LPFM News: Established Community Media Groups Get LPFMs
The total number of low-power FM construction permits issued hit 1,598, twenty-six of them issued in the last week. There are more stations in big urban metro areas this batch, including ones in Las Vegas, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Kansas City, San Diego and Chicago. There also are a number of established community media groups that are […]
My Visit to Public Radio Station KEXP in Seattle
During a trip to Seattle in October, 2014 for the College Broadcasters Inc. (CBI) conference (see my report on that event), I carved out time to visit five radio stations in the area. My first stop was to public radio station KEXP-FM in Seattle. (more…)
Podcasting News: Reddit Launches Upvote, NPR Breaks New Ground
There were three notable entrants into the podcasting world in the last week. As I’ve written before, I don’t feel compelled to cover every new podcast or network that comes on the scene. In part this is because of the sheer volume of new shows, but also because I like to keep a focus on […]
The Latest FCC Call Sign Changes Herald the Return of WRVU (LP) and the End of WIP
As I perused the list of the most recent call sign changes issued by the FCC, I found some interesting tidbits. The call sign for the former Vanderbilt University FM radio station, WRVU, is making a terrestrial radio comeback of sorts (WRVU.org is still used by an online station at Vanderbilt, but the now sold […]
Building My First Radio – Elenco’s Crystal Radio Kit
I’ve always wanted to build a radio and luckily Santa brought me three radio kits last month. So, the day after Christmas, I enlisted my dad and my daughter to help make a few. For my first project, my dad and I constructed a crystal radio using a kit made by Go Lab/Tree of Knowledge […]
Cleveland’s “La Mega” and the case for channel 6 FM radio
The Federal Communications Commission’s proceeding on whether to permit Low Power TV stations to broadcast FM on channel 6 (87.7 FM) has reached its formal deadline: January 12 (backgrounder here). The FCC rolled the question into a whole suite of issues facing LPTV. Of interest to us is a defense of the channel 6 FM […]
Radio Survivor’s 2014 Year in Review
Happy 2015! As we start the year, it’s a good time to reflect on the biggest radio stories of 2014 and also to make our predictions for 2015. Over the past few weeks we’ve shared our thoughts on the state of college radio, low power FM (LPFM), radio in academia, and podcasting in 2014, as […]
Ham radio to FCC: don’t let Marriott mess with our bands!
Amateur radio operators are weighing in on the hotel industry’s petition to the Federal Communications Commission asking for authority to “manage” Wi-Fi hot spots used by hotel patrons. In October the FCC hit Marriott with a $600k fine for blocking personal Wi-Fi networks at its Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center in Nashville, Tennessee. Meanwhile […]
Je suis Echo of Moscow?
The online/FM indie Russian radio station Echo of Moscow is under fire for posting a questionnaire to its readers on its website. The question went roughly as follows: “Whether [to] print editions cartoons of the Prophet MuhammadMuhammad in response to the shooting of the editorial board ‘Charlie Hebdo’?” Over half a million people voted (yes, […]
Framingham State’s College Radio Station WDJM Makes Deal with FCC to Address Public File Violations
In another instance of the FCC giving student-run college radio stations a break, Framingham State University radio station WDJM-FM in Framingham, Massachusetts agreed to pay a lesser penalty of $1,200 for public file violations. According to a Consent Decree adopted on December 31, 2014, the university agreed to pay the penalty and set up a […]