William Mandel has died. Mandel broadcast over KPFA’s airwaves for almost half a century, offering commentaries on the now-defunct Soviet Union. He wrote books about the USSR, among them Soviet Women and Soviet but not Russian: the Other Peoples of the Soviet Union. He spoke at just about any public event at which someone would let him appear. He died […]
Pete Tridish works as a radio engineer, building low power and full power community radio stations. He initially did this work with Prometheus Radio Project and now with International Media Action. “Back when I was working with Prometheus Radio Project, which was a group that worked to expand the low power radio service and create […]
Like many of you in the U.S. and around the world, I’m still trying to make sense of the presidential election and its outcome. And, by “make sense,” I mean determine what actions I should and can take to help ensure the safety and security of people who have been targeted by the rhetoric of […]
It is a blasphemous question, I know. But since I’ve already put it in the headline, I’ll also spell it out in this post’s opening paragraph. President Donald Trump: good news for Pacifica radio? My decisive answer is . . . maybe. At this point, the Pacifica Foundation and its five radio stations can only go in […]
KRAB-FM was the first station in what would become known as the “KRAB Nebula” of community stations that sprouted up around the U.S. in the 1960s and 70s. These 14 stations shared a common parentage in Lorenzo Milam, who helped found them, beginning with KRAB. First hitting the Seattle airwaves on December 12, 1962, KRAB […]
Over the weekend I posted some concerns about the future of La Jungala community radio, which until last month served a now dismantled refugee camp in Calais, France, known as “The Jungle.” I also emailed the operation to get an update on its status. Do you still exist? I asked. Today I receive a reply: […]
The New York Times reports that a huge refugee camp in Calais, France is “finally” gone. “The Jungle,” as its residents called the site, offered shelter to thousands of North African and Middle Eastern migrants. It was a great big ramshackle humanitarian crisis, and now authorities have cleared it out. Al Jazeera says that some of these […]
This post notes the continued existence of two interesting online community radio venues: n10.as in Montreal and The Lot Radio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It celebrates their persistence because, given recent events, I no longer take any local radio station for granted anymore. I know that some of you disagreed with my support of Triple A formatted KUSP-FM in Santa […]
“Grass Roots Radio Conference has been a giant jump start in my learning process,” said Julia Rose of KPSQ lp in Fayetteville Arkansas. Radio Survivor’s Jennifer Waits attended the GRC and she reports back for us with her own observations as well as with the voices of the people she met there at this year’s […]
The New York Times has a nice feature story on the latest wave of Low Power FM radio stations sweeping the country, thanks to the Federal Communications Commission’s licensing spree of 2014 through this year. Authored by Brett Sokol, it surveys LPFMs from Brooklyn to Los Angeles. The piece even quotes little old me saying something. To […]
