Wellesley College Celebrates 70 Years of College Radio on Campus
Not many college radio stations can lay claim to 70 years of broadcasting, so it’s exciting to hear that student radio has been a part of campus life at Wellesley College since 1942. The first station, WBS 730 AM, launched in 1942 and was apparently the first all-woman college radio station. Eventually that station evolved […]
Pacifica radio Executive Director: we are out of money for elections
In a special meeting of the Pacifica National Board held on Thursday, April 26, Pacifica Executive Director Arlene Engelhardt dropped this long overdue bombshell. “I just am very concerned where we are going to come up with a quarter of a million dollars to run an election this year,” she told the Board. This is […]
Merlin Media killing smooth jazz 87.7 to bring alt rock to TV Ch. 6 in Chicago
Editors’ note: Since the publication of this article the smooth jazz format has returned to the Chicago airwaves. Read this December 31, 2014 update for more details. In a move whose logic I honestly don’t understand, Randy Michael’s Merlin Media has entered into a local marketing agreement with Venture Technologies Group, which owns the low-power […]
College Radio History Lesson: KUOI’s 1945 beginnings at University of Idaho
I’ve spent the past through days digging through college radio history artifacts and it’s been inspiring to read about the passion and energy that has gone into building radio stations on campuses across the country since the 1920s. University of Idaho’s free form college radio station, KUOI, started up in 1945 and was a descendent […]
FCC proposes rules to let non-comm broadcasters fundraise for charities on-air
So, last night I wondered if the deletion of the non-commercial station fundraising item from the FCC’s open meeting agenda meant that they were going to release a proposal ahead of time. Today, the Commission answered that question by releasing a proposal to give non-commercial and educational (NCE) stations a limited ability to raise money […]
HD Radio smartphone prototype lands with a thud
Remember that HD Radio enabled smartphone set to debut at the National Association of Broadcasters show last week? There was hoopla–mostly in the industry–leading up to the show. And, then, radio silence. I looked for news reports all last week and didn’t find a thing. Only a NAB email newsletter sent this week brought any […]
Is Twitter a radio station?
Perhaps inspired by its new report indicating that almost one in five Americans have listened to Internet radio in their cars, the Edison research group has a new revelation: Twitter is a form of broadcasting. Upon what evidence is this thesis based? The responses to a survey question that the outfit put to a sample […]
FCC drops non-commercial radio fundraising item from Friday’s meeting
Wednesday the FCC announced that it’s dropping from Friday’s open meeting an item addressing non-commercial radio stations’ ability to fundraise on-air for other non-profit organizations. The item appears to deal with stations raising money for efforts like disaster relief. But, as I wrote earlier this month, this rulemaking might also address non-commercial stations being operated […]
The top three Change.org radio related petitions
As Change.org Ben Rattray founder told the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart on Monday, the web service has been around for about five years. The site lets you launch your own petition, asking a government, or a company, or some other entity to do (or stop doing) something. Here are the top three radio related Change.org […]
Dick Clark: race, class, and the payola scandal of 1959
American Bandstand‘s Dick Clark has died, and the season of online commemorations for him has more or less receded. As a television watching toddler in the early 1960s, I never glommed onto the program. I was just a little too young, and so its huge significance as the first TV rock-and-roll show went past me. […]