More radio history books for the holidays (or any time)
I am endlessly buying books about the history of radio. Here are some updated recommendations for the holidays. The Hits Just Keep on Coming: The History of Top 40 Radio: Ben Fong-Torres’ immensely fun history of Top 40 radio explores the lives, accomplishments, and antics of the great Top 40 deejays. Frank, engaging, lots of […]
High School Radio News Round-Up: More Sports at KMIH, Students Back at WEPS
It’s no secret that I’m a bit enamored with high school radio. I’ve visited a handful of school district-owned stations (although only one was focused solely on student content) and feel like high school stations provide a tremendous opportunity for young people to experience the power of radio. Although it seems that high school radio […]
CPB probes StoryCorps “multimedia conglomerate” charges
The office of Corporation for Public Broadcasting Ombudsman Joel Kaplan has released some details of its investigation of StoryCorps, prompted by the complaints of blogger Sylvia Kronstadt. StoryCorps is heard on NPR’s Morning Edition and seen on PBS stations. The CPB has given the show 23 grants worth more than $15 million since 2003. In […]
College Radio Survivor: College Radio News Round-Up
As the FCC works its way through the recent batch of LPFM applications, we’re continuing to see some reports from college radio stations who are anxiously awaiting news. One such applicant, Middlesex Community College in Middletown, Connecticut, is hoping to build a radio station in partnership with the local community and with a local high […]
DC Update: Innovation Act passes House, Republicans announce Comm Act update
This was a particularly active week in Washington with regard to legislation that affects radio and our overall communications technology landscape. Here’s what happened. Innovation Act Passes the House The Innovation Act passed the House on Thursday by a vote of 325 to 91 with broad bipartisan support. The bill is intended to fix some […]
LPFM Watch: High School Radio and LPFM News Round-Up
It’s been a busy few days as far as news on the low power FM (LPFM) front goes. Advocates like REC Networks are analyzing the recently filed applications and are starting to find some discrepancies. Earlier this week, REC Networks filed informal objections with the FCC in reference to 245 applications that were all prepared […]
Rough notes: the case for radio deejays talking over music
Full disclosure: once upon a time I was a radio deejay. In the 1980s I took jazz/public radio aficionado Jim Bennett’s engineering course at KPFA in Berkeley and learned how to run the live studio board at the station. The more I “board-opped”, the more I was called upon to substitute for various absent hosts. […]
Open letter asks AOL to hand off Winamp to new stewards
It’s two weeks into the campaign to rescue the beloved but doomed media player Winamp, and the Save Winamp petition has over 41,000 signatures. Unfortunately, there’s been not a peep out of corporate parent AOL, nor any other news about a rumored purchase of Winamp and Shoutcast by Microsoft. The team behind Save Winamp are […]
Podcast Survivor: Entrepreneur Jason Calacanis invests $250k in podcast app Swell
Just about one year ago internet entrepreneur and paid blogging pioneer Jason Calacanis announced that he was getting out of the podcast business, declaring “moderate success is the enemy of breakout success.” Although his podcasting company ThisWeekIn.com was already breaking even, he said that it wouldn’t scale, concluding “Very, very few podcasts have made it […]
REC Networks Questions 245 LPFM Applications Filed by Hispanic Christian Community Network President
LPFM advocate REC Networks has been cranking out reports and analysis in order to make sense of the nearly 3,000 LPFM applications that were filed in the October-November, 2013 window. In the course of that, it has been flagging applications that seem to have errors or that look to be masquerading as local applicants. Today […]