Radio Survivor

It was some pretty exciting news from the FCC on Tuesday, when they announced the list of 59 organizations who won the non-commercial educational radio license lottery. Although I was thrilled for some of the winners, as a college radio observer, I was saddened and surprised to see that very few colleges or educational institutions applied for these coveted licenses.

As Paul reported on Wednesday, the largest percentage of new licenses went to religious groups (at least 17), whereas only a handful were awarded to educational institutions (colleges, primary or secondary schools). In some cases college radio applicants lost the race against religious groups due to the complex point system (looking at local ownership, population served, etc.) that the FCC uses in its decision-making.

Scanning through the FCC’s grid of groups who applied and won, it’s often quite difficult to figure out which are actually affiliated with educational institutions. For example, Central Florida Educational Foundation (which won a new license) operates a whole network of 10 non-commercial Christian radio stations in Florida.

A closer look at the 7 winners in the college/primary/secondary school category reveals that only a few are likely to have any sort of student involvement in the resulting radio stations. Two of the groups already run networks of religious stations, one runs a LPFM community station, and another runs a public radio station. Of the remaining three institutions, one has both public and student radio stations, another has a broadcasting program, yet no station, and a third currently owns the license for a student station.

So, the question from me is, why didn’t more colleges/universities/high schools go for it back in 2007 and apply for these new radio licenses? It’s clear that religious groups are organized and have the funding to pursue radio expansion, but it saddens me that college radio for the most part sat on the sidelines while these licenses were doled out to groups with a very different take on educational radio. The Future of Music Coalition has a great fact sheet that gives a bit of perspective on the process for obtaining these licenses and it’s a good reminder that financial considerations are probably a key reason why college stations might have been scared off from applying.

Here are the college radio groups who won: (more…)

The FCC opened up an important licensing window for new noncommercial FM stations in 2007, announcing the first round of license winners in 2008. However another 59 licenses remained up in the air due to the Commission needing to pick a winner amongst competing applications. The FCC announced those winners on Tuesday [PDF].

The Commission uses a point system to judge which group should receive a noncommercial FM license amongst multiple competitors. The system awards points with preference to candidates that are locally headquartered with an “established” presence, do not have a controlling interest in another nearby station and which propose to serve the largest number of people.

For the first time the FCC had to contend with applicants who are currently running low-power stations. Because the operators of LPFM stations cannot also operate full-power stations, the Commission will require these operators to give up their LPFM licenses before signing on with their full-power stations. In order to make sure their communities are not deprived of service any longer than necessary the Commission is allowing the LPFM stations to petition to maintain broadcasts until they are ready to begin test broadcasts with their full-power stations.

A total of nine LPFM station operators were in competition for licenses nationwide, and of these five won. Two winners are stations that have been operating as traditional community radio stations: Radio Free Moscow in Moscow, Idaho and Berkshire Community Radio in Great Barrington, MA.

Radio Free Moscow (RFM) edged out Fire Media Corporation and Country Roots Preservation Group based upon RFM demonstrating that it is an “established local applicant,” which neither of the other contenders claimed. Berkshire Community Radio (BCR) won out over the University of Massachusetts and Home Improvement Ministries. BCR and UMass both scored the same number of points, which required the FCC to use “tie breaker” criteria. The first tie-breaker criterion prefers the organization that has fewer licenses in other communities. UMass operates WBCR in Boston, while BCR, as a LPFM, operates no other, which resulted in BCR winning this competition.

Amongst the rest of the licensees [PDF], seventeen appear to be obviously religious groups, three are universities or colleges, two are primary or secondary schools, two are established public broadcasters and one is a Native American group. The nature or affiliation of the other licensees can’t be easily discerned from their names.

These awards are considered tentative because will be an opportunity for the filing of petitions to deny a license to any of the winners. However, in practice, such denials rarely occur.

