A “distraction” that won’t go away: FCC drops Fairness Doctrine again
Apparently you can’t repeal the Fairness Doctrine too many times over at the Federal Communications Commission. Today FCC Chair Julius Genachowski announced that the policy, which the agency dumped in the 1980s, needs to be scotched yet again. An “unnecessary distriction,” Genachowski called the Fairness Doctrine, which “holds the potential to chill free speech and […]
The Wheeler School to Lease FM Airwaves to Rhode Island Public Radio
Last week WELH 88.1 FM in Providence, Rhode Island announced that it was working on a deal to lease its signal to WRNI, Rhode Island Public Radio, for the next 10 years. WRNI currently airs NPR news programming over 102.7 FM in southern Rhode Island and over 1290 AM in Providence. As part of this […]
Four cool turntable.fm extensions for Chrome
I’m continuing to cultivate my turntable.fm addiction by experimenting with various extensions of the music social networking application for the Chrome browser. No doubt there are many. So far I’ve found four that I enjoy. First a quick refresher. The way turntable.fm works is that you join a room as either a listener or a […]
10 months after Tribune Randy Michaels is back with FM news stations in Chicago and NYC
When last we heard from Randy Michaels he was exiting the Tribune Tower in Chicago, resigning after news broke that he turned the company’s broadcast division into Animal House. While the architect of Clear Channel’s buy, consolidate and gut approach to broadcasting was busy allegedly throwing poker parties, he shuffled beloved hosts and drove down […]
2012 Princeton Review’s 20 “Most Popular” College Radio Stations
Students are heading back to their college campuses for the start of another new academic year and once again it’s time for Princeton Review to announce results from their annual survey of college students. The 2012 edition of “The Best 376 Colleges,” represents the results of mostly online surveys conducted with more than 122,000 students […]
Need a death metal radio widget for your blog? Here you go
This is one of those innovations where I’m sure it has been done elsewhere, but this version seems pretty elegant. You’ve got a blog about death metal rock. Maybe you’d like a widget that links to a death metal rock channel 24/7? Well, to your right meet “Radio Doom,” hosted by Adam Shore and his […]
KUSF Listener Asks FCC for Formal Hearing over Pending Station Sale
The legal back and forth with the FCC over the proposed sale of University of San Francisco (USF)’s college radio station KUSF to Classical Public Radio Network (CPRN) has featured arguments from several people and entities who have filed Petitions to Deny the station transfer. KUSF listener Ted Hudacko, who previously filed a Petition to […]
A live Jam concert from 1980 demonstrates the synchronicity of radio
I’ve written about Chicago “progressive” rock station WXRT-FM before. It’s truly the only commercial music station in the city that I can tolerate listening to for any extended period of time. Sure, its commercial stop sets can be as long and annoying as any other stations, but everything else about the station stands pretty far […]
Spotify in the US – a review: Is it a Pandora & last.fm killer?
Spotify is an online streaming music service that has been available in parts of Europe since 2008. It differentiates itself from popular US music services like Pandora and last.fm by permitting users to actually select the specific artists and songs to hear, rather than only relying upon an algorithm to choose music similar to a […]
NPR angst: entitlements, cutting off Barney Frank, gay conversion therapy
NPR’s new ombudsman Edward Schumancher-Matos is cranking out a slew of interesting posts, of late. Among them: Is “entitlements” an appropriate word to use in news stories describing social security? “A pension is not something you are entitled to, it is something that belongs to you,” one listener wrote to NPR in response to numerous […]