Radio Survivor

For the past year we’ve been chronicling the evolution of FCC FREE Radio in San Francisco. Starting out as renegade LPFM community radio broadcasters in 2009, they went Internet-only in May 2010 and are now embarking on a mission of becoming a broader-based Internet radio station and content provider.

When I visited a few weeks back, General Manager John Miller hinted at a deal that was in the works that might be a stepping stone for a much larger audience for FCC FREE Radio.

Well, it turns out that today marks the beginning of the station’s new gig as a content provider for SFStation.com, an online city guide focused on events and attractions in San Francisco. Through its partnership with FCC FREE Radio, SF Station now features a weekly hour-long Internet radio show called SF Station Radio that is made up of music selections and calendar listings for that week. Hosted by a SF Station staff member, SF Station Radio is recorded at FCC FREE Radio’s studio and airs live on Wednesdays from Noon to 1pm. It is also archived on the SF Station website for a week. This week’s episode highlights indie-oriented featured events happening in San Francisco in the next 7 days, as well as music from artists taking part in the Outside Lands music festival.

In addition to facilitating this weekly radio show, FCC Free Radio is also highlighted as the official radio station for the SF Station website, with a link to its “24-hour Program Stream” provided from the SF Station Radio page.

With many websites seeking out audio content, this is an interesting partnership and a creative way to blend two community resources. In a similar vein, the San Francisco Bay Guardian launched its own web radio show in April. Their show (which airs several times a week) features Johnny Angel Wendell and San Francisco Bay Guardian Executive Editor Tim Redmond discussing topics ranging from California politics, to the state of news to local controversies such as whether pet stores should be banned in San Francisco.

If I were anywhere near Detroit this weekend I would grab a seat at the Allied Media Conference. Held at Wayne State University, this is the 12th annual conference put together by Allied Media Projects. Sessions focused on media, technology, community-organizing, social justice, and the DIY ethos all began today. With topics ranging from radical comics to culture jamming to creating gender inclusive online games, it’s sure to be a fun conference full of creative and engaged media fans.

Of interest to me, is that an entire conference track is focused on radio. “Radio Active: From the streets to the airwaves” is being coordinated by Prometheus Radio Project and the Community News Production Institute of People’s Production House.

Prometheus is doing a live radio webstream from the event (9 to 5:30 tomorrow and 10 to 1:30 on Sunday), in case you want to tune in to hear what they’ve got in store. Radio sessions will include “Build a Mini Radio Transmitter,” “Radio as a Tool to Transform, Organize and Build Community,” and live broadcasts. Other radio-related sessions include a discussion about “Open Source Internet Radio,” and “Your Phone is Your Microphone.”

Later in the month, Prometheus will be doing more radio how-to’s in Detroit at the United States Social Forum.

The Knight Foundation has taken a lead in funding grants for promising new ideas for journalism, in particular those that exploit opportunities in digital media and are local in focus. The Knight News Challenge Grant is providing $2.74 million in funding to twelve projects that aim to inform specific geographic communities. The winners were announced at the Future of News and Civic Media conference at MIT and this year two grants are going to radio organizations.

The PRX StoryMarket is a project that allows any person to pitch or help fund the production of a story for a local public radio station. When the amount of money raised for a particular story is sufficient then the local station can hire a professional journalist to produce it. Proposed by PRX CEO Jake Shapiro, The StoryMarket received a $75,000 challenge grant and is built on software developed for a 2008 challenge winner Spot.us, which uses a similar model for online news in four cities, including Los Angeles and Minneaplois. The project PRX is the Public Radio Exchange which is seven year-old online market for public radio content.

Public radio station WBUR in Boston received a $250,000 challenge grant to create a laboratory in a Boston courtroom that aims to establish best practices for digital court reporting. Called Order in the Court 2.0 the project’s courtroom will have a designated blogging area with wi-fi and the ability to stream court proceedings live. The project, headed by WBUR executive editor for new media, John Davidow, will also publish a daily docket on its website and develop a wiki for common legal terms.

Once again, it’s impossible not to notice that the innovation happening in radio is coming from non-commercial, and in this case, public radio. This segment of the radio industry readily embraced the internet while at the same time emphasizing local service. I’m glad to see the Knight Foundation recognize the fruitful potentials in the merger of this old media with new.

