FCC Decision in San Francisco LPFM Group Means Probable SF Community Radio and SF Public Press Time-Share
On Friday, the FCC released a Memorandum Opinion and Order, which may bring a resolution to the lengthy and contentious competition for a new low power FM (LPFM) channel in San Francisco at 102.5 FM. This paves the way for a potential time-share between the two remaining applicants: San Francisco Community Radio and San Francisco […]
Hastings College Radio Station KFKX to Leave the Air on Thursday
We first reported back on May 16, that plans were in the works for college radio station KFKX 90.1 FM at Hastings College in Hastings, Nebraska to leave the air. Well, the day has come this Thursday, June 30th. Over the weekend, alumni came back to celebrate the station (see video here) and prior to […]
Radio Station Field Trip #103 – Touring Takoma Radio as it nears its LPFM Launch
It’s been particularly exciting for me to visit some of the new low power FM (LPFM) community radio stations that are in development thanks to the Local Community Radio Act. After an all-day field trip from Washington, D.C. to Culpeper, Virginia (to see the Library of Congress’ Packard Campus of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center), […]
Nuts! Why John Romulus Brinkley still matters
I am so looking forward to Penny Lane’s new documentary on John Romulus Brinkley, coming here to San Francisco in early July. Titled Nuts! it chronicles “Doctor” Brinkley’s rise as the Depression era midwestern mega-quack who championed the grafting of goat glands into the gonads of his patients. To promulgate this astoundingly bad cure for male sexual […]
College Radio Watch: Hidden History of Carrier Current Radio and More News
I hope you caught this week’s Radio Survivor Podcast (episode #51), in which I talk about the history of carrier current college radio. Dating back to 1936, college radio carrier current stations starting popping up on campuses in earnest throughout the 1940s, 50s, 60s, 70s, and beyond. At one point there were rumored to be […]
Radio Station Field Trip #102 – WGTB at Georgetown University
After visiting WCUA at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. on February 24, I made my way to Georgetown in order to check out college radio station WGTB at Georgetown University. Since it’s a bit more difficult to get to via the Metro system, I opted for a long walk to campus, with a break mid-way […]
Podcast #51 – Carrier Current is Cool
The DC Circuit Court of Appeals recently upheld the FCC’s open internet rules, also known as net neutrality. Co-Host of the podcast Eric Klein admits that he still finds it hard to believe that the big telecom companies can lose so Paul Riismandel explains it’s not such a surprise that Big Telecom didn’t get it’s […]
College Radio Watch: Happy 80th Anniversary to Carrier Current College Radio and More News
Thanks to Matthew Lasar for pointing out that this year marks the 80th anniversary of carrier current broadcasting on college campuses. According to Louis Bloch’s 1980 tome, Gas Pipe Networks, the first carrier current college radio station launched at Brown University in 1936. The technology caught on and by the late 1970s there were purportedly […]
Hey, let’s do a podcast! (hello? hello???)
My friend Ian Scheller has released volume two of his Hollywood Strips comics series. This panel (below) hit home for me, and perhaps for you as well. I don’t mean to single out podcasting here. Basically, this is my experience with spontaneously getting into almost any media project these days, from learning a new computer programming language […]
The Gas Pipe Networks is eighty
I own a lot of books about the history of radio. Unique among them is Louis M. Bloch Jr.’s charming and strange volume titled The Gas Pipe Networks: A History of College Radio, 1936-1946. Every now and then I open its pages and am transported to a distant world of struggling collegiate stations. The tome chronicles lads and […]