Mea culpa. When one sets out to launch an ambitious critique of community radio programming mistakes will be made, and I made them. This is a necessary aspect of testing ideas, as is coming back to revise, tweak and clarify. I am very grateful for the comments, feedback and criticism of my last two posts, […]
Jennifer Waits brings us the voices of three programmers at a mysterious and chaotic community station with deep connections to the Los Angeles art scene. KCHUNG is an unlicensed part 15 AM radio station with about 40 station managers and extremely eclectic programming. Paul Riismandel wrote a series of articles, offering strongly worded advice for […]
One of the greatest tensions for community radio stations lies in the spectrum between public access and public service. Although this conflict may not be explicitly discussed, it implicitly affects every single programming decision. It’s time for this tension to be made explicit, and for stations to actively grapple with how to balance a focus […]
This is a transitional time for community radio, unprecedented in the medium’s more than 60-year history in the U.S. Thousands of new LPFM stations are going on the air bringing service to communities that never had community radio, or adding new services to supplement existing community stations. At the same time many community stations risk […]
William Mandel has died. Mandel broadcast over KPFA’s airwaves for almost half a century, offering commentaries on the now-defunct Soviet Union. He wrote books about the USSR, among them Soviet Women and Soviet but not Russian: the Other Peoples of the Soviet Union. He spoke at just about any public event at which someone would let him appear. He died […]
Pete Tridish works as a radio engineer, building low power and full power community radio stations. He initially did this work with Prometheus Radio Project and now with International Media Action. “Back when I was working with Prometheus Radio Project, which was a group that worked to expand the low power radio service and create […]
Like many of you in the U.S. and around the world, I’m still trying to make sense of the presidential election and its outcome. And, by “make sense,” I mean determine what actions I should and can take to help ensure the safety and security of people who have been targeted by the rhetoric of […]
It is a blasphemous question, I know. But since I’ve already put it in the headline, I’ll also spell it out in this post’s opening paragraph. President Donald Trump: good news for Pacifica radio? My decisive answer is . . . maybe. At this point, the Pacifica Foundation and its five radio stations can only go in […]
KRAB-FM was the first station in what would become known as the “KRAB Nebula” of community stations that sprouted up around the U.S. in the 1960s and 70s. These 14 stations shared a common parentage in Lorenzo Milam, who helped found them, beginning with KRAB. First hitting the Seattle airwaves on December 12, 1962, KRAB […]
Over the weekend I posted some concerns about the future of La Jungala community radio, which until last month served a now dismantled refugee camp in Calais, France, known as “The Jungle.” I also emailed the operation to get an update on its status. Do you still exist? I asked. Today I receive a reply: […]
