Federally recognized Native American Tribes and Alaska Native Villages who apply for AM or FM radio stations will get “Tribal Priority” status, thanks to an FCC decision released today. Tribal Priority will give precedence to their applications or to companies controlled by tribes that want to set up stations intended to serve tribal land areas. […]
Archive | Public Radio
Radio Survivor's top radio shows – Matthew's #1: Bonnie Simmons and Derk Richardson on KPFA
Every Thursday night I drive home from Santa Cruz, where I teach at the University of California campus situated in that fair city. Soon as 8 pm comes around, I tune into KPFA to listen to the Bonnie Simmons / Derk Richardson music show, which I absolutely love. To be accurate, they’re actually two separate […]
Radio Survivor's Top Radio Shows – Paul's #2: On the Media
I’m a media geek, hence my nom de internet. And I pretty much have always been, ever since I recognized that there were people, organizations and companies behind the shows I saw on TV and listened to on the radio. I remember reading Billboard and Radio and Electronics in the library while still in elementary […]
Radio Survivor's Top Radio Shows – Matthew's #3: Democracy Now!
Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez’s radio/TV program Democracy Now! is, without question, the most successful media vehicle in the history of the United States Left. Launched at Pacifica station WBAI-FM in New York City in the mid-1990s, it is now an independent venture, subscribed to by over 800 radio, TV, and Internet stations around the […]
RadioSurvivor’s Top Radio Shows – Paul’s #4: Sound Opinions
As a proud thirty-eight year-old member of Generation X, I have become just a little disturbed by a trend I’ve noticed in the last few years. One might call this trend the “indie-rockification” of public radio. As my fellow grunge-survivors and I, raised on the so-called “first wave” of alternative rock and derided by boomers […]
Radio Survivor’s top radio shows – Matthew’s #5: Joe Frank, Work-in-Progress
I forget when I first started listening to Joe Frank. The other problem is that his half-hour to hour long programs are so weird that one can’t trust one’s memory about them. I mean, I think I remember an episode about a hysterical waiter who, after a long tirade, vomits on his patrons, a furious […]
KPFA raises $130,000 for Haitian relief
America’s longest running listener supported non-commercial radio station, KPFA-FM in Berkeley, raised a lot of cash on Wednesday for victims of Haiti’s horrific series of earthquakes. “In this economy, we would expect a normal day of fundraising to bring in about $45,000. For our Haiti fundraiser we set a goal of $100,000” said KPFA General […]
Wrapping up the decade in radio and looking forward to the decade ahead
As I said in my introduction to our subjective and opinionated review of radio in the 2000s, I still think it was darn near impossible to predict how the medium of radio would end up at the beginning of 2010. Sure, the seeds for satellite radio, HD radio, low-power FM, internet radio and MP3s were […]
The decade’s most important radio trends: #4 Podcasting
August 13 of this year marked the fifth anniversary of podcasting. On that date in 2004 former MTV VJ Adam Curry began his Daily Source Code podcast, ushering the term into the popular consciousness. Like so many innovative ideas, podcasting is quite simple. It’s not like there weren’t online radio programs prior to 2004. The […]
NPR calls for Congress to create "common public media waiver"
As we’ve reported, National Public Radio has been filing comments with the Federal Communications Commission a lot these days, talking up its localism initiative, Android app, and new mobile site. NPR’s latest commentary to the FCC on its National Broadband Plan reiterates all these points. But here’s the paragraph in the filing that got our […]