Sirius XM keeps hanging on
I splurged and took a taxi to JFK airport in New York City today, and waddayaknow, my driver was a dedicated Sirius XM fan. We listened to the Love Channel for a while (I would not have taken him for a Lionel Richie type of guy). I asked him how much he likes Sirius XM. […]
Kitchen Confidential Meets Radio Confidential in San Francisco
If foie gras and tripe can stand in for quaaludes and mescaline, then Anthony Bourdain is the Hunter S. Thompson of food television. As a so-called “anti-celebrity” chef Bourdain is the host of the Travel Channel’s No Reservations, traveling to both familiar and exotic places in order to explore their culture via food, often with […]
Corporate radio's future: dim or dimmer?
Cautious optimism abounds for the economic outlook, with the Federal Reserve predicting that the Great Recession is “leveling out.” Financial markets are improving, the Fed says. Household spending is “stabilizing.” Businesses are realigning inventory with sales. Thus “market forces will contribute to a gradual resumption of sustainable economic growth in a context of price stability.” […]
Radio Obsessive Profile #2: Jose Fritz's Arcane Radio Trivia
I’m awed by all the radio enthusiasts, collectors, historians, and scholars out there; so I’m going to try to feature some of my favorites on Radio Survivor in a new feature called Radio Obsessives. I didn’t realize it at the time, but my interview with Garrett Wollman about his fascination with radio towers is what […]
Freelance Reporter Explains How Radio Is Made
Cyrus Farivar is a freelance radio journalist who files stories for programs like PRI’s the World and NPR’s Morning Edition. On his blog he recently posted a breezy and clear explanation of his process for pitching, recording and editing a radio news piece. As someone who produces an independent weekly radio program on the cheap, […]
College Radio Being Exported to Promote Study Abroad
I just learned about a soon-to-be-launched online radio station in Taiwan called Oh! Zone that will be programmed entirely with foreign content from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. What’s cool to me is that the station is picking and choosing specific programs from college radio stations in an attempt to […]
Gotcha! Tuning into the FBI
Ok. I admit it. I listen to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s “gotcha” radio service. The sounds files come in windows media player format. It’s basically a real version of Dragnet. Part of the reason why I tune in is because the cases are so weird that, well, I just like weird stuff, that’s all. […]
BAM! The Future of Rock N Roll (is online only)
Before we got married, in the late 90s my wife lived for two years in Dayton, OH. I would drive four hours across Indiana from my Champaign, IL home to see her. I knew that I had exited the radio desert of the Hoosier State when I could just barely tune in WOXY out of […]
Is Future Perfect Radio the Future of Radio?
I spend a lot of time exploring Internet radio stations. And while most of it is for fun, I’m definitely on a Diogenes/Morpheus-looking-for-Neo sort of mission. I’m searching for Internet radio that feels like real radio. What is “real radio?” you ask. It’s radio that feels like it is situated in some actual place and […]
Hearing Radio from Thousands of Miles Away
When I was a kid we had a large old-fashioned radio that had stations listed on it from all over the country and globe. I can’t remember if we ever had any luck tuning in to far-away stations, but it seemed like such a magical concept. Certainly in the early days of radio that was […]