Yikes! Helmet cam video shows 1768-foot broadcast tower climb
I’m not particularly scared of heights, but watching this video definitely raised my heart rate. It’s a helmet-camera view from a tower worker scaling a 1768-foot broadcast tower to perform maintenance. The first 1600 feet are in an elevator, but the last 60 are a “free climb” without safety harnesses. I know the video has […]
Three takes on how many new LPFMs might be in major markets
How many new LPFM stations will there be? That is one of the biggest questions on the mind of community radio supporters, especially since the FCC’s March ruling resolving the tension between processing the backlog of translator applications and saving room for new low-power stations. Radio World recently published a short survey of best guesses […]
Radio Valencia: inside the new Mission Street digs
As promised, San Francisco community based radio station radiovalencia.fm has moved from Chicken John’s Chez Poulet hangout on Cesar Chavez to a swell new third story studio operation at 2390 Mission Street “on the northwest corner of 20th St directly across from Bruno’s,” as the relocation announcement put it. I dropped by on Sunday to schmooze […]
Pandora rallies fans for performance royalty reform
Pandora’s own Tim Westergren took to the blogosphere on Friday to urge support for a new performance royalty reform bill freshly introduced to Congress: Representative Jason Chaffetz’s (R-UT) Internet Radio Fairness Act. The proposed law would correct an “unfair royalty system that forces us to pay massive licensing costs,” the founder of the music streaming […]
Is this Sign at Your Radio Station?
After visiting probably 40 radio stations, I’ve come to expect to find certain artifacts at every station. As I wrote back in 2010, there are a whole bunch of items that I regularly see when I travel to college radio stations, including skull-themed paraphernalia. I frequently see sticker-covered cabinets, funky couches, pop culture artifacts (from […]
Is your PC laptop the best deal for Internet radio?
I’ve been writing a lot about Internet radio and mobile devices these days. But sometimes I think there are advantages to tuning in on my PC laptop instead. Advantage number one: avoiding monthly charges. Most radio social networking applications on your PC are free with advertisements, including Last.fm. But want to get Last on your […]
Spinning Indie Radio Station Field Trip to WPGU in Champaign
I’m always interested in visiting radio stations that defy the norm, which could mean that they play an unexpected genre or do experimental programming or are simply under the radar. As I plotted out my radio station field trip wish list in advance of my visit to Urbana-Champaign for the Grassroots Radio Conference (see Paul’s […]
New film to tell the story of New Zealand’s own offshore radio pirate
I was unaware that New Zealand had a pirate radio scene in the 1960s. But upon further reflection it makes sense, since that country’s radio dial was similarly monopolized by state broadcasters just like the UK and continental Europe. This meant that insurgent rock n’ roll music was hard to find, making for a ready […]
31 songs about radio: a Spotify playlist
Over the last two years, Paul Riismandel, Jennifer Waits, Helen Yamamoto, and I have posted various mentions and lists of popular songs about radio (Paul, Jennifer, Jennifer, Helen, and me). Many of you wrote in with your own personal favorites. After noting one of Spotify’s best features—letting subscribers publish playlists on the web via embedded HTML—I […]
Behind the scenes at a grassroots international daily radio news program
Listeners to Free Speech Radio News may not realize that only two of the producers are in the same location. The rest of the staff–not just reporters and correspondents–are geographically dispersed and work together over the phone and internet. This is due to the grassroots nature of FSRN, but also because the organization’s tight finances […]