If you are a total, gob smacked radio fan like me, you never tire of reading history books about the subject. Here are some of my faves: Anthony Rudell’s Hello everybody! The Dawn of American Radio is a wonderful introduction not only to the beginnings of American radio, but to the culture of the 1920s […]
Oliver “Tuku” Mtukudzi is probably the best known Zimbabwean composer/performer on the international music scene. He also works as music director for Zimbabwe’s Kiss FM pop music radio station, which applied for a commercial private radio licence by the Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe. But BAZ awarded the latest two licenses to several prominent supporters of Zimbabwe […]
Zimbabwe is in a medium-sized uproar over the allocation of two radio licenses to entrepreneurs associated with Prime Minister Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party. The signals will go to Zimpapers and AB Communications. The opposition newspaper The Zimbabwean identifies the principals of both companies as possible pro-Mugabe candidates in future elections. “Despite having no experience in […]
The United Kingdom’s broadcast regulation agency Ofcom has published its annual report (.pdf) on the state of community radio, and the figures indicate that income for UK community outlets has markedly declined. No big surprise, given the global recession. But the data also contains interesting clues suggesting that certain kinds of community radio strategies or […]
Thanksgiving is upon us again. Don’t forget that part of the holiday is listening to our great leaders pontificate about turkeys on the radio. Here’s a historic YouTube video of President Ronald Reagan explaining via a 1986 Thanksgiving radio broadcast why he blocked a jobs program proposed by Congress. “A five point four billion dollar […]
As a die hard Turntable.fm fan, I’ve been reading the service’s blog for a while. Starting in October tt.fm inaugurated a “room-of-the-week” series and has posted on the activities of four rooms. All include very funny exchanges between turntable users and tt.fm’s jessepedia. October 31: Orange Bear Indie Party The convention at the Orange Bear […]
Haaretz reports that Israeli police and the Communications Ministry have shut down Radio Kol Hashalom in East Jerusalem. Israeli and Palestinian peace activists ran the station, which used broadcasting equipment in Ramallah and was licensed by the Palestinian authority. Kol Hashalom roughly translates as “All for Peace.” Israeli officials insisted that the station lacked the […]
My Amazon Kindle Fire arrived in the mail on Thursday, and I’ve been fiddling with it ever since. Got my Facebook going, read a whole lot of newspapers via the Pulse application, and downloaded a free edition of Tolstoy’s War and Peace. After several days of downloading and noodling with various apps, however, I’m inclined […]
Underwriting represents a very modest percentage of the budget of most Low Power FM radio stations in the United States. So reports the Prometheus Radio Project in a filing to the Federal Communications Commission. The latest data comes from a 2011 study conducted by Prometheus in collaboration with Keith Brand, Associate Professor of Radio, Television […]
It is said that there are some things best left forgotten. If that is your philosophy, stay away from New Jersey community radio station WFMU-FM’s wonderful Beware-of-the-blog blog. There WFMU listener Bob Purse has posted a slew of Dominos Pizza radio ads from the 1980s in MP3 format. I thought I had blocked these insipid […]
