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 […]
Lawyers for Friends of KUSF Ask FCC for Evidentiary Hearing
Over the past 10 days, the lawyers for Friends of KUSF have been delving into the hundreds of pages of documents that were submitted in response to the FCC’s recent letter of inquiry into the pending sale of college radio station KUSF to Classical Public Radio Network (CPRN). As I recounted in my story yesterday, […]
Scrutiny of KUSF Deal Continues as USF and CPRN Respond to FCC’s Inquiry Letter
It’s been nearly seven months since the plug was pulled on the University of San Francisco (USF) terrestrial college radio station KUSF, and the FCC is still scrutinizing the pending sale of the 90.3 FM license to Classical Public Radio Network (CPRN). On August 1, USF and CPRN submitted their joint response to the FCC’s […]
Rock radio’s war against disco
Sirius XM has announced a new music channel: Studio 54 Radio, described as a 24/7 commercial free tribute to the legendary club of the disco era. "The channel will air music that comes from the vaults and special record collections of insiders, much of which has never been heard since the club’s doors shut," the […]
Microradio pioneer Mbanna Kantako receives notice from the FCC
Mbanna Kantako has been running one of the longest lived unlicensed radio stations in the US, Human Rights Radio in Springfield, IL. He served as the inspiration for Stephen Dunifer and other microradio activists who used unlicensed broadcasting as a means for civil disobedience in the 1990s. While Kantako has had several run-ins with the […]
New York State makes pirate broadcasting a misdemeanor
Last week New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed legislation that makes broadcasting on the AM or FM dials a class A misdemeanor, which is punishable with up to a year in prison. Like similar laws in New Jersey and Florida, the legislation was pushed by broadcasters in the state who cheered its passage. The original […]
Turntable.fm’s best kept secret: great classical music
Everybody’s talking about turntable.fm these days, the service that allows you to create your own music rooms and share tunes with your friends. The New York based startup is such a huge hit that it appears that Lady Gaga and Kanye West are investing their possibly hard earned cash in the application. We did a […]
New Zealand’s Radio One 91 FM Fends Off Sale of Student Station
It’s nice to hear some good news amid all the battles over the future of college radio. After a very public protest over a rumored sell-off, the University of Otago student radio station Radio One 91FM in Dunedin, New Zealand announced today that the station will not be sold. Back in July, the student association […]