Lovers of the truly bizarre process by which the Federal Communications Commission receives indecency complaints from the public will enjoy our comprehensive table of all indecency, obscenity, and profanity complaints logged by the agency since 2002. Here’s a sample of the last line of the chart: 2008 Jan. Feb. Mar. “Indecency/Obscenity 578 505 179,997 “General […]
Author Archive | Matthew Lasar
Pandora announces Pandora for Android
You can get it on the iPhone, you can get it on your Blackberry. Now you can get Pandora on Android. “I know this has been a really long time coming and I’d like to thank all of you for your patience. Hope you enjoy the app,” declared Pandora “tech and product guy” Tom Conrad […]
Re-meeting the Beatles on the Internet
If you are a cultural curmudgeon like me, you’ll doubtless respond to any mention of “Beatlemania” with the sign of the cross. But seconds after I went over to Accu Radio’s Re-meet the Beatles streaming radio page, I was won over by what I heard. “A lot of this music will be brand new for […]
FCC lets radio off the hook in content filtering inquiry
The Federal Communications Commissions report on the state of content filtering and blocking devices is out. It says a whole lot about the V-Chip, satellite/cable blocking systems, video games, youtube, and mobile phone apps, but not much about radio. The survey continues: “Most commenters addressing the issue contend that we should not examine audio-only programming […]
PO'd photo painter hits left/right wing radio/TV talkers
“Paint Your Life is an Equal-Opportunity Offender,” was the title of the e-mail we received today from Assaf Kostiner, proprietor of the Paint Your Life web site. The service will take any photo and turn it into a painting, but it looks like Kostiner did these two portraits free of charge. He’s sick of the […]
FCC reaches out to LPFMs near California wildfires
If you’ve got a Low Power FM radio station around one of those awful wildfires near Los Angeles, the Federal Communications Commission is allowing Special Temporary Authority to erect emergency antennas without immediate authorization from the FCC. “If a licensee desires to continue to use an emergency antenna, it must submit a request for STA […]
Review: a long way to go for Blackberry live radio apps
After reading my colleague Paul Riismandel’s review of Public Radio Player 2.0 for the iPhone, I’ve been meaning to survey the possibilities for live radio listening on my Blackberry Curve 8330—that is to say, to tune into terrestrial stations on the device. Alas, so far I haven’t found very many. Don’t get me wrong. There […]
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The education of a radio pirate
I am belatedly reading Sue Carpenter’s wonderful memoir 40 Watts From Nowhere and chuckling at her evolution from a disgruntled DJ wannabe to a radio station manager. The book is sine qua non for anyone who aspires to run any kind of community-style radio station, as far as I’m concerned, because it shows how different […]
Digital radio revenues up; terrestrial way down
If you are looking for the bright spot in radio’s future, it’s streaming from a digital platform. The Radio Advertising Bureau’s report for this year’s second fiscal quarter makes this abundantly clear. Local and national over-the-air radio saw a 25% drop in revenue, while digital saw a ten percent boost. Digital radio’s revenue from advertising […]