The art of wiring a Palm Treo to your car stereo
Shortly after posting my piece about BlueToothing my Droid Razr to my Panasonic car stereo, I got this fascinating response from San Diego based indie consultant Bob Hudson: “I put Internet radio in my car back in 2005,” Hudson wrote, “connecting a Palm Treo through the car’s audio system using one those audio adapters that […]
Five (Mitchell Davis) reasons why radio sucks
A single word of advice for Mitchell Davis: decaf. Still, despite the jump cut hyper-frenetic shtick, some of his five reasons why radio sucks resonate: too narrow a range of selections, dumb deejays making dumb noises, too many commercials, too many bleeps on songs that just shouldn’t be played, and making great tunes boring by […]
Radio Happenings at the 2013 CMJ Music Marathon
The CMJ Music Marathon takes over New York City and environs October 15th to 19th, for a dizzying number of music showcases, panels, parties, and special events. Originally a conference focused on college radio, these days the CMJ Music Marathon caters to not only young radio DJs, but also to the hundreds of musicians who […]
CBS should make Audio AdCenter the AdWords of online radio
CBS Radio today announced a new self-service platform to buy advertising on the online streams of its radio stations, called Audio AdCenter. Normally this is not the kind of industry announcement that we would dedicate space to here at Radio Survivor. But taking look at the site demonstrated to me that this is the sort […]
Speaking of unions… KBOO employees ratify 1st contract
A little while after I hit publish on the post about Chicago Public Media workers seeking SAG-AFTRA representation, this report from NW Labor Press came across the transom. On October 8 employees at community radio KBOO-FM in Portland, OR ratified their first contract as a collective bargaining unit. The employees joined the Communications Workers of […]
WBEZ staff seek SAG-AFTRA union representation
The staff of Chicago Public Media, the parent company of NPR affiliate WBEZ-FM, is attempting to unionize. That’s according to a report in Current, which says a majority of staff signed a petition requesting representation by SAG-AFTRA and submitted it to interim CEO Alison Scholly on September 25. Recall that CPM is looking for a […]
Welsh modern rock station petitions to switch to “male focused” format
South Wales commercial FM station holder Nation Radio Ltd. has petitioned the United Kingdom’s broadcast regulator for a format change. It has informed Ofcom that it wants to alter its “Character of Service” from a modern rock station targeting listeners age 15 to 34 to “one which requires the service to play rock-oriented music and […]
Portland Radio Project plans to reunite public service and music
The public service obligation of radio broadcasters has changed, and not for the better. That reality is what’s driving a group of Oregon volunteers to create the Portland Radio Project, a new locally-oriented online station that starts streaming October 18. The group is running a Kickstarter for $100,000 to build and fund a station that […]
Internet radio in my car diary, Entry #1: it works!
The Decision Last December I made a New Years resolution: I would get Internet radio in my Honda Civic by the summer. So in the middle of July I went over to New Sound car stereos in San Francisco and talked to the proprietor Ed Sosa about what I needed: a console with AM/FM plus […]
WFMU’s RadioVision Festival to explore new routes to produce and sustain radio
WFMU’s RadioVision festival enters its third year this October 19 at the Scholastic auditorium in Manhattan’s SoHo. Curator Benjamen Walker said the overarching focus this year is, for radio producers and artists, “How can you stay true to yourself and find the right path?” One successful path is “what someone like (keynote speaker) Laurie Anderson […]