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 […]
In our last post on the latest broadcast station statistics I noticed that while the number of FM radio stations is steadily increasing, the number of Low Power FM stations has been consistently declining. Take a look at the Federal Communications Commission’s broadcast station spreadsheet (excel download): over 860 LPFMs in March of 2010, down […]
Update (10/28/2013) Reporters Without Borders condemns Somali government attack on radio stations. Somali reporters are up in arms over a police raid of the Shabelle Media Network, which describes itself as the “leading independent media network in Somalia,” located in Mogadishu. Here is Shabelle’s account of the Saturday incident: “Security personnel cordoned off the building […]
Velvet Underground legend Lou Reed has died. I cannot do his remarkable life justice in this brief post, but note that Reed wrote one of my favorite songs about radio: “Rock ‘n Roll.” “Jenny said, when she was just five years old you know there’s nothin’ happening at all Every time she put on the […]
The latest broadcast station count from the Federal Communications Commission is out. Quick headline: AM stations down; FM stations up. And the numbers please . . . “AM STATIONS 4728 FM COMMERCIAL 6613 FM EDUCATIONAL 3989” Those figures are as of September 30, 2013. When Radio Survivor’s Jennifer Waits looked into the situation in January, the […]
![Students being dragged down the stairs during the May 1960 HUAC protests [source: foundsf.org]](https://www.radiosurvivor.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/huacstairs-250x125.jpg "The KCBS reporter who informed for the FBI")
I am reading Seth Rosenfeld’s extraordinary book Subversives: The FBI’s War on Student Radicals, and Reagan’s Rise to Power. There are many radio references in the 734 page tome. Among the most interesting to me are mentions of KCBS radio reporter Dick Leonard, who offered “clandestine help” to the Federal Bureau of Investigation after the […]
We’ve been talking about this for a while, and at last it has happened. Radio Survivor has fired up a forums site: radiosurvivorforums.com. The beta site has three forum topics for starters: College Radio, Low Power FM, and Indie Internet Radio. Why the new venue? First—to get some kind of discussion system up that isn’t […]
As expected, the Pacifica Foundation has released a Request for Proposals to run Pacifica station WBAI in New York City via a Local Management Agreement. Various interesting strings are attached to this RFP, among them: Pacifica must retain “ultimate control” over the LMA’s programming and even be able to preempt or reject various shows to […]
Reading Corporation for Public Broadcasting Ombudsman Joel Kaplan’s recent posts on public radio stations WAMC in Albany, New York and WHDD in Sharon, Connecticut, one could come away with the impression that these signals have become the political domains of two men on hyper drive. For example, Kaplan, a journalism professor at Syracuse University, quotes […]
![[thomhartmann.com/]](https://www.radiosurvivor.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/thomad_1.gif "KBOO giving Thom Hartmann a try")
A quick follow up to our post on Thom Hartmann and KBOO. After what appeared to be very lengthy deliberations, the Portland, Oregon based community radio station has began running part of Hartmann’s three hour show on a trial basis. “We’ve heard from a lot of you, from both sides of this question, and have […]