So, I guess now it’s my turn. What is Radio Survivor (the blog)? It’s all about the idea that radio is a hardy, useful, practical and proven medium with a lot of life left in it. A Radio Survivor (the person) is someone who continues to believe in the medium. A Radio Survivor is not a luddite clinging to her transistor radio while eschewing iPhones and netbooks, nor is he a retro fetishist stuck in the past. Rather, a Radio Survivor recognizes the simple power inherent in broadcast audio, which can be done inexpensively and bring people together in a community.

I’ve been a radio broadcaster working in college, community and public radio since 1989, with just one year off from May 1993 to May 1994. And while I’ve had some sporadic work in radio, most recently as a college station adviser, as Matthew emphasizes, my approach is more as a listener and enthusiast rather than an industry insider. Much of what is written about radio is for the industry insider, and is therefore concerned more with profits, ratings and staffing changes than with the place of the medium in our society and everyday lives. Also often missing from insider coverage is critical analysis that challenges the business orthodoxy.

I write for Radio Survivor because I wish to challenge myself and others to consider what radio can be, not just be content or discontented with how it is. We can recognize the damage wrought by consolidation without giving in and leaving the medium for dead. We can highlight the stations and places where innovation is happening and 21st century is in the making. We can encourage new or lost listeners to give radio a new chance.

Radio, as a medium, has a great chance to survive because of the internet, iPods and mobile phones, not in spite of them. Just because Clear Channel and its mostly bankrupt consolidating brethren were too busy buying up stations, firing staff and elminating local service to notice the internet revolution doesn’t mean that the internet has to kill radio. I believe that there is still an audience that pines for local news, information and culture that is still hard to find on the internet, that doesn’t require a monthly broadband bill or data package and is there in the car, in the home or a hundred miles away from the nearest wi-fi hotspot. And as internet access becomes more ubiquitous and less costly radio can still be a complementary part of our information environment.

That’s Radio Surviving.

As we wrote last week, radio has played a vital communications role in Haiti in the weeks following its devastating earthquake last month. But what we didn’t cover in that story is the sad state of some Haitian community radio stations which have suffered major damage to buildings and equipment.

According to a series of articles on the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) blog, community radio plays an important educational role for Haitian citizens. By broadcasting native language programming it is serving a rural population in which 80% of homes are said to contain radios.

A post from last week reports that,

“In the western and southeastern parts of the country, at least 16 stations are facing serious problems that have suspended their broadcasts, Sony Esteus, executive director of SAKS, a local organization of community radio stations, told CPJ. The earthquake obliterated SAKS’ office in the Bourdon neighborhood, east of Port-au-Prince.”

In a post this week, CPJ shares some video of the destruction at the office of community radio organization SAKS, as well as footage from a destroyed community radio station in Fondwa.

Take a look at CPJ’s entire blog series on Haiti to find additional stories about the role that radio is playing during this crisis and to learn about the state of several other radio stations.

Federally recognized Native American Tribes and Alaska Native Villages who apply for AM or FM radio stations will get “Tribal Priority” status, thanks to an FCC decision released today. Tribal Priority will give precedence to their applications or to companies controlled by tribes that want to set up stations intended to serve tribal land areas.

“More tribally-owned stations will mean new opportunities for these rural communities,” predicted FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, who supported the Order, “economic advancement from construction activity to erect broadcast facilities; advertisements for goods and services geared especially to tribal audiences and markets; career and employment opportunities in media-related fields; outlets for the distribution of diverse cultural programming and viewpoints, as well as public safety information for tribal lands. This initiative goes to the heart of localism.”

There are about 14,000 radio stations in the  United States, and 41 are licensed to federal recognized tribes. That’s less than a third of one percent of the total. To get technical, the FCC is giving Native Americans “Section 307(b) priority,” that being the language in the Communications Act that requires the Commission to “make such distribution of licenses, frequencies, hours of operation, and of power among the several States and communities as to provide a fair, efficient, and equitable distribution of radio service to each of the same.”

