USC to Purchase KCNL in San Jose for $7.5 million to Expand KDFC’s Classical Radio Coverage
It was announced today that Principle Broadcasting Network, the owner of San Jose-area commercial radio station KCNL 104.9 FM, has submitted paperwork to the FCC in order to sell the station to University of Southern California (USC) for $7.5 million for use in its network of classical radio stations. Currently KCNL airs a Spanish-language talk […]
Internet radio usage way up, driven by smartphone rush
Edison Media reports a big surge in Internet radio listening. And mind you, it’s not just the boring old predictable annual uptick in Internet radio listening that we’ve all become accustomed to hearing about. This uptick is serious, Edison insists. The weekly usage of online terrestrial radio streams and Pandora “pure play” has jumped from […]
HTC vying to rival Apple for mobile music with higher fidelity
Last week rumors emerged that smartphone manufacturer HTC is in talks to buy MOG, which is sort of the also-ran online music service after Spotify, Pandora, Rhapsody and Rdio. However, MOG is frequently considered having the highest fidelity of these services. That aspect would appear to be the most attractive to HTC which owns a […]
Will New Zealand get satellite radio?
North Americans can be accused of taking our selection of radio broadcasting for granted. Sure, I’ll be amongst the first to complain about the homogenizing effect consolidation has had on commercial radio. Yet even small cities in the US and Canada have a wide variety of commercial, college, non-commercial and public stations to choose from. […]
Limbaugh continues to bleed advertisers, Media Matters appeals directly to his listeners
On Sunday the Wisconsin-based bath fixture company Kohler announced that it had pulled all of its advertising from the Rush Limbaugh show. This comes almost a month into the fallout from Limbaugh’s on air attack of Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke, whom he called a “slut,” amongst other names, for voicing her support for private […]
Did Ralph the Talking Computer do a Mike Daisey on Harry Shearer?
Following a monologue on the latest developments in Afghanistan and Iran, Harry Shearer had his semi-regular guest, Ralph the Talking Computer, on the March 25 edition of his podcast: Le Show. Looks like Harry thought that he and Ralph needed to talk about journalistic integrity (the chat starts around 10 minutes into the program). One […]
Falling, falling cats, and Radiolab Season 8, Episode 3
A remarkable moment in the annals of cats brought me to an excellent episode of Radiolab this week. First the cat story. US News and World Report says that Sugar the Cat, a resident of a high rise apartment in Boston, decided to trip the light fantastic on Wednesday. The fluffy white feline stumbled from […]
Reactions to the FCC’s LPFM ruling
I was talking with my pal John Anderson earlier today about how relatively muted the reaction is to the FCC’s LPFM decision on Monday. We did get a statement from Prometheus Radio Project pretty quickly. But even today, three days later, there’s only a handful of hits on a google news search. Perhaps the news […]
Progressives scratch heads over Pacifica radio hire of Jackson Lewis
The KPFA Worker website says that the Pacifica Foundation has retained the law firm of Jackson Lewis to manage some of its legal affairs. The foundation owns listener supported station KPFA in Berkeley, and four similar non-commercial stations in Los Angeles, New York, Washington, D.C. and Houston. “We see the entry of Jackson Lewis as […]
FCC acts to preserve space for new low power community radio stations
A couple days ahead of its March open meeting, on Monday the Federal Communications Commission released a two orders addressing the implementation of the Local Community Radio Act to bring more low-power FM community radio stations to the nation’s airwaves [press release PDF]. Most significantly, the FCC has decided to prioritize the establishment of LPFM […]