Right now it is very difficult to get confirmed news out of Libya due to the internet and phones being restricted and foreign journalists being kept out. Twitter is alive with reports from Libya, but with all the re-tweeting it’s difficult to following things back to a source and then determine if it’s credible. Earlier […]
Right now there are strong indications that the Libyan government of Muammar Qaddafi may be pulling back. There are reports from Benghazi that government forces have withdrawn and Libyan ambassadors to countries like China and India resigning. The BBC’s Five Live radio service seems to be providing some of the best up-to-the-minute English-language coverage of […]
Radio Netherlands Worldwide today announced that it will be expanding its Arabic broadcasts to cover the protests across the Arab world, including Libya. The broadcasts will primarily be on satellite in Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq where receiving TV and radio broadcasts by satellite is very common. The broadcasts will […]
Much of the news today from Libya is sad, with reports that as many as 200 protesters have been killed by government forces who are using live ammunition–some large caliber–on civilians trying to exercise their human rights to free speech and peaceful protest. However there are also signs that protestors are finding ways to break […]
While I’ve been fixated on the shutdown of college radio station KUSF in my own city of San Francisco, up in Toronto, Canada an equally serious situation is taking place at Ryerson University’s campus-community radio station CKLN. On January 28, 2011, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) revoked CKLN’s license and ordered the station […]
Like lots of folks, I’ve got the jitters about Canada’s impending metered Internet billing system (Usage-Based Billing they call it there), especially when it comes to online radio and music services. Ars Technica has a pretty decent piece about the UBB development, if I say so myself. The Canadian Radio-Telecommunications Commission approved the pay-by-the-gigabyte policy […]
There are two controversies raging in radioland right now over the appropriateness of words broadcast across the airwaves. One of them is playing itself out in Canada; the other in the United States. The Canadian debate involves the word “faggot”; the US involves the articulation of the word “gringo.” Following these discussions, I’m wondering if […]
Xtra, Canada’s Gay/Lesbian news service, has strongly questioned the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council’s decision to declare Dire Straits‘ song ‘Money for Nothing’ “unacceptable for broadcast” over the airwaves. But judging from the reader comments, Gay and Lesbian Canadians are divided on the matter. The song itself is about a crabby home appliance installation guy bitter […]
Yesterday marked the one year anniversary of the devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti, which killed over 200,000 people and left a million homeless. At the time of the quake it became clear that radio was a vital resource for Haitian citizens, as it was often the communication tool used to find survivors and to […]
Although in the United States we are often hard-pressed to find examples of radio drama, over in the U.K. radio listeners have been tuning in to hear “The Archers” for 60 years. The soap opera, which began in January 1951 currently airs 15-minute episodes 6 days a week and is now presumed to be the […]
