Celebrating Women in Sound on International Women’s Day
Happy International Women’s Day! Every day I’m inspired by my female colleagues around the world who are passionate about radio, sound, and audio. From college radio DJs to sound studies scholars to radio historians to engineers to station owners to high school podcasters to teachers and station advisers; it’s a community that enriches our lives […]
Time Is Running Out for FrankenFMs – Just 4 Months Left
The clock is still ticking for FrankenFMs, legacy analog low-power TV stations broadcasting on channel 6 with signals heard at 87.7 FM, on the far left end of the dial. The FCC has determined all analog television signals must convert to digital by July 13 of this year, and just issued a public notice reminding broadcasters of […]
More New CDs than Vinyl Records Were Sold in 2020, Yet Again
Back in October 2019 I published a response to the breathless news reported across the tech, music and popular press that “vinyl outsold CDs” for the very first time. While true in terms of raw dollars, as I demonstrated, it wasn’t true in terms of volume. More than twice the number of CD albums were sold than vinyl […]
Podcast #287 – New Station Opportunity, Women’s History Month, and more
Jennifer, Eric and Paul join together to review what’s news as we kick off the month of March. Top of the list is an upcoming FCC radio license auction. Originally planned for April 2020, but delayed by the first coronavirus lockdowns, the auction will see 140 commercial radio construction permits up for bid. We discuss […]
Podcast #286 – Native American Voices on the Air in the Early Days of Radio
On this week’s show we take a look at the ways that Native Americans used sound technology during radio’s earliest days and how that inspired and led to the flourishing Native media landscape, including tribal radio stations. Our guest, Josh Garrett-Davis, is Associate Curator at the Autry Museum and author of a recently completed dissertation: […]
Podcast #285 – Running a Big Community Media Organization in the 2nd Year of the Pandemic
Nathan Moore is the General Manager at WTJU and the Staff Advisor of WXTJ at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. He is also the current President of the Board of the NFCB, the National Federation of Community Broadcasters. We invited Nathan Moore onto the show to ask about running community and college radio stations […]
Radio Is the World’s Most Accessible & Popular Analog Sound Medium
I’m a bit of an audiophile, because I really enjoy music that is nicely reproduced, not because I’m up for dropping five figures on an audio component. One of the most enduring debates among audiophiles is analog vs. digital. I don’t really take a position in this debate. I’ve owned a turntable since my age […]
Listen to this BBC Documentary about 5 Community Stations around the World
In celebration of World Radio Day this past Saturday, the BBC World Service released an hour-long documentary about five different community radio stations around. the world. Beginning with Cameroon’s Radio Taboo, a solar-powered station started by an artist, presenter Maria Margaronis then takes us to Romania’s Danube Delta, which is focused on preserving the region’s […]
World Radio Day is Saturday, Feb. 13
In 2011 UNESCO declared February 13 to be World Radio Day, celebrating radio’s power for democratic discourse, serving humanity in all its diversity. 2021 is the 10th World Radio Day, and stations spanning the globe will join in the commemoration. Hofstra University’s WRHU will receive the 2021 World Radio Day Award. The 60 year-old station […]
Podcast #284 – SpokenWeb and Literary Sound
On this week’s show we learn about SpokenWeb, a Canadian project focused on the preservation of literary sound recordings. Partly inspired by the energetic poetry scene of the 1960s, SpokenWeb works to preserve recordings of these live events and also describe and share this material. Our guest, Hannah McGregor, leads the SpokenWeb Podcast Task Force […]