Digital Watch: Chicago Taxes Spotify; Internet Radio Awards
After dedicating two consecutive posts–and part of this week’s podcast–to Apple’s Beats 1 Radio I’m taking a little break before reviewing Apple Music. So this week I have just a few stories of interest to online and digital radio. Chicago to Tax Subscription Radio Services First, is a truly puzzling one from Chicago, where the […]
FCC’s Quarterly Station Count: Radio is Still Growing, Particularly LPFM
Today, the FCC released its quarterly list of the total number of licensed broadcast stations. As we’ve seen in recent years, the number of licensed stations continues to grow, with the current grand total at 15,455 licensed full power radio stations as of June 30, 2015. The biggest increase this quarter is in the number […]
“Madroids” take to New Mexico’s airwaves
Low Power FM station Madrid Community Radio is on the air. We posted about the Madrid, New Mexico station some months ago and now it has gotten a write up from the Santa Fe Reporter. Author Benjamin Yeager says he can pick up K96.9 all the way from Santa Fe. It broadcasts from the lower depths of […]
A Legacy of Failure: FCC and Media Ownership Policy
Four years ago, on July 7, 2011, the United States Third Circuit Court of Appeals handed down a second “remand” to the Federal Communications Commission’s attempt to weaken its media ownership rules. When a court remands an action by a government agency, it is telling the agency that the decision is somehow wrong, often procedurally wrong, and needs to be revised. The […]
Radio Survivor Podcast #5: Don’t Make Our Radios Obsolete
We examine digital radio in Norway, where the biggest FM stations will go away in 2017, and in the US, where the adoption of HD Radio has been slow. We also assess Apple’s new, and underwhelming, Beats 1 Radio. In college radio news Jennifer reviews the upcoming CBI conference and podcasts at WMSE in Milwaukee, […]
Zambia to community radio: you are on your own
When it comes to funding community radio stations, Zambia’s Minister of Information and Broadcasting Services can only offer some friendly advice: good luck with all that. “Let me make it very clear that it will not be possible for Government to fund community radio stations,” the Zambia Daily Mail quotes Chishimba Kambwili as saying. “Already we […]
Report: London is pirate radio heaven (or hell, depending on your viewpoint)
The United Kingdom is so famous for its pirate radio stations that Hollywood made a movie about one. But as always the government is quite dour about these unlicensed signals, and has shut 400 of them down recently, according to a newspaper report. The London Evening Standard says that a quarter of the crackdowns over […]
Anger follows Cumulus closure of KGO’s South Bay wing
Cumulus media has closed the South Bay bureau for KGO news-talk radio. Just like that, according to the San Jose Mercury News blog Internal Affairs: “Here at IA, we’re told it was done in a particularly sudden and ugly way: Two officials with Cumulus Media, which bought the station four years ago, showed up last […]
College Radio Watch: 50 Best College Radio Stations?, Two New FM Stations, WSOU Metal Countdown, WMSE Adds Podcasts + More News
In this week’s Radio Survivor Podcast (our 4th!) I join Paul Riismandel and Eric Klein as the third co-host for the first half hour of the podcast. In addition to talking about radio in general, I also spent more time discussing some stories that I’ve written about here, including Nikki Marra’s college radio documentary, the […]
LPFM Watch: The Six Segments of LPFM + More Community Radio in Seattle
I just noticed a great piece on REC Networks, “The Six Segments of LPFM,” which outlines the wide array of groups that hold licenses for low power FM (LFPM) radio stations. As we’ve been following the growth of LPFM, particularly after the 2013 application window, I have been interested to learn more about stations in […]