World College Radio Day takes place on October 6, 2023 and in honor of that, we dig into the early history of college radio on our latest episode of the show. Jennifer Waits walks us through her research about college radio in the 1920s and earlier, sharing details from a paper that she presented this […]
Tucked away on the 3rd floor of the Campus Center at Brown University is a college radio station with a fascinating history. BSR (Brown Student and Community Radio) currently broadcasts online and over 101.1 FM in Providence, Rhode Island, with call letters WBRU-LP, but it is the descendant of likely the first AM carrier current […]
Did you know that upwards of 350 radio stations were established at summer camps across the United States? Dan Braverman, President of Radio Systems, Inc., joins us to share the history of summer camp radio, including his own experience setting up a camp radio station when he was just nine years old. Still involved with […]
On this week’s episode we venture to prison and to a very unusual high school radio station. Members of the artist collective Provisional Island (Heidi Ratanavanich, Eileen Shumate, and Michael McCanne) speak with us about their prison-radio-themed exhibit, An Electric Kite, which is on view at the historic site/museum Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia through […]
How do I get a broadcast radio license? How can I find all the LPFM or college radio stations? Will you visit and write about my favorite station? Every week the editors of Radio Survivor receive, and answer, queries like these from readers and listeners. While we enjoy corresponding with people, we thought we shouldn’t […]
There’s lots of college radio news this week, particularly following last Friday’s College Radio Day, which drew participation from 461 radio stations. Did you hear something particularly interesting or do something special at your college radio station? Since I got my college radio start at a carrier current station, I was excited to learn more […]
Eric and Paul do some “dusting up,” by reviewing some reader emails about carrier current radio. Paul brings the good news about KPLU in Tacoma, WA, which was purchased from its university owner by a community group in order to preserve its local ownership. Then Eric wants to share his experience with the NPR One […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
