Radio Survivor

Jennifer Waits practicing her art (source: CMM)

Radio Survivor’s college radio and culture editor received well deserved kudos from the College Media Matters blog over the weekend. Jennifer Waits was singled out as one of the “10 individuals who have mattered most to college media over the past academic year.”

CMM partners with the Associated Collegiate Press, “the largest and oldest U.S. student journalism membership organization,” and praised Jennifer as so:

“As an adamant ‘evangelist for radio’s ongoing relevance’, she is determined to specifically spotlight college radio culture- its independence, eclecticism, and celebration of a unique musical feast you will not find anywhere else on the dial.”

And our Technology Editor Paul Riismandel added these excellent lines:

“Jennifer Waits is the strongest and smartest voice reporting on and advocating for college radio today. With a deep knowledge of the history of this unique medium, combined with a keen sense of its role in our media environment, Jennifer shares the fruits of her research and passion at RadioSurvivor.com and her own blog, Spinning Indie. Not content to just write about college radio, she puts her conviction to work by visiting stations and networking with their staffs, becoming a catalyst for the exchange of information and ideas amongst this often atomized community. Jennifer is an invaluable asset to college radio (and she does her own show, too).”

Well put, and all the more reason why your RSS reader should be locked onto Spinning Indie and parked here at Radio Survivor too.

Moi in the basement, via camcorder.

It’s way too early to start writing self-congratulatory histories of this web site, but since Jennifer asked for the back story on how we got started, who am I to refuse . . .

I first approached Paul Riismandel last Spring about creating what eventually became radiosurvivor.com because I was, and still am, concerned that discussion on the ‘Net about the state of radio has become marginal and fragmented. The conversation has become marginal because so much blogging on the future of media focuses on other technologies and venues, among them IP video, social networking, P2P, e-Books and other mobile applications. It has become fragmented because most of the big sites that report news about radio do so from the vantage point of a particular corner of the radio industry—streaming, terrestrial, podcasting—and almost always from the perspective of management.

The rest of the talk is propelled by solo bloggers whose wonderful sites ponder all kinds of interesting questions, but who rarely interact with each other. I wanted something more than that. Radiosurvivor.com’s mission, as I see it, is to stimulate dialogue about radio from a listener perspective. It is the listener, who does not have a monetary or employment investment in some corner of the status quo, who is in the best position to discuss the future of radio.

The big question is . . . what is radio? As it is being transformed by the Internet and wireless, what do we want from it as individuals? And how do we think radio can serve us as neighborhoods, cities, regions, and nations?

I am happy to report that Paul was very receptive to this idea. He contacted Jennifer, and 250 terrific posts later, here we are, drawing in many more page views a day than I ever imagined we would. Our contributor Helen Yamamoto should also be mentioned for her great work.

The domain name “radiosurvivor.com” is intended to evoke the crisis in which terrestrial radio finds itself today—with revenues and listening rates in near free fall, and the other, more recent platforms treading water at best. What do all of us who still believe in radio—we the “radio survivors”—do now? I’m hoping that our writing will draw in many more listener-oriented voices to offer answers to that question.

In the vein of practice what you preach, two of the bloggers here, myself and Jennifer Waits, have regular weekly radio programs. Our third accomplice, Matthew Lasar, is a frequent guest on my program, mediageek. The mediageek radioshow covers grassroots media along with a focus on the regulatory and legal maneuvers that affect our ability to communicate freely.

Matthew was my guest last week to talk about this here little blog and the new FCC, which just saw its last two new commissioners ratified by the Senate.

The previous week I was lucky to have Jennifer as my guest to talk about the value and importance of college radio in the modern multichannel universe.

Matthew has made several appearances on the radioshow in the last fifteen months, and I hope that I’ll have the opportunity to have Jennifer on again, too.

Mediageek airs live weekly for an hour on WNUR 89.3 FM in Evanston and Chicago, IL at 9 PM on Thursdays. A half-hour syndicated version airs on thirteen other non-commercial stations in the US and Canada, which are listed at the radioshow website. And if the show doesn’t air on a station near you, you can always listen at the show’s website.

The program is free to air for any noncommercial radio station. So if you work at a noncomm station or have a local station that you think should broadcast it, drop me a line and let me know.