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 […]
New iPhone OS to bring background online radio listening
As an iPhone user I can say with full knowledge that one of the things that holds the device back when it comes to listening to online radio is the lack of multitasking. While the iPod app allows you to play your audio files in the background while surfing the web or using other apps, […]
Tough Times for High School Radio: WHSS to Sign Off
As a radio geek, I’ve always been jealous of the kids who have had the opportunity to do radio beginning in high school. Last fall when I visited WGBK at Glenbrook South High School near Chicago I was impressed by the opportunities that teenagers had to run a real radio station and was optimistic that […]
The Times Tests In-Car Internet Audio
As we reported back in January, all the big radio hoopla at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show as about the incursion of internet audio services like Pandora into car stereo systems. Things have been quiet on that front until I noticed an article in the New York times last week that asks “Will the Internet […]