Supreme Court to consider FCC’s indecency rules again
Will it be 1978 all over again? That was the year the Supreme Court decided the seminal FCC v Pacifica case which legally established the constitutionality of the FCC’s ability to regulate indecent content in broadcast. But the media landscape of 2011 is very different than 1978. Today, network sitcoms airing as early as 8 […]
Does the college/community radio show before yours influence your program?
Are you a college/community/LPFM/unlicensed music show host? Does the show that comes on before you have an impact on your program, or your efforts to cultivate an audience? I ask now because I forgot to mention the question when I moderated a National Federation of Community Broadcasters workshop panel on great music programs. I first […]
How to turn your library card into a free music portal
Thank you, San Francisco Public Library, for giving Californians completely free access to the wonderful Alexander Street Music Online collection. The SF Public library system is one of a host of awesome libraries offering entre to this terrific database. The collection bills itself as: The largest online collection of music recordings, scores, reference, and video […]
FCC taking up LPFM and translator stations at July 12 open meeting
Ever since the passage of the Local Community Radio Act, the big question has been how the FCC will deal with its backlog of applications for translator repeater stations. Translators are low-power stations that may only rebroadcast the signal of an existing full-power station, and can be fit in many of the spaces on the […]
Farewell to KUSF Assistant Chief Engineer Mike Schweizer
I’m very sad to report that Mike Schweizer, an important figure in San Francisco Bay Area broadcasting, died on Tuesday, June 14 at the age of 58. Schweizer was the assistant chief engineer for University of San Francisco’s college radio station KUSF and had been with the station for more than 33 years. We met […]
Libyan rebels broadcast free radio to the cities of Misurata and Benghazi
It has been a while since I’ve written about radio in Libya. The popular revolt in that country started back in February, and there were reports that opposition protestors were taking over radio stations in regions where the central government was losing control. Some four months later the uprisings and struggle against Muammar Qaddafi are […]
How psychedelic are your Last.fm tags?
Those graphics loving geeks over at Last.fm are at it again. Remember the flower power experiment? Now Last.fm staffer Andrew Clegg describes how he’s grabbed a pile of the online music service’s user tags and combined them with data from the Echo Nest’s million song dataset. Then he brought the whole goulash over to the […]
College Radio Day Hits the Airwaves on October 11, 2011
I make it a habit to evangelize the importance and relevance of college radio and that passion led me to create my Spinning Indie blog back in 2008. One of my main goals was to spread the word about college radio and also to remind people about the interesting stations in every pocket of the […]
NFCB Sessions’ Fundraising Tips for Radio: Celebrity Smackdowns, 1-Day Drives and the Philanthropist Next Door
The National Federation of Community Broadcasters‘ 36th annual community radio conference was an incredible few days full of radio education and community radio bonding. Held in San Francisco from June 1st to June 4th, it featured an action-packed schedule of sessions, keynotes, and workshops. I’ve already recounted the Saving College Stations panel and Matthew has […]
Hidden treasure: perusing the Other Minds radio archive
I have been bellyaching a lot about the paucity of classical music over the airwaves recently (bellyache one here; bellyache two here). It seems to me that I ought to be evangelizing great resources for classical music lovers instead. So here’s the top item on my list: the Other Minds RadiOM radio archives. We are […]