UK runs YouTube draw for short term radio licenses for Ramadan
Ramadan is coming, and various broadcasters in the United Kingdom want short term radio licenses for the month of fasting, which begins on Wednesday June 17 and ends on Friday July 17. So how is the UK’s telecom regulator allocating them? As the YouTube video below indicates, Ofcom got itself a bunch of lottery-style balls […]
Digital Watch: FCC Approves Pandora Broadcast Buy; HD Radio Patent Troll Dismissed
At the top of this week’s digital radio news is an analog broadcast station. In a deal that took nearly two years to complete, on Monday the FCC removed the first barrier to Pandora buying Rapid City, SD FM station, KXMZ. The Commission granted a waiver of foreign ownership rules which otherwise prohibit a company […]
Santa Cruz’s KUSP votes to sell license
The Santa Cruz Sentinel reports that public radio station KUSP has taken a major step towards selling its license. On Monday KUSP’s board, staff, and volunteers approved a letter of intent to offer it to the Classical Public Radio Network for $1 million. CPRN owns classical radio station KDFC in San Francisco and is headquartered […]
Visiting Bellarmine Radio in Louisville
It’s sort of a weird coincidence that in the past few months I visited radio stations at two different institutions called Bellarmine. I wrote about my trip to see Bellarmine College Preparatory’s AM station KBCP in San Jose, California a few weeks ago and now I’m covering my visit to Bellarmine University’s radio station, Bellarmine […]
Radio Amateurs & Shortwave Broadcasters Assist Nepal Earthquake Relief
In the days since the disastrous earthquake in Nepal amateur radio operators have been lending critical communications assistance, especially in places where power, telephone, wireless and internet service has been interrupted. Nepal has only 99 licensed amateur radio operators, which is why hams from other countries have traveled to the country to help. The country’s […]
There Are Surprisingly Few Spanish-Language News Stations
The Pew Research Center released its annual State of the News Media report for 2015. One fact struck me that I haven’t seen otherwise commented on elsewhere: only 30 Spanish-language radio stations in the US air news and talk programming, out of more than 500 Spanish-language format stations total. That’s seems really low to me. […]
Community radio: how do you use SoundCloud?
I spend a lot of time rummaging around SoundCloud. Some of this energy goes into following the service’s engagingly sporadic use by community radio stations. WFMU in New Jersey, for example, has a SoundCloud page titled WFMU Marathon. “Share an MP3 only (for size & compatibility) telling us what you love about WFMU,” the account requests. […]
Santa Cruz community radio station to weigh selling license to classical network
The Board of Directors of community/public radio station KUSP of the Monterey Bay/Santa Cruz area is holding its annual foundation meeting on Monday, May 4. The Santa Cruz Sentinel reports that the principal item on the agenda will be whether to sell the cash strapped license to the Classical Public Radio Network, which operates classical […]
College Radio Watch: College Radio Scholarship Featured in Special Issue of Interactions
Scholars focused on college radio are a pretty tiny subset of the already small universe of radio scholars, so I am thrilled to see the publication of a student radio-themed issue of Interactions: Studies in Communication & Culture this week. Brian Fauteux shared the news yesterday on Radio Survivor and he and I also have […]
LPFM News: 12 New Stations, Many Avoiding Timeshares
The FCC approved twelve low-power FM construction permits this last week, bringing the grand total to 1839 new low-power FM stations authorized in the 2013 application window. All but one of the approved groups was in an MX group of applicants competing for a single frequency. Six of these groups were able to move out […]