On December 1, 2011, KGO’s parent company, Cumulus Media, fired most of its on air-talent and other valuable staff without warning. This sends a message that large corporations do not care about progressive and free media in the Bay Area. Let’s band together to send a message to Cumulus and other media monopolies that this is not OK with us.

Former Listeners has a Twitter page, too: Ex KGO Listeners. The second Facebook group has come up with an equally to-the-point title: Occupy KGO. Here’s its statement of purpose:

“Occupy” KGO’s social media, phone lines and mail expressing outrage and disappointment in KGO management’s decision to change the station’s formatting to all-news, most of the time! No tents required. We enjoyed current on-air personalities, but those left are victims of this change as we the listeners walk away. Our primary objective is to drive listenership down significantly and encourage major sponsors to pull-out of KGO. Our ultimate goal is to devastate Cumulus Media, Inc. using these techniques to the point the company needs to re-invent themselves yet again. By doing this, we will have proved that Cumulus’ original business decision of re-formatting to all news, most of the time was, in fact, NOT what the majority of listeners wanted.

Occupy KGO also has a Tweet account: @OccupyKGOAM810 and a live chat room (which seems to work best in Google Chrome).

Ex KGO Listeners is focusing on a market walkout; Occupy KGO, on the other hand, is taking the hands-on approach. Here’s how its “phase 1″ event, held on Monday, played out:

Let KGO and its parent company Cumulus Media, Inc. know that you will not tolerate its blindsided changes, taking away the Bay Area’s open news talk forum and replacing it with over-saturated, regurgitated news.

We invite you to express your frustration in a respectful way and encourage you to stand firm with committing to tuning out of the news during times talent took the stage.

During this two-day phase, please chose one number to call each day. Both numbers are listed below. After your call, please post on our page who you talked to, how it went and the response you got.

**As a result of good discussion in the page forum, it should be noted that you should express your disappointment in a firm, but respectful manner! We’re not here to hurt others, just express ourselves.

**

Cumulus Media, Inc: 404-949-0700

KGO Listener Line: 415-216-1050

If you experience any trouble with these numbers, please post any corrections you encounter.

Good luck occupiers!

While you are wondering what “phase 2″ will look like, Twitter users are creating a variety of accounts as shout-outs to their lost talk radio heroes. Among the most creative, the Where Did Ray Taliaferro Go page. Last tweet: “We lost Ray Taliaferro, John Rothman, KGO as well. Those SOBs never cease being EVIL. http://t.co/FlhNVsSB.”

Second to last: “The only thing left at the KGO online profile for Ray Taliaferro is a Porsche ad.”

Meanwhile, the San Francisco Chronicle has a insightful op-ed piece about the format change, written by long time talk radio host and author Peter Laufer.

“The surprise silencing of KGO’s talk shows may make budget sense for the radio station’s absentee owners, but pulling the plug is bad news for civic discourse,” Laufer writes.

The demise of most KGO talk shows is not the end of the world as we know it. But it is another incremental step in our alienation from one another, and an important one. Don’t believe the argument that the Internet allows for so much interaction that radio is inconsequential. We choose about what and with whom we interact online; online we exist in special-interest neighborhoods. Nothing wrong with that.

But local talk radio – especially when we’re faced with long commutes alone – helps create and define us. Ratings spike when there is a crisis. We want to be in touch with each other, guided by a familiar – if flawed – “host” such as the local celebrities fired last week as if they were of no special value to the community KGO is licensed to serve.

“A viable community needs a common curriculum of knowledge, otherwise we cannot share the joys and concerns of our neighbors,” Laufer’s commentary concludes. “If we’re isolated from one another, we’re much less likely to care about each other and to work together for common goals.”

Clearly that “viable community” is so important to KGO listeners that they’ve turned to Facebook—and each other—in a bid to bring it back. Good luck to them.

Logo for Libyan resistance online station.

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 today the group called Libyan Youth Movement posting under the twitter name @ShababLibya tweeted that “BREAKING: Libya open first real radio called soot libya al hura (voice of free libya) frequencies and live feed to follow #Libya #Feb17″. This message was repeated all over Twitter and on blogs and websites covering the popular revolt in Libya, but with no additional information or citations.

