I first learned of Lorenzo Milam because of his groundbreaking book, “Sex and Broadcasting.” Subtitled, “A Handbook on Starting a Radio Station for the Community,” it’s an idiosyncratic journey through the independent media landscape of the late 60s and early 70s. While it does serve as a handbook of sorts, as advertised, it’s a lot […]
I got my first Sonos speaker more than five years ago, and since then I’ve installed a speaker in nearly every room of my small house (except the bathrooms). Just a few weeks ago I treated myself to the rechargeable and portable Sonos Move so I can better enjoy music in my back yard. Though […]
Carl Malamud is credited with having one of the very first streaming internet talk radio shows, “Geek of the Week,” beginning in 1993. And because it was available for download, too, it’s considered a proto-podcast. Carl joins us this week to dig into this early history of internet radio, recounting how his efforts quickly snowballed […]
Thanks to our intrepid and loyal readers I’ve learned a bit more about the mystery signal I reported on last week. To recap, I DX’d a station at 1700 AM – a frequency with very few stations assigned across the continent – that simply played 80s pop music, with station IDs that were difficult for […]
Before going to bed I often enjoying scanning the radio dials, listening for signals that don’t come through while the sun is out. A couple of weeks ago the AM band was particularly fertile, especially at the upper end of the dial. These frequencies north of 1600 kHz are known as the “expanded band” because […]
Internet radio was born more than 25 years ago, yet, according to Edison Research, only in the last month has the medium garnered just 10% of all broadcast listening time in the US. We might lay at least some blame on the commercial radio industry, which didn’t embrace it until well into the 2000s, long […]
The National Association of Community Broadcasters has organized a nationwide observance of the life of George Floyd. Mr. Floyd will be laid to rest at a private ceremony on June 9 at 2 PM CDT in Houston, Texas. At that time over 100 community radio stations will play Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come.” […]
Over the course of four seasons, the Peabody-nominated podcast “Scene on Radio,” a production of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, has earned a reputation for tackling head-on difficult topics around race, gender, justice and equity. But it didn’t start out that way. It started life as a documentary anthology that host and […]
Some consider the late 1960s through the mid-1990s to be a “golden age” of college radio. History professor Katherine Rye Jewell, from Fitchburg State University, notes that the period begins with college stations taking to the FM dial, and concludes with the rise of the internet. During that time, college radio stations certainly at times […]
A common theme on Radio Survivor is that claims of being first should be viewed skeptically. From purported first college radio station to first internet simulcast, we’ve learned that there’s always another challenger to the prize. This time around, however, we can say this is definitively the first ever episode of Radio Survivor broadcast, and […]
