Hey Santa Cruz: you have 7 days to decide about KUSP-FM
It is crunch time for KUSP-FM in Santa Cruz, California. The newly launched Adult Album Alternative non-commercial radio station has challenged itself to raise $300,000 or bust by May 1. Here’s the good news. KUSP has become a really nice contempoary rock/pop signal, with live deejays playing all kinds of cool music I’ve never heard […]
College Radio Watch: Celebrating Prince on the Radio
I was as shocked as everyone else yesterday when I glanced up at a TV screen at my local diner and saw the breaking news that Prince has died. I voiced my disbelief and soon there was a chorus of commentary from my fellow restaurant patrons. Wasn’t Prince just in town performing? Was he really […]
LPFM Watch: KUZU-LP, WKYW-LP, and WUUK-LP Set to Launch
Although there hasn’t been much FCC action related to low power FM (LPFM) in the past few weeks, numerous stations are working furiously to get on the air. In Texas, KUZU-LP is preparing to launch in the city of Denton. According to the Denton Record Chronicle, the station is actively fundraising and will host a […]
Happy High School Radio Day Today
Today is the 5th annual High School Radio Day. By last count, 78 high school radio stations from 30 states planned to celebrate the day devoted to the power of student-run radio, high school style. I’ve been lucky to visit a handful of high school radio stations and I’m always in awe of the opportunity […]
Podcast #43 – NPR: When Disrupted, Go Local
A recent Slate article about the podcast challenge to NPR added fuel to the debate about how the public broadcaster should respond to this disruption. Paul jumps into the fray to posit that superserving affiliates and local listeners is key to NPR’s future, while Eric argues that calls for a shift in how coverage is […]
It’s time to make Haiti’s 40+ community radio stations legit
Reading the Miami Herald’s piece on Haiti’s 40 or so community radio stations, I kept wondering to myself, are they legal or not? The article says these signals are “difficult to locate” and have “no official listings and, under Haitian law, the stations do not exist.” So they’re not exactly pirate but they’re not really legitimate […]
College Radio Watch: Celebrating the Power of Radio Art
As I mentioned in a piece earlier this week, a highlight of last weekend’s UCRN (University of California Radio Network) conference for me was a pair of presentations by sound artist Anna Friz. Also a former college radio DJ and program director, Friz is now Assistant Professor, Film & Digital Media at University of California, […]
College Radio Unites at KZSC-Hosted Spring 2016 UCRN Conference
On Saturday, April 9, I took a misty drive from San Francisco to Santa Cruz for the Spring 2016 UCRN (University of California Radio Network) conference (my 10th!). The low key college radio gathering takes place twice a year at a different college radio station in California. Although the organization originally began as a way […]
Are we at the dawn of the post-iHeart radio era? (And will it be good?)
Medialife ponders the imminent collapse of iHeartMedia, a product of Clear Channel’s famous leveraged buyout, which, apparently, has not rescued the new company from its $21bn mountain of debt. Bankruptcy is what the author of the piece hopes for, which will unleash 850 radio licenses onto the market. Ditto for Cumulus Media, drowning in red […]
Podcast #42 – Hug Your Local Radio Journalist Today
Cumulus Media’s long-standing San Francisco radio news station KGO recently laid off its news staff, at the same time the company’s rock station KFOG also fired most of its on-air staff. We discuss what this means for Bay Area listeners and what it indicates for the future of radio journalism. Jennifer Waits joins to bring […]