No less than fifteen different organizations have applied for a single Low Power FM signal in Los Angeles, California: 101.5 FM. I would not want to be the Federal Communications Commission staff person who has to decide which of these groups get access to that frequency. Here are some excerpts from their application statements. Future […]
While Syria’s bloody civil war increasingly looks like a stalemate, and the US has held off on retaliatory bombing in favor of chemical weapons inspections, brave broadcasters are taking risks to bring free flowing information and news to the people of Syria through their radio dials. Where the local press is tightly controlled by the […]
If you subscribe to our weekly newsletter, you’ve got access to Paul Riismandel’s summary of the latest salvos between musicians, radio stations, and Pandora over performance royalties. Paul notes that everything in this debate is contested, including how much musicians should be paid for each Pandora “spin” of a song, how to calculate those payments, […]
It has been a while since I checked in with Clear Channel’s federal Lobby report, which you can look up via the House of Representatives Office of the Clerk database. The radio giant’s latest disclosure form indicates that the company spent $1,170,000.00 on lobbying in the first quarter of 2013. Here’s which legislative and Federal […]
As we reflect back on 2012, there’s no clear answer about the state of college radio. In a way, college radio may be getting back to normal following a particularly dramatic 2011. Although some stations left the air this year, others continued to thrive and new stations were born. Fall-out from 2011 continued this year, […]
A new Internet radio package called Samvibe crossed my radar the other day. Produced by Spacial, it’s a cloud based system that allows the user to easily upload music and sounds, then set rotation rules for all kinds of entertainment channels. But what makes Samvibe different from other packages is that it brands itself as […]
Friends of KUSF and KUSF listener Ted Hudacko have both filed Applications for Review with the FCC, asking for further scrutiny of the transfer of the license for KUSF 90.3 FM from University of San Francisco (USF) to Classical Public Radio Network (CPRN). After the shut-down of college radio station KUSF 90.3 FM in January, […]
This is turning into a significant year for documentaries about free form radio. We’ve already mentioned Freeform or Death, a film about WFMU-FM in New Jersey. Now comes Radio Unnameable, a doc about free form radio legend Bob Fass at Pacifica station WBAI in New York City. Fass began his remarkable career there in 1963. […]
Adam Yauch, also known as MCA, of the Beastie Boys passed away from cancer today at the age of 47. Although I knew Yauch had been battling cancer for the last few years, the news still hit me as a shock. I started to think about how my relationship to Yauch and his bandmates’ music […]
As the United Nation’s UNESCO agency celebrates World Radio Day, it is important to remember that independent radio broadcasters around the globe face constant hostility from their governments. They must contend with regimes that politicize the licensing process, explicitly forbid free speech, or even prosecute radio hosts in the courts. Radio Survivor has covered many […]
