Another one bites the dust. Wilmington North Carolina’s Star News reports that Wilmington Bach radio at 95.9 FM and 1180 FM is no more. Those frequencies will now stream Port City Radio news until a new format is unveiled later this month. The Star article quotes Wilmington public radio station WHQR FM manager Cleve Callison saying […]
Author Archive | Matthew Lasar
SF Chronicle: fire KNBR’s Damon Bruce for “anti-woman rant”
My hometown newspaper has come out swinging on the sports radio snafu of the week. Here’s an unsigned opinion piece worth reading: “Bay Area sports radio host Damon Bruce should find another profession,” declared the San Francisco Chronicle on Tuesday. “His nearly nine-minute rant last week about how women are ruining sports was misogynistic and foolish in […]
French radio’s Belle Époque
I took in Nicolas Philibert’s documentary La Maison de la Radio over the weekend, a 24 hour snapshot of Radio France “from one dawn to another,” as IMDB puts it. Funny, candid, charming, even visually beautiful, I savored every minute of this love letter to French public radio. The YouTube trailer below includes many of […]
Plug.dj: six hot communities
Plug.dj has rolled out its new look and expanded community based structure. I am wandering about its corridors, marveling at the sights. Here are six of the most well attended communities as of this weekend. All of them revel in various kinds of dubstep, electronica, and sampling based themes and sounds. 1. Monstercat + Tasty […]
Radio conflict and cooperation in Africa: an interactive map
For years, Jennifer Waits, Paul Riismandel, and I have been blogging about radio in Africa. Millions of people there depend on radio for crucial news and information. When conflict comes to one of Africa’s nations, radio becomes a resource, and then it becomes an issue. So in Libya rebels rush to control radio in Benghazi. […]
NPR to FCC: TV spectrum auctions affect radio too
An interesting filing from NPR to the Federal Communications Commission concerning the impending wave of incentive auctions planned to “reassign” television broadcaster spectrum, ultimately for wireless broadband use. NPR reminds the Commission that a lot of the television towers that broadcast video signals stream radio as well, and public broadcasters could be affected by this […]
Plug.dj: from rooms to “communities”
Plug.dj is rolling out a new design this Saturday. What interests me most about the remake is that the online deejay service is dubbing its rooms “communities”: “The first thing you’ll notice is the lobby has been redesigned and is now called ‘Communities’. We decided to change the name to reflect how much we value […]
Talking Heads: debating the Spotify “rental” market
I am reading Paul Riismandel’s summary of Day One of the Future of Music Summit. It appears that all digital music policy discussion roads lead to Spotify. “It seemed like every [FOMS] conversation that dealt even a little bit with royalty payments and artist income always veered back to Spotify,” Paul notes. “On this there […]
Pandora while driving? Safety may depend on your listening gear
In my third installment of my Internet radio in my car diary, I admit that I have tuned in to Pandora in my Honda Civic while driving on the freeway. You probably think this isn’t much of a confession. But I found the experience distracting enough to wonder whether I should make it a habit. […]
Santa Barbara classical radio in peril
Santa Barbara, California’s eight decades old classical radio signal KDB 93.7 FM is up for auction. The Santa Barbara Foundation, which owns the license, has voted to sell it off. The Foundation’s principals say that the operation has run up big deficits that the non-profit cannot afford. “Unfortunately, despite the on-air pleas we made during […]
