College Radio News Round-Up – WBZC’s Electronic Music, West Virginia’s thriving stations, and KBGA’s Freeform Mantra
Summer is a slow time for college radio news, but a few recent stories caught my interest: College Radio Thriving in West Virginia According to an article in the Charleston Gazette, several West Virginia-based college radio stations are thriving, despite national buzz about recent station shut-downs and sales. Western Virginia University station WWVU 91.7 FM […]
UK revises short term radio license procedures for Ramadan
One of the more interesting permits that Britain’s radio/telecom regulator offers radio broadcasters is short term restricted service licenses (SRSLs for you acronym lovers). They’re reserved for community events, festivals, non-profit offerings, those kind of things. Some noted restricted license holders of the past have included Radio Caroline, Radio Avalon (the Glastonbury Festival), and Takeover […]
Alexander Cockburn, community radio provocateur, 1941-2012
Alexander Cockburn, long associated with a variety of leftist publications, is dead at the age of 71. He died after a “fierce two year battle with cancer,” his friend and associate at Counterpunch, Jeffrey St. Clair, reports: Alex kept his illness a tightly guarded secret. Only a handful of us knew how terribly sick he […]
FCC’s Quarterly Station Count Indicates that Radio is Still Growing in U.S.
The FCC just released its quarterly list of the total number of licensed broadcast stations in the United States. Based on their statistics through June 30, 2012, the number of licensed broadcast radio stations is still on the rise, continuing the trend that we saw last quarter as well as in the quarter ending in […]
Solar flares: should broadcast radio stations be worried?
This month saw an uptick in solar flares—huge Coronal Mass Ejections from our Sun that can spark gorgeous Aurora Borealis effects around the world, but also disrupt radio communications. By “radio” the experts often mean high frequency communications systems, but could broadcast radio stations be affected as well? Well, according to the solarstorms.org site, one […]
Uncle Sam: Thank you, but we won’t dump Rush Limbaugh
The White House has responded to a petition asking the Federal government to eliminate Rush Limbaugh from the lineup of radio programs available on the American Forces Network for overseas troops. “Thank you for your interest in American Forces Network (AFN) programming . . . ” the statement begins, but: “AFN does not censor content, […]
Internet radio rankings show Pandora’s #1 but broadcast is #2
I’ve been enjoying Jennifer Lane’s Audio4cast blog because she cuts through the growing avalanche of stories and fluffed up press releases to highlight just a handful of important news items in the internet radio world each week. She recently wrote about Triton Digital’s top 20 US streaming audio rankings for May, observing that Clear Channel’s […]
Sirius sound quality still sucks
As I’ve admitted before, I can be a stickler for sound quality when it comes to consuming audio media. Unfortunately, in so many ways the fidelity of plain old analog broadcast FM radio is rarely matched by digital media, where lower bitrates and lower sound quality are chosen for cost considerations, or to squeeze more […]
Applications for Review Filed with FCC Regarding KUSF License Transfer
Friends of KUSF and KUSF listener Ted Hudacko have both filed Applications for Review with the FCC, asking for further scrutiny of the transfer of the license for KUSF 90.3 FM from University of San Francisco (USF) to Classical Public Radio Network (CPRN). After the shut-down of college radio station KUSF 90.3 FM in January, […]
How much community radio content can you find on the Internet Archives?
My friend and noted radio historian Jesse Walker e-mailed me the other day. “Just found out that there’s a ton of back issues of the WBAI and KPFK folios posted at archive.org,” Walker wrote. “Did you know this?” He was referring to the Internet Archives, of course. I think I did know, but then I […]