86-year-old WDOD Shuts Down and Turns AM License Back to FCC
I know a lot of people who would love to have a terrestrial broadcasting license, so it seemed odd to me when I read about a Chattanooga radio station turning its license back to the FCC. Why on earth would a station opt to dispense with their license when there are so many entities out […]
New Jersey getting out of the “Soviet” public radio business
Sandwiched between the large media markets of Philadelphia and New York City, New Jersey has always had a tough time staking out a unique media identity. Of particular concern has been the ability to have good news state news coverage not dominated by the two adjacent metroplexes. The state of New Jersey has had a […]
Bad Few Weeks for College Radio at WXLV, WJMF and WRVU
It’s shaping up to be a really weird and sad couple of weeks for college radio news. Two weeks ago I wrote about the possibility that college radio station WXLV at Lehigh Carbon Community College is up for sale. On Friday I reported that Bryant University’s college radio station WJMF was moving off the FM […]
WRVU’s Call Letters Changed to WFCL Sparking College Radio Station Sale Rumors
It can’t be a good sign when a college radio station that’s rumored to be for sale secretly changes its call letters during summer break. Well, that’s what happened on June 1 to Vanderbilt University’s student radio station WRVU, according to a report on CMJ today. FCC records indicate that on June 1, 2011 the […]
Commercial Radio Station Donated to Meridian Community College
The owner of commercial radio station WKZB in Stonewall, Mississippi is donating the station to Meridian Community College. The “classic hits” station, dubbed 106.9 “The Buzz,” is part of a local network of radio stations in Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana owned by Clay Holladay under the auspices of Mississippi Broadcasters, LLC (and branded as “The […]
How KUVO-FM got its Latino Jazz groove
The National Federation of Community Broadcasters 36th annual conference is finished, and I had a great time moderating one of its workshop panels: Great Music Programs. The panelists included Florence Hernandez-Ramos of the Latino Public Radio Consortium, Anthony Bonet of KALX-FM in Berkeley, and Bonnie Simmons of KPFA-FM, located in that same city. Over the […]
WJMF Losing Spot on FM, Making Room for Classical WCRB
In a variation on a familiar theme, student radio station WJMF at Bryant University in Smithfield, Rhode Island just announced that they will be leaving their terrestrial radio home in light of a deal that the university made with Boston public radio station WGBH. WGBH’s all-classical service will begin airing over WJMF’s FM frequency in […]
DAR.fm is TiVo for your radio, about a decade too late
New York Times personal technology columnist David Pogue recently covered a new web site called DAR.fm that allows any user to record any radio station that’s available on the internet. The site has a schedule database for many, but not all stations, which permits you to look up and schedule a recording of most major […]
Pirate Cat Radio Relaunches Today as Mutiny Radio
Today the former Pirate Cat Radio/PCR Collective relaunched their online-only community radio station in San Francisco as Mutiny Radio. As mentioned in our post yesterday, with this new name they hope to reference their pirate past, but also suggest that they are moving on to a new chapter in the station’s history. According to a […]
Boston pirate bust is a lesson in the slow grind of bureaucracy
It’s been quite some time since I can recall the FCC imploring a U.S. Attorney to issue a warrant to shut down an unlicensed FM station. In fact, it’s quite a rare action, usually reserved for long-running stations that either have been utterly unresponsive to administrative notices or have operated for a long time out […]