The Media Network blog from Radio Netherlands Worldwide today posted a roundup of reports about radio inside Libya. Blogger Andy Sennitt relays reception reports from Denmark of a high-powered mediumwave station (called AM in the US) in El Beida that apparently is taken over by protestors, while other Libyan mediumwave stations continue to air pro-Qaddafi material. The same Danish DXer reports receiving this station, identified as Radio Free Libya, broadasting at 1125 KHz.

El Baida is about 125 miles east of Benghazi, which is the reported location of the internet station I reported on yesterday. This could be the same broadcast, or they might be separate — it’s hard to know.

It’s also unclear if the mediumwave Radio Free Libya is the same station as the Voice of Free Libya that the Libyan Youth Movement tweeted about today. While mediumwave can travel great distances–from Libya to Denmark–these stations won’t be receivable in North America. I find no indications or reception reports of any Libyan shortwave broadcasts operated by protestors. Like in Egypt, it’s unlikely there are many ham radio operators, especially under Qaddafi’s even more repressive regime. However, I think it’s safe to say that broadcast radio is playing a more significant role in the Libyan uprising than it did in Egypt’s.

In terms of tuning in English-language news of the situation in Libya, while BBC’s Five Live was airing constant Libya coverage at this time last night, today the station seems to be back to its normal program schedule. That’s too bad because I found the station’s coverage last night to be quite riveting, with many live calls directly from Libya. At the same time the host, Stephan Nolan, kept a very cool head, making pains to consider internet and twitter rumors with due caution, while also paying appropriate respect to the real violence and suffering being experienced by Libyans on the streets of Benghazi and Tripoli.

For the most updated English-language news from Libya I’ve found Al Jazeera’s English service to be the most reliable right now. However, this evening CNN has the first Western TV journalist inside Libya. He confirms earlier reports that the resistance has control of eastern Libya.

I hope for the best for the Libyan’s protesting and acting for an end to decades of totalitarian repression. Communicating their circumstances and showing the government’s brutality both to other Libyans and to the outside world I believe will aid their cause. Radio is one tool that may help.

Grassroots heat has been getting hotter this week as the Senate runs out of time to vote on the Local Community Radio Act, expanding low-power FM. There are some signs that the action is having some effect.

Free Press campaign director Tim Karr tweeted on Thursday,

NAB lobbyists overheard at DC event: “We’re getting beat up on Twitter about LPFM”

Indeed, the twitter petition site act.ly itself tweeted later in the day,

Today’s #1 petition @nabtweets to stop lobbying Congress to block new, independent radio stations

And DC insider newspaper Politico ran a story on how all the NAB lobbying pressure “is pinching the nerves of some lawmakers on Capitol Hill.” So much so, in fact, that congressional staffers are saying their bosses are getting tired of negotiating with the NAB because the lobby is not showing any willingness to compromise on issues like LPFM.

Even the Oregonian, the home paper of NAB president and former-senator Gordon Smith, took notice with a piece on Wednesday that observed,

Gordon Smith is no longer one of Oregon’s U.S. senators, but community radio activists are trying to paint him as still pulling secretive strings in Congress.

It’s unclear how much the NAB cares about the increasingly negative press. However, I’m certain the lobby does care quite a bit how members of Congress are perceiving its efforts, with many starting to wonder if it isn’t squandering its clout and resources on an issue that is more symbolic than any kind of real threat to commercial broadcasters.

The question is whether or not the NAB is willing to risk some standing in order to score a win on LPFM. Or it may be that the broadcast lobby is betting a Republican House and more Republican Senate won’t care or remember come January 1. Given the bipartisan support for LPFM, that may not be the surest bet. But that hasn’t seemed to stop the NAB in the previous nine years, either.

Ever since radio lost its prominence to television as America’s number one form of entertainment, it has been in the background of American life. The primary place where many people listen to radio has been in their cars on the open road. The audience for traditional AM/FM forms of radio is shrinking, but the market for personalized Internet radio services such as Pandora radio continues to grow. Drivers have sought to bring Internet radio with them on the road since mobile smartphones such as the iPhone, Blackberry or Android phones started offering mobile Internet radio applications.

