Pirate Cat in fundraising mode to buy radio license
Pirate Cat radio says that the operation has “two FM stations that it has the option of purchasing,” but it needs $60,000 to do so. Hence a fund-raising drive on the Kickstarter site. The Kickstarter campaign has until October 21 to raise the money. San Francisco’s Pirate Cat has an interesting history. For a while […]
Save KPFA declares victory in KPFA-FM board elections
In what is hopefully the last subscriber/staff board election that Pacifica radio ever has, the Save KPFA slate says it has won the majority of delegate seats on Pacifica station KPFA-FM’s Local Station Board. “I believe that the results here indicate that the listener-members do not want an explicitly sectarian station,” declared Save KPFA’s Mal […]
Want to piss off your radio audience? Talk about P2P file sharing
Man, my student Jacob Margolis got himself into a deep tub of digital hot water the other day over at KPCC-FM public radio in Pasadena, CA. Jacob took my telecommunications history class up at UC Santa Cruz and now he’s an intern down there. His crime? Explaining the mechanics of P2P file downloading on one […]
Bill would legalize extra-long music sets online for public radio
Under the provisions of the Digital Milennium Copyright Act (DMCA) there are several restrictions on streaming radio that don’t exist for terrestrial broadcast. One of the most vexing for a lot of noncommerical stations is the limitation that an online station may not play more than three songs from the same artist, album or compilation […]
Radio Nowhere at San Francisco School of the Arts
I’m always on the lookout for radio-themed events and was super excited to find out this week about something happening right in my backyard. The San Francisco School of the Arts (SOTA) is having an event this Friday called Radio Nowhere. Students from the public creative arts high school’s creative writing program will be on […]
Ghosts of Clear Channel continue to haunt Tribune Company
New York Times media reporter David Carr dropped a bombshell on Tribune Company CEO Randy Michaels today, and paragraph number seven pretty much says it all: Based on interviews with more than 20 employees and former employees of Tribune, Mr. Michaels’s and his executives’ use of sexual innuendo, poisonous workplace banter and profane invective shocked […]
9 Tips to Ensure College Radio’s Survival
I’ve been obsessively following the sagas of KTRU and WRVU, two college radio stations that are in danger of losing their FM signals. As I write more and more about the situations at stations where licenses have been lost, where administrations have sold off frequencies and transmitters, and where radio station staff members seem powerless […]
Google TV will include Pandora
Pandora the online radio feature announced today that it will be included in the upcoming Google TV service: “Today we’re expanding again and we’re thrilled to announce that Pandora is coming to Google TV. Google TV combines the best of the web with the best of TV in one easy to use entertainment experience, giving […]
Gender and age preferences on Last.fm: What should you be listening to?
Joachim Van Herwegen, an intern at Last.fm, recently decided to compile a number of plots of musical preferences based on listener ages and genders. The results are quite fascinating! Herwegen’s first plot depicts the most common artists as a function of age (x-axis) and gender (y-axis). A quick glance will tell you that most users […]
Georgetown University Radio Station WGTB’s Storied Past and Impending Renaissance
Although I’ve been fixated on the college radio crises at KTRU and WRVU lately, I am heartened to see the world of student radio isn’t filled entirely with bad news. This week I spotted several stories about new and old radio stations gearing up for the start of the school year. Amid those tales was […]