The Federal Communications Commission is commissioning nine economic studies on the state of the media industry, and numbers five and six couldn’t come too soon as far as I’m concerned. Here they are:

• Study 5: Quantity of radio news and public affairs programming provided and audience for radio news programming as a function of local market structure. This study will examine provision of radio news and public affairs programming and will examine the impact of local market structure on presence of news formats.  The study may also examine station websites to determine how much news these stations provide.
• Study 6:  Local content on the Internet. The study will examine the availability and usage of local content on the Internet and analyze the impact of local market structure on the availability and usage of local Internet content.  The study shall analyze, at a minimum, the extent to which websites offering local Internet content are affiliated with local radio stations, television stations, newspapers, or other media entities and whether the degree of such affiliation varies across markets with different local market structures.

All the proposed studies are listed at the end of this post. This is part of the agency’s quadrennial review of its media ownership rules.

In all my years of covering the FCC and the Great Media Ownership Debate, one of the things I’ve noted is the lack of up-to-date data on questions like localism. Pro and anti-regulatory groups have been at each other’s throats for years on whether to require more local coverage from radio stations.

Example: this Youtube clip (see above)  of Senator Barbara Boxer’s (D-CA) tense confrontation with then FCC Chair Kevin Martin in 2007 over his handling of a study on local TV ownership patterns. But much of this discussion takes place without any concrete and vetted research on the degree to which radio stations and their Internet portals really serve the public, local coverage-wise. (more…)

The recent earthquakes in Chile and Haiti are a strong reminder about the importance of radio as a communications tool, especially in times of disaster. Haitian radio stations have served to help with rescue efforts and shortwave radio operators in Chile were also instrumental in transmitting tsunami updates and emergency communications.

Along these lines, the organization Interactive Radio for Justice (IRfJ) has been creating radio programs in war-torn regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic in order to help provide information to citizens about their basic human rights. Utilizing local community and Catholic radio stations as their outlets, representatives from Interactive Radio for Justice have created several series of “interactive” radio programs in which listeners can hear citizens asking pressing questions about their legal rights, which are then answered by government officials over the air.

In parts of the world where television, the Internet, and print media are not commonplace, but radios are in nearly every home; radio broadcasts can become a vital educational tool.

Recently I interviewed Wanda Hall, Founder and Director of Interactive Radio for Justice, in order to hear from her the reasons why radio is such a critical tool in her work.

The project began in 2005 in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) with one of the main goals being to “create interactive conversation” between citizens and legal officials. The focus have been on regions where The International Criminal Court has been investigating serious crimes such as genocide and war crimes and the radio programs attempt to begin a dialog in order to educate communities about the justice system.

Luckily for IRFJ, the DRC had an established culture of community radio that could be tapped into for the project. In 2008 they also began work in the Central African Republic where “local radio is not as obvious a tool” according to Wanda. She said that because of this, they have teamed up with religious radio stations affiliated with the Catholic church.

In addition to producing programming, IRFJ also works to provide radios to members of the local communities in order to set up “listening groups.” That way, even if residents don’t have access to a radio, they can go to someone’s home to hear the programming. Group leaders are given radios and they establish a specific time each week that they will open their home to their neighbors in order to listen to IRfJ programming. Wanda told me that in these communities the cost of a radio may be equivalent to a month’s salary, so it’s not unreasonable to expect that it’s a luxury item for many people.

For residents in these regions with low rates of literacy and a strong oral tradition, radios provide the main source for news. Additionally, Wanda mentioned to me that newspapers aren’t as popular and printing presses “ground to a halt” during wartime. She added that it’s a “musical society…and so radio is effective…word of mouth is effective as well.” She pointed out that even though there are Internet cafes, “you simply don’t have electricity in these places” and “there’s not enough bandwidth to surf the Internet.”

In the U.S. it’s easy to take for granted the easy access that we have to newspapers, the Internet, and television for news and information. Wanda reminds us that in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the “educational system is destroyed” and there are literally grenade holes in the walls of the schools. She said that people there wonder who is controlling the media, so she is trying to get voices from the community on the air, asking the pointed questions.

In addition to the radio programs that IRfJ is producing, they also did a project called Music for Justice in which the youth of Ituri were encouraged to write and create songs focused on themes of justice and peace. CDs of the music have been distributed to radio stations in the region and the songs are also played during IRfJ programming. The music was recorded in a number of languages and spans a range of genres including pop, rap, and traditional Congolese music.  Tracks can also be heard and downloaded from the IRFJ website.

