FCC policy has left media ownership diversity at “obnoxiously low levels,” especially considering that more minority and women ownership is one of the desired objectives. That’s what Prof. Chris Terry from the University of Minnesota tells us on this week’s show. The Commission may be headed to the Supreme Court to defend its diversity policy, […]
Jennifer, Eric and Paul have some college radio news to review, but first they pull back the curtain to survey the state of affairs in Radio Survivorland. They note some recent attention from The A.V. Club and Podnews along with a nice uptick in podcast audience as they reflect on the importance of sticking with […]
The PIRATE Act, recently passed by Congress, is intended to stem the tide of unlicensed radio broadcasting by providing the Federal Communications Commission with new tools. Chief amongst them are new maximum fines, and a shortcut to issuing them. But will this really work? Author and radio scholar John Anderson says that a lot of […]
We love getting email from readers and listeners, and by far the most common inquiry we receive is asking how one can get a radio station license. For the last four years or so we haven’t had a good answer, because there hasn’t been an FCC license auction or application window since July 2015. Though […]
Mid-way through the last decade I declared that, “[w]ith regard to new stations going on the air, 2015 represented the biggest single-year leap forward for non-commercial and community radio in U.S. history.” That’s because 524 new low-power FM stations signed on that year. That was an increase of 56% over the number of existing LPFMs […]
All nine judges on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals recently denied the FCC’s request for a rehearing on its many-times rejected media ownership rules. Prof. Christopher Terry calls this the Commission’s “Legacy of Failure.” But it begs the question, what does success look like? Prof. Terry, who teaches media law at the University of […]
The Federal Communications Commission is all about radio at the end of 2019, and we catch you up on what you need to know. We all have questions about the possibility of AM stations going all-digital, including the FCC. The regulatory body released the things it wants to know about how digital stations would work, […]
In a few dozen markets around the country there is a rare species of FM station that is only heard on the far left end of the dial. Because of the unusual spot on the dial, and sometimes unusual programming, some listeners may think they’ve tuned in a pirate. But these stations are legal, if […]
Last week The Verge wrapped up a three-part series on pirate radio, examining a US-government-sanctioned form in Afghanistan, radio-like conference call services used by the Hmong diaspora and unlicensed Haitian stations in Brooklyn, NY. Recovering from the holiday weekend I finally had a chance to catch up, read the three articles and listen to their […]
On Nov. 22 the Federal Communitications Commission voted unanimously to adopt a proposal for rulemaking to allow AM radio stations to convert to fully digital broadcasting, using the MA3 all-digital mode of HD Radio. There was no dissent, and all three Republican commissioners issued separate statements of support. As I noted earlier, if approved, all-digital AM broadcasting would […]
