz, California has been rethinking itself in terms of trees. Earlier this year the signal posited a host of models, among them scenarios dubbed “fig” (news), “walnut” (BBC), and “maple” (NPR on the hour). But in the end, after shedding its […]
Chicago’s public radio station WBEZ quietly dropped the syndicated Smiley and West program from its Sunday line-up at the end of September. This stands in contrast to the station’s decision to drop Car Talk reruns from its Saturday line-up, which management communicated in an email to donor members explaining the decision and soliciting feedback (full […]
August 13 of this year marked the fifth anniversary of podcasting. On that date in 2004 former MTV VJ Adam Curry began his Daily Source Code podcast, ushering the term into the popular consciousness. Like so many innovative ideas, podcasting is quite simple. It’s not like there weren’t online radio programs prior to 2004. The […]
Clear Channel, Cumulus and their commercial radio brethren are not the only ones facing economic hard times right now. While public radio in general may be doing better, it’s not necessarily the case for individual stations. The most recent example is Southampton, NY’s WLIU which is being put up for sale by Long Island University […]
