My Jungle Boogie moment
It was 1975. I was 20 years old. I had just left home. I worked and went to college in Manhattan, and lived with my girlfriend in the Bronx. Meanwhile, Kool and the Gang‘s hit tune “Jungle Boogie” jumped to one of the most requested songs on the radio. Transcriptions of the lyrics to this […]
Ghost Story with Physics: Radio Drama Explores Wireless Pioneer
Coming up this weekend on the evening of Sunday, July 25th, BBC Radio 3 will be airing a 90 minute radio drama that explores the life of wireless radio pioneer Sir Oliver Lodge. British physicist Sir Oliver Lodge transmitted radio signals in 1894 (before Marconi), studied wireless transmissions and also investigated psychic phenomena such as […]
Should "male thickening" ads be on the radio?
As a regular listener to commercial radio stations, I often hear radio ads that I really wish weren’t broadcast, especially later at night. With this post I begin an ongoing series on these spots, my least favorite being the Prolixus “male thickening” product. The radio script runs as follows: Hey guys, does size really matter? […]
U.S. Court of Appeals Strikes Down FCC's Indecency Policy
Big news for broadcasters today, as the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued a decision striking down the FCC’s indecency policy. According to the decision, the “FCC’s current policy fails constitutional scrutiny,” in large part because it is too vague and can lead broadcasters to shy away from airing programming, effectively […]
Broadcasters union to FCC: don't change your radio ownership rules
The union that represents what’s left of the radio broadcasting workforce has told the Federal Communications Commission to keep its current restrictions on how many radio stations an entity can own. The filing by the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) is a reminder of how dramatically broadcast radio ownership has consolidated over […]
Spies still using radio
Numbers stations have been part of radio lore for decades. If you’ve ever listened to much shortwave radio at some point you would have come across an unidentified station broadcasting only a person reading off numbers, like an endless lotto feed: “21 99 36….” Sometimes this is in English, and often in Spanish or other […]
Hey NPR: bring back the word "reactionary"
National Public Radio’s ombudsman Alicia Shephard pondered an interesting conundrum this week. What do you do when you are covering elections in a state like Utah, where just about everybody can be classified as a “conservative”? How do you grade the distinctions in conservatism? The network’s Howard Berkes decided to roll out the term “ultra-conservative” […]
Christian Radio Station Quells Violence after Mehserle Verdict
Although I still haven’t sleuthed out the origins of “Oscar Grant Radio,” the mobile radio station that offered up a voice for citizens on the streets of Oakland following the Johannes Mehserle verdict on Thursday, today I learned about another station that was live on the street in order to both discourage violence and offer […]
Oscar Grant Radio on the Streets of Oakland
After the verdict was read yesterday in the trial of former BART police officer Johannes Mehserle in the shooting death of Oscar Grant, there was a great deal of media coverage about local reactions in the San Francisco Bay Area. Most interesting to me was a brief glimpse of a mobile radio station in Oakland […]
FCCFREE RADIO: Pirates No More
Lately there’s been a lot of buzz about the comings and goings of pirate radio stations, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area. New station Radio Valencia is about to begin broadcasting any day now in San Francisco and pirate radio stalwart Freak Radio Santa Cruz is continuing in its mission, while looking for a […]