The FCC is adding some caveats to this windfall. Station owners who get Section 307(b) priority status won’t be able to downgrade their service level. But the agency is also looking into giving Native  American applicants extra bidding credits when they apply for stations.

The discussion leading up to this decision was somewhat contentious, with various groups, including the Catholic Radio Association, charging that Tribal Priority would represent an unfair or even race/identity based form of preference. But Native Public Media, which advocates for Native Americans, noted that the policy would not run afoul of various affirmative action standards, because Native Americans are classified “not as a discrete racial group, but, rather, as members of quasi-sovereign tribal entities whose lives and activities are governed by the [Bureau of Indian Affairs] in a unique fashion.”

Looks like that logic won the FCC over. “Tribes are uniquely situated to provide programming meeting their members’ needs,” the Order notes.  “The existence of a non-tribal commercial station or stations at a community located on tribal lands should not, in our view, preclude the establishment of a first local transmission service owned by a Tribe or Tribes.”

In January of 2000 struggles over the management of the Pacifica Foundation were at a fever pitch. As the owner of five major community radio stations in New York, LA, Berkeley, Houston and Washington DC, as well as the national Pacifica Network, the Pacifica National Board and its executive director were accused of orchestrating a corporate-style consolidation of power and censoring on-air content (for more on that read RadioSurvivor Matthew Lasar’s Uneasy Listening: Pacifica Radio’s Civil War). It was this latter charge that prompted a strike by the group of freelance reporters who contributed to the daily half-hour syndicated Pacifica Network News (PNN). Shortly thereafter the reporters formed a collective to produce their own daily news program, Free Speech Radio News (FSRN).

The station where I volunteered then, WEFT, picked up the program almost immediately, replacing PNN in its schedule, as did a bevy of other community stations. These decisions were driven as much by conflicts between affiliates and the Pacifica Network as they were by solidarity with the striking reporters.

FSRN is my #1 radio program because I have deep respect for the integrity of the organization and the program itself. I’ve been listening since the very start, and even then it showed itself to be very different from any other radio news program in the US. Operating as a worker-run collective, FSRN features reporters from all over the world, many of them reporting on events in their home towns, states and countries. As a result on any given edition of FSRN you will hear a diversity of voices from people of a wide range of backgrounds that stands in contrast to virtually any other radio news program. You will also gain a perspective that differs from that of an American reporter who parachuted into a crisis zone, may not speak the local language, and is otherwise separated from the local people except for those hours when s/he’s actually on the ground.

Showing its roots in the Pacifica Network, FSRN carries forward with a social justice mission, focusing on stories about people and issues that are largely left out of the mainstream news–whether its CNN, FOX or NPR. When reporting on national or global events that are also covered in the mainstream news, FSRN makes an effort to seek out unheard perspectives. For instance, this past week the program featured reports about residents living outside Port Au Prince in Haiti who are receiving less aid than those in the capital, and about activists’ expectations for the president’s State of the Union address.

The strike that created FSRN ended in March 2002 when the program joined the Pacifica Network, gaining both funding and better distribution via Pacifica’s satellite network. That happened shortly after Pacifica pulled the plug on its own PNN. Since then FSRN has continued to bring well-reported truly alternative radio news to 104 noncommercial community and college radio stations.

In 2008 the financially strapped Pacifica drastically reduced its financial support of FSRN, forcing FSRN to rely more heavily on listener donations. That the program has been able to survive is a testament to the resolve of the reporters and the great value its listeners place on this one-of-a-kind enterprise.

If you’ve never heard Free Speech Radio News I strongly encourage you to find it on a local station or listen online.

Every Thursday night I drive home from Santa Cruz, where I teach at the University of California campus situated in that fair city. Soon as 8 pm comes around, I tune into KPFA to listen to the Bonnie Simmons / Derk Richardson music show, which I absolutely love.

