This weekend, Radio Survivor embarked on the Terrible Twos. On June 11, 2009 we posted our first story on Low Power FM radio. Jennifer Waits, Paul Riismandel, and I have been blogging away ever since.
24 months later, our mission is the same. We see ourselves as critical advocates for participatory radio—community, public, college, Low Power FM, Internet, satellite, public, mobile, and pirate. We ponder the medium from the vantage of participants and consumers. We love radio in all its forms, but Radio Survivor is not “the voice of the industry.” We write from the perspective of listeners, joiners, and fans.
As such, we’re often ahead of the curve. The New York Times ran an op-ed piece on Sunday about the unfortunate sale of Vanderbilt’s college radio station and the crisis of college radio in general. It’s great of The Times to discover the problem. But if you regularly visit these pages, you know that Jennifer is a national go-to writer on this issue, recognized as such by her peers.
When Air America radio hit the dust, I don’t think anyone had a better analysis of the network’s history than Paul (ditto for his work on Howard Stern). Meanwhile, the Federal Communications Commission has just issued a new report on media, which notes that bandwidth costs often restrict how local an Internet radio station can get. We posted a piece on that problem almost a year ago.
But we’re not a cheering squad for the masses, either. We’re perfectly happy to point out dubious college, community, and pirate radio strategies when necessary, because we want these venues to thrive. Radio Survivor is what its logo says it is: “news, views and tough love for radio.”
Regular readers should look for a significant design change for the site, and soon. But the purpose will always remain the same. So if you’re starting a new show, starting a new station, having a problem (eg, your campus administration wants to shut you down!), or have just won a victory, send us an e-mail or join our Facebook page. If you search for and buy something via our Amazon store, we’ll get a cut of the proceeds, and that always helps.
Thanks, by the way, to all the people who have helped us get to this place, among them Gavin Dahl, Chris Stroffolino, Kevin Vance, Allison Rolls, Bob Mason, John Anderson, and Helen Yamamoto. Adelante!