The problem is how to do this. Launching the radio apps on phones and then connecting them to a car stereo’s auxiliary port has so far been the only way to take Internet radio to its fullest potential. But this creates further distractions for the driver and can contribute to driver error and traffic accidents. This week the Ford Motor Company announced their solution to this dilemma.

A new upgrade to its SYNC systems named AppLink will natively and wirelessly use radio applications such as Pandora or Stitcher radio from smartphones, allowing the driver to use these applications hands free. After Ford rolls out the new software update later this year, all SYNC enabled vehicles will be able to use AppLink. The system works by syncing smartphones to Ford’s SYNC systems and then the user navigates Pandora or Stitcher using voice commands.

Imagine driving down California’s beautiful coastal highway one and saying to your car “change station to the Beach Boys.” On the stressful commute home from work, command your car to play relaxing reggae, classical music or any other commercial free genre or artist station Pandora has to offer. Compared to the now ancient auxiliary port, this is a huge step forward in bringing Internet radio on the road. The Stitcher radio app is an Internet radio service that allows users to listen to talk and news radio from a plethora of sources such as N.P.R. Fox News, Wall Street Journal, and many other radio and podcast stations. As an N.P.R. addict, I would love the ability to listen to my favorite shows whenever I want simply by telling my car “Play all things considered.”

These are just the first two radio applications that Ford is releasing though AppLink. There is also another application available at launch called OpenBeak that will read Twitter updates out loud. But who really cares about Twitter while driving (sorry Twitter addicts). The software update is expected to rollout mid summer, first on Ford’s new Economy car the Fiesta and later as an upgrade for all other SYNC equipped vehicles. At launch AppLink will only work with Google Android and Blackberry smartphones, but Ford promises iPhone support later this year.

As more and more car companies are able to safely bring Internet radio into the automobile market, could this be another nail for AM/FM’s coffin? Only time will tell.

Ofcom's latest poll on how Britons get their weather news

The latest poll taken by the United Kingdom’s Office of Communications (Ofcom) indicates that almost as many Britons get their updates about weather and travel conditions from websites as from TV and radio. 43 percent identify the web as their favorite source in response to the question: “How have you been getting your weather/travel information during the  recent snow.”

Meanwhile 26% percent clicked “National TV/radio” while 19% clicked “Local radio.” So it’s 43% web versus 45% radio and TV.

Makes sense, of course. You get a lot more detail and data from one of those local traffic/weather sites than you do from the occasional radio update. Still I like listening to the latter more than I do looking at the former.

The Ofcom poll is obviously directed towards the moment, with heavy weather warnings in London, Wales, the West Midlands, and southern England. 50 schools in Gloucestershire closed on Wednesday.

The rest of the  respondents say they get their weather intel from smart phone apps (7%), Twitter (4%), and phone information lines (1%).

As described in their pitch video, NowPlaying.fm will soon offer a new music service integrated within the popular social site, Twitter. In yet another move to push audiences towards specialized Internet streaming, the service will allow users to listen to specific songs online, tweeted by them or their friends.

Within Twitter, topics are emphasized by users and tracked through the use of a number sign (#) in front of a single word phrase. These are called hash tags. For example, #threewordsforyou and #spacejams were the second and third most popular trends on Twitter on December 23, 2009, right behind #nowplaying, the popular term used to indicate what twitterers are listening to. Nowplaying.fm will allow users to search for a song title and artist name on their website. The website will then create a tweet formatted with #nowplaying, the song title and artist, and a bit.ly link to a page where users can listen to that specific song, adding a new dynamic to the popular tag.

While Pandora has been a major player in Internet radio, NowPlaying.fm allows users to do something fairly new. I wonder, though, if it will be legally compromising. With the main difference between Pandora and NowPlaying.fm being the latter’s ability to play specifically requested songs, the issue of copyright infringement might arise, depending on how the service’s database is structured. Sites such as Pandora and Lala have had to wheel and deal with record companies since their inceptions to be able to stream copyright music for free online. With the NowPlaying.fm service though, it is unclear which database the bit.ly link within the tweet will take users.

