Mary Payne clarifies UK pirate radio history
Reader Mary Payne, webmaster of the Radio London website, took a moment to correct and expand upon my surface gloss of UK pirate radio history in my post about a documentary on 90s pirates told through cassette airchecks. In particular, Ms. Payne notes that the BBC didn’t ban rock music in the 60s. Rather, the […]
The art of avoiding hyperbole in radio interviews
Here’s an interesting Larry Gifford YouTube tutorial on the perils of flattering your interview guests, using the faux pas of Pierce Morgan as examples. Very good points to keep in mind:
Rush Limbaugh erases then restores FDR to economic history
One of the nation’s most prominent self-appointed Presidential scholars gave his audience a history lesson today, minus a fairly important detail. Radio rantmeister Rush Limbaugh was musing on the latest economic statistics, which are disappointing. The unemployment rate has dropped to the still high rate of nine percent, indicating that the tepid recovery will continue […]
Fight to Save KUSF Hits Next Phase: Lawyers, Fundraising, and City Hall
The battle to save college radio station KUSF has hit a new phase this week, as the group Save KUSF begins its work to fight the University of San Francisco station’s pending sale to Classical Public Radio Network (owned by University of Southern California and Public Radio Capital) through legal channels. In order to hire […]
Pacifica’s KPFK to try unlicensed radio
On the heels of my post about FCC enforcement of “legal” low-power AM broadcasting, I learn that Pacifica plans to jump into the LPAM arena. The plan is for Pacifica’s Los Angeles station KPFK to serve its Spanish-speaking audience with a network of Part 15 LPAM stations deployed strategically in Latino neighborhoods. According to a […]
Unlicensed AM broadcasting a little safer than FM
Last fall I wrote a post on unlicensed broadcasting on the AM band in the US. The impetus was reading an article on a rare FCC action against a station in Portland, Oregon, which caused me to track down the few other Commission actions against AM pirates in 2010. The so-called Part 15 rules that […]
Xtranormals fight to save KUSF!
Just sent to us. Enjoy!
The history of British underground music through cassettes of pirate stations
While pirate radio has existed in the US since the very invention of the medium, it’s had a far more significant impact in the UK. The movie Pirate Radio dramatized how pirates forged cracks in the dam that the staid BBC built against R&B and rock n’ roll in the 60s. But British pirates retained […]
Pandora wins top billing on Google and Bing searches for “radio”
Do a search of the word “radio” on either Google or Bing, and Pandora online radio is the first result. The runners up are also identical—AOL Radio, followed by Wikipedia’s “radio” entry. I decided to do this experiment following Google’s charge that Microsoft’s Bing uses Google’s search results. Google says its staff came up with […]
Cassette aircheck from pirate radio station inside Pearl Jam box set
The long-surviving Seattle band Pearl Jam has just announced a new box set re-release of their second and third albums, Vs. and Vitalogy. In addition to five LPs and four CDs, the box set will include a cassette recording of a January 8th, 1995 broadcast from Pearl Jam’s Monkeywrench/Self-Pollution radio series. During the 1995 and […]