This is painful. I will just start this article by saying that I can’t make any excuses for what I am about to present to you. Bruce Willis as you’ve never seen him before. This is going to drag you kicking and screaming back to the worst parts of the 80’s or, if you weren’t […]
The great WMUA-FM Polka War continued through last week. Supporters of polka programming at the University of Massachusetts Amherst campus station kept protesting reductions in the genre. But the U.Mass administration is sticking to its guns. They’ll be more student involvement at the station, its principals insist, and that means less polka music on WMUA. “Polka programming will continue to […]
Radio Survivor’s podcast resumed this week after a break for the winter holidays. In this brand new episode, I give an overview of the state of college radio in 2015. It’s worth a listen, particularly if you missed my 2015 college radio year-in-review article. My segment starts at about the 60 minute mark. Also this […]
So here it is. Behold the beast. The hook that got this fish curious. This record can more or less be credited with the inception of my current writing preoccupation. It is, without a doubt, the most exciting find I have ever made, as well as the most infuriating. Going over the entire rock vinyl […]
No new low-power FM construction permits have been issues yet so far in 2016. No applications have been dismissed, either. As I mentioned last week, there are only about 100 applications left to be processed by the FCC, so it’s likely we will see most, if not all, of these dealt with by year’s end. […]
Amherst, University of Massachusetts campus radio station WMUA-FM is having a Polka crisis. The Daily Hampshire has the deets. Apparently the signal is sunsetting some Polka shows, among them “Polka Bandstand” and “Early Bird Polka.” Plus there will be a general scaling back of Saturday Polka programming from twelve to four hours. This has not gone well […]
Happy New Year! It’s been awhile since I’ve written a “regular” College Radio Watch column, although there’s been quite a bit of college radio news in the past few weeks. I’m slowing making my way towards my 100th radio station tour report and am really looking forward to visiting more college radio stations in 2016. […]
With regard to new stations going on the air, 2015 represented the biggest single-year leap forward for non-commercial and community radio in U.S. history. At the end of the year 524 new low-power FM stations had been fully licensed during the year. This represents a 68% increase in the overall number of LPFM stations compared […]
Over the years I’ve seen references to the Black College Radio Conference and its annual award ceremony. Although scant information is available online, William Barlow writes about the convention’s origins in Voice Over: The Making of Black Radio. He says that the Atlanta-based event was launched by Lo Jelks and that the student-focused convention was […]
A few days ago I learned about a documentary about the “first all-woman radio station,” a commercial country station WHER which launched in Memphis in 1955. Of course it piqued my curiosity, not only because it sounds like an intriguing station, but also because I’m aware of college radio stations at all women’s colleges that […]