It will also be interesting to see how the website handles unknown bands without major record deals.

It is difficult to answer these questions, as the service is not available yet, with the domain only having been registered on December 21. APIs are currently being developed, with a Beta version to be offered in early 2010 to a select 500 people who sign up on their website. We contacted Nowplaying.fm to talk, but, of course, it’s the holidays.

To be placed on this list you can go to their website, and submit your name and e-mail. When we signed up we got this message:

“Hey!

Thanks for requesting a NowPlaying beta invitation. At the moment, we are optimizing some code and performing some general tidiness. Invites will begin to distribute in the coming weeks and we expect around 500 beta testers.

Like the girl who didn’t exactly ‘put out’ on the first date please do not ditch & forget about us as you wait

Best Regards,

The NowPlayingFM Team

Follow us: @NowPlayingFM

So, I suppose, many of us will now remember when we heard of Michael Jackson’s death, where we were, and how we heard about it. I found out on email (how retro!) from a fellow college radio DJ. Our radio station’s staff email list is actually the place where I’ve gotten the first word about many music-related deaths.

From the posts I’ve seen on Facebook, it would seem that many people heard about the news via that social networking site. And, I wouldn’t be surprised if Twitter has functioned the same way today (after all, it’s the new college radio!).

But what about radio? Did any of you find out about Michael Jackson’s death today on your local radio station? On your college radio station?

In the days to come, radio will be the place where fans might congregate to celebrate Michael Jackson’s life in song. If you have special programming planned, post it here. Also, I’d love to collect stories about how people heard about his death and if radio played a role in spreading the word.

I’ve got to go now and settle in for MTV’s Michael Jackson tribute tonight at 9pm EST to memorialize the King of Pop.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how Twitter and Facebook are the new “radio” for the younger generation. It’s almost hard to believe that way back when we got our breaking news from the radio because today radio is often overlooked as a news source.

WHRC Studio 1987

A few weeks ago I was at my college reunion and revisited the campus radio station WHRC. During my visit I talked to a lot of people about the station and the role that it played on campus in the 1980s. Everyone had bits and pieces of nostalgia to pass along, but what really amazed me was that several people had distinct memories of first hearing about the Challenger disaster in 1986 while listening to WHRC. At the time the campus-only station was piped in to the dining center and, in fact, the main WHRC audience was during meal times. So all of the people who I talked to were probably eating lunch in the dining center when they heard the news together about this tragedy.

Similarly, when Kurt Cobain died in 1994 (another defining tragic moment for my generation), the first people to mention it around my office had heard the news over the radio. However, this was also the first time that I remember hearing that the Internet was actually breaking news, as it was buzzing over word of Cobain’s death. This was during the early days of the Internet (I’m not even sure if we had email at my office yet), when those participating in online communities like The Well were trailblazing true hipster geeks. I’m pretty sure it was my friend’s sister who worked at Wired (a hip magazine about technology? Crazy!) who was getting some of these early reports on Cobain and passing the news along to those of us in technologically-deprived offices.

Flash forward to today, when breaking news spreads like wildfire through mobile devices, online, on Twitter, and through social networking hubs like Facebook. It kind of makes you wonder if these tools are supplanting radio in some way. An interview with Cracker’s David Lowery in Glide touches on this, making the point that Twitter and Facebook may even be the new college radio, not just for their ability to break news, but also in that they facilitate music scenes:

I see you’re on Facebook and fans can follow you guys on Twitter.  Quite different from the 80’s…or is it?

Well, exactly.  It’s different from the ‘80’s in that it’s much easier to maintain a grass roots following now.  But we basically tried all of this networking back then, just in a different way.  We collected people’s addresses, we had mailing lists, we had a newsletter.  We went around to the college radio stations, which to us back in the early’80’s was our underground blog.  We would play on the college stations and then do a show in the college towns and there was this belief that we would associate ourselves with like-minded people, which is a lot like the social networking tools of today.

