From the pages of Essence and the Huffington Post, Radio One’s Kathy Hughes and singer Dionne Warwick take potshots over the Performance Rights Act. African American station owner Hughes is decidedly con on the proposed law, which would require over-the-air radio signals to compensate performers as copyright law has them pay royalties to song copyright […]
Archive | Commercial Radio
Univision antes up a million bucks for payola violations
It’s been a few years since the FCC reached consent decrees with CBS, Citadel and Clear Channel over illegal pay-for-play schemes, so you think that the major broadcasters would have learned their lesson. Apparently the warning didn’t get translated into Spanish. Yesterday the FCC released a new consent decree [PDF] with Spanish-language broadcaster Univision which […]
My Jungle Boogie moment
It was 1975. I was 20 years old. I had just left home. I worked and went to college in Manhattan, and lived with my girlfriend in the Bronx. Meanwhile, Kool and the Gang‘s hit tune “Jungle Boogie” jumped to one of the most requested songs on the radio. Transcriptions of the lyrics to this […]
Do radio DJs ever fall asleep on the job?
I was listening to Regina Spektor’s very sad song “On the Radio,” which I’ve never actually heard on the radio. The tune includes the following lyrics: “On the radio We heard November Rain That solo’s really long But it’s a pretty song We listened to it twice ‘Cause the DJ was asleep” Guns ‘N Roses’ […]
75 or so words you really ought to think about before you say them on UK radio
Ofcom (the United Kingdom’s equivalent of the FCC) has just published a new survey of which words British radio listeners and TV watchers don’t like, or sort of don’t like, or really object to, depending on the circumstances. The most important circumstance is whether the word was said pre- or post-“watershed”—post being the equivalent of […]
Hudson valley to get new full power community radio station
The Prometheus Radio Project will run its 12th community radio barn raising by launching a new station: WBXC in Hudson, New York on September 24-26. This is the first such event, however, that will involve setting up a full power station—3,300 watts as opposed to the usual 100 watts of low power FM. “This new […]
Happy Anniversary to Radio Survivor
What a year in radio it’s been! Back in June, 2009, Matthew, Paul and I agreed to focus our energies on Radio Survivor in order to champion all things radio. Coming from the perspective of radio fans, academics, and DJs; we’ve devoted much energy to espousing the virtues and lamenting the pitfalls of radio in […]
Less "specialist jazz" for London "smooth" radio?
It will be interesting to see what Ofcom, the United Kingdom’s broadcast regulatory agency, says about GMG Radio, aka “Smooth Radio” of London and North West’s request to pare down its jazz format. Here’s the gist of the request for the stations (I’ve added the bold): “Current Character of Service AN EASY LISTENING STATION FEATURING EASY […]
AM Radio Goes Bollywood
I really like the idea that someday soon there will be a radio revolution and the FM dial will once again be returned to passionate music-loving DJs playing an eclectic mix of sounds at locally-owned radio stations. In the meantime, I will continue to troll the left side of the dial to hear my fellow […]
FCC ponders the future of radio consolidation
The Federal Communications Commission is reviewing its media ownership rules again. That ordeal took up quite a bit of public bandwidth over the last decade, especially after former FCC Chair Michael Powell proposed scotching most of them. Now we’re back to square one, with the Commission launching a Notice of Inquiry about its current ownership […]