After putting up with painfully slow DSL Internet service for the past few years, my family just switched to cable and in the process moved to cable TV. I have always been a huge television consumer and was the master of my video cassette recorder (VCR) back in the day. Digital video recorders (DVRs) came […]
Channel surfing on cable or over-the-air TV you may have come across Bewitched, Columbo or other “classic” re-runs on a station that calls itself MeTV. This successful Chicago-based upstart network that airs its nostalgic programming on digital television subchannels across the country is dipping its toes into the radio pool. Today MeTV parent company Weigel […]
The Federal Communications Commission’s proceeding on whether to permit Low Power TV stations to broadcast FM on channel 6 (87.7 FM) has reached its formal deadline: January 12 (backgrounder here). The FCC rolled the question into a whole suite of issues facing LPTV. Of interest to us is a defense of the channel 6 FM […]
I love televised yule logs. I’m drawn to them not only out of nostalgia (the original aired on WPIX in New York beginning in 1966), but also for the minimalist delight. As I stare at the image of a burning log for hours on end, the smallest details and changes in the scene are emphasized. […]
There are approximately 18 low-power TV stations posing as radio in the US. They are stations that broadcast on channel 6. And because low-power stations are still permitted to transmit in analog, that means their audio can be received at the very low end of the FM dial, around 87.7 MHz. For all intents and […]
Funnily enough, just last night I was channel surfing and settled in to a WKRP in Cincinnati rerun (the program is one of Jennifer’s top 5 TV shows depicting radio). This one tackled the very serious issue of payola, wherein a new morning DJ is gifted some cocaine from a record promoter, and has to […]
Yet again, the FCC is making a firm stance about the sanctity of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) and is proposing major fines against Viacom, ESPN and NBCUniversal for recent infractions. In a Notice of Apparent Liability (PDF) sent to all three organizations, the FCC is asking for a voluntary forfeiture amount of $1,120,000 from […]
Even though fans attending the Super Bowl received a free radio from Westwood One so they could listen to the game at the stadium, I discovered that the Super Bowl broadcast was indeed blacked out from stations’ internet streams yesterday. So I settled down in front of the television to watch the Broncos get utterly […]
I reviewed the last year in podcasting and concluded that it was one in which the medium had a growth spurt in production, attention and investment. Looking forward to 2014 this is the year that podcast listening needs to become easy and ubiquitous. I mentioned how I’ve come to think that the supposed discovery problem–that […]
I was saddened to hear the news that celebrity psychic Sylvia Browne died yesterday in a San Jose hospital at the age of 77. A mainstay of numerous television shows and the host of her own Internet radio show, Browne was a master of broadcast media. I remember seeing her regularly on the San Francisco-based […]