There was something about the popularity of the college radio station back in the 80’s that made music so special.  Students today have no idea what that was like…

I’ll tell you what it was.  College radio in the ‘80’s was very egalitarian…it was about playing pop music for our generation…

Indeed, radio can (and did) bring people together to help spread news, spread scenes, and even spread music out to a wider audience. Although radio’s declining influence is true overall, I do think that non-commercial radio and college radio in particular, is still a powerful force. Even for breaking news. Just this week, in 2009, I got a call during my college radio show from someone following up on news he’d heard on the radio earlier in the day about the death of surf legend Bob Bogle of the Ventures. He asked if I could verify the news for him. It was like the olden days before the Internet, when people would call radio and TV stations to find out things like “was that an earthquake that I just felt?” and “where is the Sonic Youth show tonight?” And it confirmed my strong belief that radio isn’t dead yet.

The Town Hall revealed some tensions between the new and old media camps, with most of the bad feelings on the old media side. The somewhat less well attended Media Future Conference didn’t dwell on this divide, focusing primarily on the online world, including dead tree and television online internet initiatives.

Entirely missing from this weekend’s conference was any mention of radio by any of the panelists or audience. To be fair, I didn’t stand up to speak, and so share some part of the blame for the oversight. What’s even more notable about the omission is that many folks who work for Chicago Public Radio were present in the audience, if not on the panels.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be so surprised. Radio went through the big journalism purge nearly a decade ago as the consolidation-frenzy spurred by the 1996 Telecom Act sank in. Indeed it was nearly nine years ago when Chicago went from having two commercial all-news radio stations to just one. WMAQ at 670 AM signed off on August 1, 2000 to become all-sports station WSCR, leaving just 780 AM WBBM holding the all-news mantle. Only recently have newspapers really started to catch up with the carnage.

Even though heavily news-focused public radio has seen its fortunes and audience rise in the last decade–in direct countervalence to commerical radio–it seems like that hasn’t helped restore radio to the front of the public’s mind when it comes to journalism. Despite the rise in ratings, I’d bet the general public doesn’t take much account of public radio, turning instead to TV, internet and newspapers to get news, especially breaking news.

I have to admit this tendency myself. If I’m sitting at home and wonder what’s going on–even with severe weather–I’ll hit the ‘net first. Only on the rare occasions when I’m in my car (which isn’t yet internet-equipped) do I turn to radio for the latest. At least part of the reason for this are the many occasions when I did turn to radio to find breaking news, only to have to slog through endless commercials, voice-tracked DJs or syndicated programming, hearing no indication that a live person was anywhere near the station console ready to jump in with an update, even if just read from wire copy.

It’s too bad, really, since radio journalism still has the potential to cover both breaking news and investigative stories with a style and economy that newspapers, TV and internet are not quite ready for. Though SMS, mobile broadband and twitter show promise for reporting up-to-the-minute news from the field, these still don’t reach a truly mass audience. By contrast a radio reporter just needs a phone link back the studio–cell phone or landline–to file a live report, or a cheap audio recorder to get interviews to bring back via sneakernet.

Perhaps I’m a foolish optimist, but I think the immediacy and frugality of radio gives the medium an opportunity to regain lost ground in the face of the supposed crisis in journalism.  I don’t expect that people will ditch their iPods, smartphones, laptops and cable TV for radio. But when the power goes out, the cell towers are down or you’re simply in one of the many places that still aren’t covered in fiber and wi-fi, radio can still be the conduit of vital news and information. And what are podcasts anyway, but radio programs syndicated over the ‘net instead of the airwaves?

It’s easy to take radio for granted, even for a confirmed radiogeek like me. Yet I think that radio can link up with and complement online journalism and media, as the live, truly wireless sister with better than 99% uptime (no fail whale on the air) and a cost model that makes reaching a mass audience a bargain, even compared to the web.

At the next group meeting for journalists’ therapy, I promise to step forward and reveal my radio addiction and bring the subject to the fore. Radio is part of the media future, wherever you are, unless we all decide to abandon it.