FCC Fines Non-Commercial Radio Station KUFW for Airing Commercials
As everyone in non-commercial radio in the United States knows, there’s often a fine line between underwriting messages to indicate sponsored programming and commercial announcements. College, community and other non-commercial radio stations are not allowed to air commercials, but they can play underwriting announcements which simply acknowledge the support received by an outside entity. It’s […]
Bonnie Simmons for Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame!
Attention all Bay Area Radio Survivor readers, it is time for you to go to the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame & Museum and vote for the Class of 2010’s best radio announcer. BTW: I’m urging you to vote for Bonnie Simmons of KPFA-FM. Now if you want to vote for one of the […]
Modern Day Mix Tapes: What's Next after the Cassette?
For me, mix tapes and radio shows have a lot in common; as they both make an attempt to compile a collection of pieces of music in order to share a particular mood, highlight a specific genre, or communicate a special message to listeners (or to the object of one’s desire). I used to do […]
Pacifica radio board elections – count me out
Opinion: It’s election season again at the Pacifica radio network. A historian of the organization explains why he’s not voting.
Pandora to hold town hall meetings in Atlanta and Denver
Pandora online radio is continuing its community meeting tour with events in Atlanta and Denver this coming week. On Monday Pandora will hold an event at the Denver Art Museum. On Tuesday the company goes to Atlanta’s Tabernacle. “Town halls are a big part of what Pandora is about,” Pandora founder Tim Westergren says on […]
DIY Radio hits Motown for Allied Media Conference
If I were anywhere near Detroit this weekend I would grab a seat at the Allied Media Conference. Held at Wayne State University, this is the 12th annual conference put together by Allied Media Projects. Sessions focused on media, technology, community-organizing, social justice, and the DIY ethos all began today. With topics ranging from radical […]
Two Knight News Challenge Grants go to radio orgs
The Knight Foundation has taken a lead in funding grants for promising new ideas for journalism, in particular those that exploit opportunities in digital media and are local in focus. The Knight News Challenge Grant is providing $2.74 million in funding to twelve projects that aim to inform specific geographic communities. The winners were announced […]
How local is radio? FCC wants more data
The Federal Communications Commission is commissioning nine economic studies on the state of the media industry, and numbers five and six couldn’t come too soon as far as I’m concerned. Here they are: Study 5: Quantity of radio news and public affairs programming provided and audience for radio news programming as a function of local […]
San Francisco's Newest Radio Pirate: Radio Valencia
Of course I’m biased, but San Francisco seems to have always been ground zero for radio innovators, back from the early days of pioneering technologists, to the freeform FM era, to punk and new wave stalwarts in college and commercial radio in the 1980s, to pirate radio champions like Free Radio Berkeley in the 1990s, […]
Do radio DJs ever fall asleep on the job?
I was listening to Regina Spektor’s very sad song “On the Radio,” which I’ve never actually heard on the radio. The tune includes the following lyrics: “On the radio We heard November Rain That solo’s really long But it’s a pretty song We listened to it twice ‘Cause the DJ was asleep” Guns ‘N Roses’ […]