Happy belated birthday to podcasting! According to a recent Guardian article written by the creators of UK podcast Answer Me This! the very term “podcast” was born on February 11, 2004, in a piece by journalist Ben Hammersley. That makes podcasting, as a thing, a little more than 10 years and 1 month old. In […]
This week, there were some interesting developments on the college radio front. The FCC finally closed the books on the contested future of the former Vanderbilt University FM radio station WRVU. Despite protests by supporters of the FM station, the license was assigned to Nashville Public Radio this week. For nearly three years, the station […]
There’s been a lot of great energy in recent years surrounding the field of sound studies, in which scholars are increasingly looking at the importance of the auditory aspects of media culture. Within the world of sound studies, a growing group of radio scholars is working hard to ensure that an academic lens is focused […]
In a letter dated today (PDF), the FCC approved the renewal application and assigned the license for WFCL to Nashville Public Radio. The non-commercial FM station was formerly Vanderbilt University’s college radio station WRVU-FM (see my profile of the station from 2010). Back in 2011, students were taken off the air at WRVU and the […]
The big news in public radio today is that New York Public Radio, home to WNYC, WQXR and New Jersey Public Radio, received a $10 million grant from the Jerome L. Greene Foundation. This comes on top of two previous grants that together totaled $11 million. This news is significant not just because it is […]
A few years back I was lucky to get a glimpse into the world of student radio in Ireland. After visiting few stations there and learning a bit about the country’s college radio culture, I am happy to hear that student broadcasters will be convening in Ireland this week. The National Student Radio Conference will […]
In the spirit of seeing if audio content can go viral, APM’s Marketplace asked journalist Stan Alcorn to make a short radio version of his report for Digg, “Is This Thing On,” which explored the question of why audio doesn’t tend to spread across the internet like cat videos. Marketplace has also installed a little […]
There are a couple of interesting items about podcasting to review this week: NPR’s Mike Pesca is quitting to host a Slate Magazine podcast, and a look at different funding methods for ’casts. Before I start, in the interest of full disclosure I want to let readers know that for the next month I will […]
Last week the Public Radio Exchange announced Radiotopia, a new podcast network dedicated to featuring “the best emerging and established talent” in the public radio mold. Jake Shapiro, PRX[/caption]According to PRX Executive Director Jake Shapiro the idea for the network began a few years ago at a staff retreat, in discussions that included Roman Mars, […]
On the heels of radio journalist Stan Alcorn’s inquiry into why web audio does or does not go viral, the Nieman Journalism Lab lets us in on a little experiment that NPR has been running to see if public radio stations can create viral audio segments. Though the report says there’s too little data to […]
