It’s always a treat to check in with the House Office of the Clerk’s lobbying disclosure database and see what broadcast radio’s big boys are spending on Congress these days. Needless to say, the top roller is usually Clear Channel Communications, which forked over $1,370,000 in the second quarter of this year. And what did […]
For the past year we’ve been chronicling the evolution of FCC FREE Radio in San Francisco. Starting out as renegade LPFM community radio broadcasters in 2009, they went Internet-only in May 2010 and are now embarking on a mission of becoming a broader-based Internet radio station and content provider. When I visited a few weeks […]
It’s been a few years since the FCC reached consent decrees with CBS, Citadel and Clear Channel over illegal pay-for-play schemes, so you think that the major broadcasters would have learned their lesson. Apparently the warning didn’t get translated into Spanish. Yesterday the FCC released a new consent decree [PDF] with Spanish-language broadcaster Univision which […]
Every year scores of community and public radio stations apply for funding from the Department of Commerce’s Public Telecommunications Facilities Program. The venue funds a host of capital expenses that many of these stations can’t afford otherwise. The cash goes to upgrading transmission towers, funding shelters for transmitters, and buying new control room equipment, console […]
Big news for broadcasters today, as the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued a decision striking down the FCC’s indecency policy. According to the decision, the “FCC’s current policy fails constitutional scrutiny,” in large part because it is too vague and can lead broadcasters to shy away from airing programming, effectively […]
The union that represents what’s left of the radio broadcasting workforce has told the Federal Communications Commission to keep its current restrictions on how many radio stations an entity can own. The filing by the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) is a reminder of how dramatically broadcast radio ownership has consolidated over […]
National Public Radio’s ombudsman Alicia Shephard pondered an interesting conundrum this week. What do you do when you are covering elections in a state like Utah, where just about everybody can be classified as a “conservative”? How do you grade the distinctions in conservatism? The network’s Howard Berkes decided to roll out the term “ultra-conservative” […]
Lately there’s been a lot of buzz about the comings and goings of pirate radio stations, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area. New station Radio Valencia is about to begin broadcasting any day now in San Francisco and pirate radio stalwart Freak Radio Santa Cruz is continuing in its mission, while looking for a […]
![Freak Radio Studio [image courtesy DIYmedia/flickr]](https://www.radiosurvivor.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/213634017_eacc013ca2_m.jpg "Freak Radio Santa Cruz's transmitter looking for a new home")
As everyone in non-commercial radio in the United States knows, there’s often a fine line between underwriting messages to indicate sponsored programming and commercial announcements. College, community and other non-commercial radio stations are not allowed to air commercials, but they can play underwriting announcements which simply acknowledge the support received by an outside entity. It’s […]
