As requested by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Canada’s broadcast regulator has approved the placement of advertising spots on Radio 2 and Espace Musique radio. The latter service describes itself “the largest directory of French music internet radio in Canada.” Judging by the comments on the CBC news website notice, many listeners are anything but happy […]
Community radio pioneer Larry Yurdin has posted a YouTube account of the Alternative Media Conference held at Goddard College in 1970. “Many of the key players in the early days of non-commercial radio were there,” Yurdin notes, “as well as most of the pioneers of commercial FM rock radio.” The historic gathering of perhaps as […]
I am reading Evgeny Morozov’s diverting book To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism. The conclusion mentions a variety of machines that act dysfunctionally in some way, but for a purpose—to alert the user that s/he is wasting energy. Among the theorized gizmos that Morozov cites is an “erratic radio,” described by […]
US Pirg has released a new report on commuting patterns that has to be worrying some radio people: we are driving less. “The Driving Boom is over,” proclaims US Pirg Senior Analyst Phineas Baxandall. “The constant increases we saw in driving up until 2005 show no sign of returning. As more and more Millennials become […]
Federal Communications Commissioner Ajit Pai and his Chief of Staff Matthew Berry conferenced with two executives from Clear Channel on Wednesday. They talked up a variety of issues. The meeting’s last item caught my eye. I presume from the language of the filed summary that Pai asked Clear Channel Vice Presidents Jeff Littlejohn and Jessica […]
The Federal Communications Commission says that it will ease up on the fines that it issues college radio stations when they violate the Commission’s procedures and rules, such as failure to submit ownership reports or adequately maintain a public inspection file. Now, rather than punish such stations with a Notice of Apparent Liability followed by […]
I am reading Ari Y. Kelman’s excellent book, Station Identification: A Cultural History of Yiddish Radio in the United States, and agreeing with the admonition found in the tome’s introduction: radio historians don’t focus enough on non-English speaking broadcasters. “The presence of non-English language programming on U.S. radio has been almost completely overlooked,” Kelman writes. […]
The United Kingdom’s broadcast regulatory agency says that it has authorized the licensing of community radio stations on the Bailiwick of Guernsey, which includes the islands of Alderney and Sark, all part of the Channel Islands. This is a bit complicated, because Guernsey, which is located off the coast of northern France, is not actually […]
President Obama has nominated telecom biggie Tom Wheeler to chair the Federal Communications Commission, and nervous commentaries are proliferating across the blogosphere. “Uh-oh: AT&T and Comcast are ecstatic about the FCC’s new chairman,” runs the headline over at Ars Technica. The post points the reader to a statement from AT&T Senior Executive Vice President Jim […]
The National Association of Broadcasters has asked the Federal Communications Commission for a 30 day extension on a proceeding requesting feedback about the agency’s indecency rules. The FCC launched the proceeding following the Supreme Court’s invalidation of the Commission’s policies against “fleeting expletives,” basically dirty words said on the fly. The high court said that […]