To be accurate, they’re actually two separate shows, but I experience them as one. Folk rock, hard rock, classic rock, R&B, lesbo-womyn’s-punk-crossover-wuddever rock, just folk, ethnic,  plus wuddever by itself—they play it all. Or, to be more accurate, they play the good stuff. And it is so good. Trust me on this. I don’t even listen to rock and roll and I listen to them religiously, because they’ve got that mysterious, unexplainable thing called great taste in music.

First comes Bonnie Simmons. Here’s the first five songs of a recent Bonnie playlist:

Elvis Costello	River in Reverse
jeb loy nichols	as the rain
eric bibb	flood water
joss stone	the chokin kind
sam phillips	same rain

I mean, who can argue with this? For two hours it’s like an alternate universe where nothing ever sucks. How does Simmons do it? Years of experience in the music biz, going back to the free form radio days: music director at KSAN, promoter for Prince and Dire Straights, deejay at KFOG, LIVE 105, and KOFY. Plus she managed Cake for eight years and currently hustles for Noe Venable and Etienne de Rocher. (more…)

One of terrestrial radio’s many benefits is that is has the capacity to be a resource for the local listening community. Since in recent years there has been less and less local content on commercial stations, there’s a great opportunity for college and community radio stations to put even more emphasis on the needs of the listening audience in one’s backyard.

My all-time favorite local radio show is on the community radio station KZYX in Philo, California. “Trading Time” is call-in swap show (airing every Saturday morning from 11am to noon) that allows people in Mendocino County to advertise goods for sale, rides needed, or items that they are looking for. It’s like a community bulletin board on the radio (or a live version of Craigslist).

The folksy hosts of “Trading Time” introduce callers, repeat details about the various items for sale, and read off emails and snail mail-delivered listings that have come in from other neighbors. Although on the surface listening to a bunch of people calling in with items to sell or trade might sound mundane, there’s something about the show that is riveting. It provides a real slice of life for the local community and you get to hear a cross-section of folks sharing news of what their current list of cast-offs might be.

Someone might call in offering an old truck. Another caller could be seeking a ride to San Francisco. And yet another might be looking for a couch. In addition to calling in live during the show, members of the community can also submit their listings of items they’d like to buy, sell, trade or barter to the station by snail mail or by using an online submission form.

If you don’t live near Philo, similar shows air all over the country, including the following:

KSCJ 1360 AM in Sioux City, Iowa:  KSCJ Swap Shop is on the air Saturdays and Sundays

WJXR 92.1 FM in Jacksonville, Florida : Swap Shop airs Monday through Saturday mornings

Mid Kansas Radio in McPherson, Kansas: Swap Shop airs daily. You can also check out some of the daily listings on their website. Today they’ve got free puppies and someone is looking for a lava lamp.

WGNS Talk Radio in Murfreesboro, Tennessee : Swap ‘n Shop has been on the air since 1947! Some of the latest listings include hay, pit bull puppies, and a “wheel barrel” for sale and someone who is looking for help fixing their “fridge.”

KGAS in Carthage, Texas: KGAS Radio Swap Shop is on the air weekday mornings. Callers can list up to 4 items in 30 seconds. No firearms allowed and only clean and sanitized mattresses.

Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez’s radio/TV program Democracy Now! is, without question, the most successful media vehicle in the history of the United States Left. Launched at Pacifica station WBAI-FM in New York City in the mid-1990s, it is now an independent venture, subscribed to by over 800 radio, TV, and Internet stations around the world. From the perspective of this media historian, Democracy Now! exceeds all previous attempts to spread an explicitly social justice oriented message via broadcast and/or print. No prior effort, starting with the The Masses at the beginning of the  20th century,  has ever come so far in terms of influence and reach.

