Bakersfield Burrito! 21 Low Power FM license applications to watch
Perusing through the Federal Communications Commission’s database of pending new Low Power FM applications, I see many worthy contenders. But I would like to be a fly on the wall when the FCC considers the following organizations. What caught my eye are their names: The Global Service Center for Quitting Chinese Communist Party is among […]
College Radio Survivor: Numerous Colleges Apply for LPFM Licenses
I begin this week’s installment of College Radio Survivor with the great news that many colleges and universities took advantage of the recently opened LPFM window and applied for new LPFM licenses. I’m still sifting through the data (there were nearly 3,000 total applicants), but I was thrilled to see that several college radio stations […]
50 Years Ago Today Student Radio Broke News of JFK Assassination
As people are reflecting back on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy 50 years ago today, many of them may remember hearing the news over the radio. College radio stations were among the media outlets breaking the news on this tragic day in history. The WMUC archives actually contain audio from the University of […]
Watch out Beijing: VOA Radiogram working on Chinese text broadcasts
Looks like the Voice of America radiogram project is super busy these days, running lots of trials with text messaging via short wave streams. When last Radio Survivor checked in on the initiative, we stopped to admire a 1938 Philco radio console rigged by a short wave operator to pick up VOA radiograms. Now there’s more […]
Losing Winamp and Shoutcast is bad for internet radio
The news last night that AOL is shutting down its Nullsoft division, which makes the venerable Winamp music app, hit me like a ton of bricks. Now, I haven’t used Winamp regularly in at least 7 years, so the loss of this software won’t have an immediate effect on my daily life. But what’s not […]
Official count of LPFM applications lower than some expectations
I just heard from Peter Doyle, chief of the FCC’s Audio Division, that there were 2,819 filings for low-power FM licenses during the application window that closed last Friday. The applications are publicly searchable in the FCC’s database. The release of this data is just a tad bit earlier than yesterday’s estimated release time, but […]
Farewell to Psychic, Radio and Television Personality Sylvia Browne
I was saddened to hear the news that celebrity psychic Sylvia Browne died yesterday in a San Jose hospital at the age of 77. A mainstay of numerous television shows and the host of her own Internet radio show, Browne was a master of broadcast media. I remember seeing her regularly on the San Francisco-based […]
The consequences of all-digital AM: an amateur operator’s view
As of this writing, almost no comments have landed in the Federal Communications Commission’s docket on AM reform, save the interesting ones of amateur radio operator Nickolaus E. Leggett. Some of his remarks focus on the consequences, as Leggett sees them, of converting the whole AM system to a digital operation. There is “a specific […]
North Carolina State’s College Radio Station WKNC Launches YouTube Channel
More and more radio stations are realizing the importance of having a multimedia operation, incorporating not only audio transmissions, but also video and other web features. Today, North Carolina State University’s student radio station WKNC 88.1 FM announced that it has launched The Lounge video project on YouTube. The nearly one month-old channel so far […]
Official count of LPFM applications to be released in a week
Update Nov. 21, 2013: The FCC actually released the official application total earlier than expected. See our updated report for details: Official count of LPFM applications lower than some expectations There’s been a bit of speculation amongst low-power FM community radio supporters since the licensing window closed last Friday. With all the energy and excitement […]