Opinions, editorials and fun stuff.
Yesterday Edison Research and Arbitron (ARB) released the latest findings from their ongoing series of studies about the convergence of radio and technology. The Infinite Dial 2010: Digital Platforms and the Future of Radio is based on a February, 2010 telephone survey of more than 1700 people in the United States and serves as a […]
Did you get fooled today? Radio stations are often one of the last remaining outlets to celebrate April Fool’s with gusto. Morning show DJs read fake news reports, radio shows are replaced, and some stations switch their formats for 24 hours. Howard Stern once pretended that he’d been fired on April 1st over his crude […]
I am rereading portions of German composer Bertold Brecht’s famous 1932 essay “The radio as an apparatus of communications,” and I am confused. Is he really talking about radio? The medium, Brecht wrote, “is one-sided when it should be two- . . . ” “It is purely an apparatus for distribution, for mere sharing out. […]
Next Tuesday the Federal Communications Commission will reveal the entirety of its National Broadband Plan, over a year in the making. Required by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which authorized $7.2 billion in broadband stimulus spending, The Plan will weigh in on about a thousand broadband related subjects—how to help more people get it, […]
I’ve only lived in Chicago for two years, but I’ve been listening to WXRT in brief spurts for the last sixteen years when visiting the city. Living in the Central Illinois college towns of Champaign-Urbana, I’d often heard about WXRT from friends and acquaintances from the Chicago area. Inevitably it was the one station that […]
I am a college and community radio loyalist and these days I never listen to commercial radio unless someone else has put it on and I have no way to control the radio (during cab rides, in doctor’s office waiting rooms, and perhaps via cheesy hold button music, etc.). Since coming up with a list […]
Each month the Radio Survivors will count down our most (or least) favorite radio things. Last month we covered our favorite radio programs. This month we’re sharing our favorite commercial radio stations. As regular readers might expect, coming up with this list proved to be more of a challenge. All three of us tend to […]
There was once a time when a rare breed of radio DJ could scare up controversy and big ratings–not to mention FCC indecency fines–using just his voice, a few on-air cronies and whole lot of bravado, innuendo and hot air. Remember Howard Stern? Arguably the original “shock jock” he was one of the few American […]
Over the weekend Sirius XM’s Doctor Radio Reports ran a show called Is Your Kid High?—Teens Speak Out, which offered advice to parents on how to tell if your tweens/teens are doing drugs. I read with great interest the summary of the wisdom offered by Elizabeth Urquhar and Naveed Etemadipour of San Diego’s Phoenix House […]
So, I guess now it’s my turn. What is Radio Survivor (the blog)? It’s all about the idea that radio is a hardy, useful, practical and proven medium with a lot of life left in it. A Radio Survivor (the person) is someone who continues to believe in the medium. A Radio Survivor is not […]