I listen to Democracy Now!’s one hour broadcast on a regular basis because it is fast paced and timely, racing to wherever the action is—Haiti, Copenhagen, Washington, D.C, or Honduras. I don’t always agree with the program’s perspective, but I appreciate the effort DN makes to host debates and discussions within the Left about how to move forward, such as its recent debate about how to respond to the Obama adminstration’s health care initiative. The vast majority of community radio style public affairs programs, within and beyond Pacifica, simply ignore these disagreements and tout one line or another, as if the rest of the world didn’t exist. DN has far outpaced those efforts in part because of its willingness to embrace a broader perspective.

Here is some of what I wrote about Democracy Now! in my second book on Pacifica, Uneasy Listening: Pacifica Radio’s Civil War.

When she chanced upon WBAI in New York, Amy Goodman had just graduated from Harvard College and returned to the city. She had been raised in Bay Shore, Long Island, by a family of activists; her mother had spent much of the 1980s working for the Nuclear Weapons Freeze. Her father, an ophthalmologist, had been a civil rights advocate in the 1960s, taking a stand for school integration in a predominantly white suburb.

“I would go to the night meetings,” Goodman later recalled. “A thousand people would be screaming, and I would watch him stand his ground. There were death threats, but he just went on. I think that very much shaped my feeling about what was just in the world.” Now out of school and on her own, she had just finished a series of articles for Ralph Nader and Alan Nairn’s Multinational Monitor on Depo-Provera, the controversial birth-control shot. Goodman was about to enroll in Hunter College for graduate classes in biochemistry when a course on radio production caught her eye. WBAI’s Andrew Phillips taught the class. At the time Phillips hosted a show called “Investigations,” a program dedicated to what radio producers call “actuality” – the sounds of people talking and doing things on tape, speeches, demonstrations, street interviews. Goodman sat in on the first lecture, then talked with Phillips afterwards. The latter knew a true believer when he saw one. He asked her if she wanted to apprentice for him at WBAI. She protested that she had no radio experience. “That’s fine,” Phillips replied. That evening the two walked the mile from Hunter on the East Side to WBAI’s West Side headquarters. Phillips put his new student to work editing tapes for an upcoming program on the fortieth anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. “And I never left,” Goodman later explained. (more…)

Late night has always been a special time for radio, ever since station owners decided not to turn off the transmitter at midnight. Now that it’s no longer necessary to have a live human being operating the station during all the hours it’s on air, commercial late night radio is mostly a bland mash of automated music, syndicated programming or Coast to Coast AM. But late night continues to be a truly sacred time in the noncommercial band, especially on college and community radio. As long as there are sleepless, nocturnal, caffeine-fueled college students and volunteers willing to stay up all night in sacrifice to the radio gods, the overnight hours will be DMZ of truly free form radio born of inspiration and insomnia, where nearly all of the normal rules of proper radio can be safely ignored until 6 AM.

While most college and community stations have their own local variety of late night brilliance, my favorite example of the species is on community radio WEFT in the college towns of Champaign-Urbana, IL, home of the University of Illinois. Broadcasting from storefront studios in Downtown Champaign, I spent fourteen years volunteer at WEFT and avoiding earning degrees in graduate school. In those years it was my distinct honor and privilege to listen to, and often participate in WEFT’s longest running program, Incoming Wounded.

Hosted by Edlee B’n Hadd (a/k/a Ed Hadley) since sometime in the 1980s, Incoming Wounded takes over the airwaves every Saturday night at midnight to bring a continuous wash of sounds to the night owls of East-Central Illinois. Ostensibly Incoming Wounded is a show that features ambient, electronic and experimental music. But that’s like saying Monty Python’s and the Holy Grail is a movie about some guys searching for a cup.

Beginning each week with his introductory collage of weather-radio reports, the sound of rain and other found sounds, Edlee never lets silence get a toe-hold over the course of the next four to six hours. Yes, he does play recorded music and CDs, but they just function as the foundation for the host’s active imagination and assorted sound processors, electronic toys, homemade musical instruments and found sounds. These external stimuli all serve as inspiration for an improvised story, monologue or sequence of mouth sounds turned musical through Edlee’s beloved Casio VA-10.
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