The IRFJ radio programs (which can be heard on their website) tackle a range of topics, covering listener questions about laws, women’s rights, victimization, and “Rights and Legal Recourse on the Road.” Many of the questions are disturbing in that the abuses that these citizens have suffered are horrific, such as witnessing rapes and murders of family members during wartime. Even though the pain of these crimes cannot be erased, it’s reassuring that these radio programs are both giving a voice to victims and providing resources and education about their rights so that some form of justice may be served.

As someone who dislikes long commercial breaks and hearing the same songs over and over on the radio, I’ve always had an interest in finding alternative ways to discover new music. Since it has now been a few years since I began this quest, I’ve decided to list some possible alternatives to “mainstream” radio (in no particular order).

Internet Radio

I absolutely love the concept of Internet radio, although my experience has admittedly been limited to Pandora Radio and Last.fm.  Summarized, they’re customizable radio with limited commercials (that you can mute if you feel the need). Awesome, yes?

Since I’m studying multiple languages for graduate school, I’m constantly searching for what I consider to be “good” music from other countries in an attempt to assist with my learning process by increasing my exposure. To test the effectiveness of these websites to help with this goal, I searched both websites for three different bands that perform in three different languages: a Japanese metal band named Dir en Grey, a German band named Wir sind Helden (We Are Heroes), and a French artist named Yelle.

I was thoroughly impressed by the fact that Last.fm not only had each group that I searched for but also managed to remain in the same genre and, almost always, the same language, including a limited amount of similar music in English. Pandora appears to be less conducive to expanding one’s international musical horizons, failing to provide any music for Wir Sind Helden and initially returning only English results.

That said, here are some general notes: I like that Last.fm provides you with a list of recent songs and radio stations while Pandora only allows you to look at recently played songs for a currently playing radio station (the history is cleared if you switch). I was  surprised to discover that Last.fm allows you to maintain a “library” of tracks that you’ve listened to, although I suppose the trade off is that users are unable to pause (as far as I can tell) songs (the alternative is to leave the radio station) and can only structure their stations around entire bands as opposed to both songs and bands (Pandora allows both options). I’m more familiar with Pandora, which is probably why I prefer its layout. I also like having the option of structuring a station around a song as opposed to an entire band because occasionally you stumble upon those amazing songs from, unfortunately, horrible albums that you really don’t need to subject your ears to again (Ex: Matt and Kim’s “Daylight” and most music from the ’80s, like this). (more…)

The trend in broadcast radio of back- and front-announcing, naming the title and artist of a track before or after playing it on the airwaves, has historically been a source for controversy due to its heavy involvement with issues of sponsorship identification and racketeering.

Is it that record labels are lobbying radio stations to play their songs, and guarantee their back or front-announcement?  Or are radio stations shamelessly seeking payment from record labels for guaranteed back-announcing? Short answer: it’s both. And the result? The back-announcing of some songs and not of others.

In the mid 1990s the deregulation brought about by The Telecommunications Act of 1996 initiated several significant changes in broadcast radio, including the lifting station ownership restrictions. This led to the emergence of a few dominant multi-station broadcasting companies in lieu of more independent localized stations and fundamentally changed the way radio stations operated. Like most businesses bought out by big companies, these stations more often than not saw their business operations being outsourced, consolidated and homogenously reproduced with little localized personalization, frequently in the arena of playlist compilation. (more…)

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.

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.

One of the most satisfying aspects of putting together our review of the decade’s most important radio trends was the number of comments we received. It appears we touched a nerve or two. And while not everyone agreed with our arguments or conclusions, we did get some thought provoking responses.

Seeing as how we like to encourage some rousing debate about radio, with this post I’d like to highlight a few of them.

Responding to #11, cash-strapped schools turn their backs on college radio, Seth Thornberry points out:

In another example of the spirit of independent radio, the DJs from KTXT got together and created The Llano Idea which has kept up the volunteer run radio (online, at least).

In response to #6, HD Radio launches, but who listens? Who cares? BrianK finds some hope for the service:

Ford announced today that HD Radio is factory installed in their autos and the at least 4X digital power increase for HD radio is on the cusp of being approved which will give listeners stereo reception upto twice as far as traditional auto FM receivers in noise-free and to my ears much better high frequency response

But Greg begs to differ, noting that,

Ford has been announcing that it would add HD Radio since 2007, but it never materialized. Also, Ford is an investor in iBiquity. … BMW even has an HD Radio trouble-shooting guide, and there are nothing but complaints about HD Radio in BMW Forums, so I’m guessing that it will be the same situation with Ford.

And Robert D Young Jr quips:

PS. just one little correction: CD quality is really “seedy” quality.

(more…)