Lizards and Satellites: Community Public Radio Hybrid KZYX's Station in the Woods
Back in January when Matthew, Paul and I were listing off our favorite radio shows of all time, I pronounced my love for “Trading Time,” a locally-produced call-in swap show on community radio station KZYX out of Philo, California. I’ve always found this show to be riveting since it provides a glimpse of everyday life […]
FCC ponders the future of radio consolidation
The Federal Communications Commission is reviewing its media ownership rules again. That ordeal took up quite a bit of public bandwidth over the last decade, especially after former FCC Chair Michael Powell proposed scotching most of them. Now we’re back to square one, with the Commission launching a Notice of Inquiry about its current ownership […]
Grassroots Radio Coalition's Annual Conference
While I was off touring another community radio station this past weekend (stay tuned for a full report), an entire conference devoted to grassroots community radio was taking place further north in California at KMUD (Redwood Community Radio) in Garberville and Redway. Organized by the Grassroots Radio Coalition, described on their website as “a reaction […]
Do community advisory boards protect public radio stations?
Free Press has a provocative new report on the state of public media and how to more adequately fund it. Many of the reform group’s proposals involve siphoning income from commercial station advertising revenue or Federal Communications Commission spectrum auctions. I’ve got an overview of the document up on Ars Technica, which has generated quite […]
FCC orders fix to unleash wireless broadband near Sirius XM band
The Federal Communications Commission’s long awaited Order to fix interference problems between Sirius XM [SIRI] and the neighboring Wireless Communications Services (WCS) band is published. Here’s hoping it will at long last resolve this feud, and allow for peaceful coexistence on the 2.3 MHz band. At least that’s the idea, says FCC Chair Julius Genachowski. […]
New Community Radio Station Launches in Pescadero
On Saturday, May 8th new community radio station KPDO 89.3 FM launched in Pescadero, California, in a rural community halfway between San Francisco and Santa Cruz. As I wrote a few weeks ago, the station is being run by Daniel Roberts who is also at the helm of Pirate Cat Radio in San Francisco. I […]
Vinyl Alive at WFMU
It seems like I can barely go a fortnight without mentioning New Jersey’s greatest radio station. But here I am again posting about freeform music station, WFMU. This time it’s because the record collector magazine Goldmine has produced a short video all about the station’s amazing record library. I’m a vinyl enthusiast myself, having never […]
The Avenue Offers Chicago a New AM Music Format
One night last week I was tuning around the AM dial here in Chicago before going to sleep when I happened upon a station playing a nice, but unusual mix of vocal jazz standards. The music set was long, interrupted only by an ID for “950 the Avenue.” The next morning I googled the station […]
Keeping up with music festivals on last.fm
In case you haven’t noticed, last.fm has a cool new feature, a list of upcoming music festivals in your area. “We know from experience that many of the best music memories happen when you’re rocking out in a field with thousands of other sunburnt/soaking wet compatriots,” Last’s Robin Lisle wrote in a recent blog post. […]
Turning "public radio" into "public media"
An interesting new report on an interesting public radio experiment has just been released. The document is rather elaborately dubbed Spreading the Zing: Reimagining Public Media Through the Makers of Quest 2.0. Once you get past the title, it’s definitely worth a read. The gist of the survey is a review of eight Corporation for […]