Opinions, editorials and fun stuff.
This Thursday, November 16, the Federal Communications Commission is scheduled to vote on an order on reconsideration that will radically alter the media ownership regulations that are enforced by the agency. The changes are substantial and include: The elimination of the Newspaper/Broadcast Cross-Ownership Rule The elimination of the Radio/Television Cross-Ownership Rule A revision to the […]
Decades before the invention of the MP3, the audiocassette, along with the home dubbing deck and four-track tape recorders, put the power to create and distribute recordings into the hands of anyone with the will to record. No longer reliant on record labels or the capital investment needed to rent studio time and press records, […]
I just discovered this fascinating piece of video tape on YouTube, likely dating from the 1970s, documenting a pirate radio and television station operating in my neighborhood, Sunnyside, in Portland, OR. It’s part of an archive of tapes from an archive of The Video Access Project, digitized by the Oregon Historical Society. It’s truly a […]
While we mostly celebrate non-commercial radio here at Radio Survivor, that doesn’t mean we don’t appreciate commercial radio when done well. The problem is that in the 20 years since the 1996 Telecom Act grossly deregulated radio ownership, the quality of most commercial radio dropped precipitously, leaving many stations with very little local programming, with […]
Amazon Echo. Google Home. And soon, Apple’s HomePod. Smart speakers are quickly taking up residence in homes. Taking voice commands to deliver news, weather, music and more, they play a very radio-like role in people’s daily routine. Radio journalist Brian Edwards-Tiekert joins to explain what these speakers can do, what they can’t, and what the […]
The MP3 is dead, we’re to believe. That’s because the technology’s inventor, the Fraunhofer Institute, has ended licensing of the patented technologies needed for the encoding and decoding of MP3 files. Reality, of course, it a little more complicated. As Fraunhofer itself clarified in a blog post this past week, the licensing program ended because […]
As I’ve written before, I’m in the process of archiving my collection of audio work that’s on audiocassette and minidisc. It’s a process that has unfolded in fits and starts over the last few years, but I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. I’m nearing my last couple dozen tapes […]
John Oliver is the hero the internet needs right now. Just when new FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has targeted net neutrality again–a mere two years after the Commission passed the Open Internet Order–the HBO host brought the subject back into the spotlight again Sunday night for a sharp, incisive and hilarious dissection of Pai’s intention, […]
For 40 years Mark Talbot hosted his UK-based radio show “Second Side Up.” On cassette. Only on cassette. At its peak the show had 40 listeners, but duplicating that many tapes became too big of a financial drain on the DJ, so he scaled back. I learned about “Second Side Up” from the Australian podcast […]
Your broadcast station–LPFM, community, college–needs to have its programming on the internet, one way or another. Now. Why? Because you risk missing a generation of listeners whose media intake is primarily online. YouTube is where they hang out the most, but online radio is also a destination. Where they’re moving away from is your AM […]
