I bought my first CD player in 1987, using money I saved from my 16th birthday and working as a stock boy at the local Party Fair store. I could only afford to buy two discs to try out on my new purchase, owing to the fact that new CDs cost about $15.99, roughly $37 in 2021 […]
Some consider the late 1960s through the mid-1990s to be a “golden age” of college radio. History professor Katherine Rye Jewell, from Fitchburg State University, notes that the period begins with college stations taking to the FM dial, and concludes with the rise of the internet. During that time, college radio stations certainly at times […]
The Federal Communications Commission is all about radio at the end of 2019, and we catch you up on what you need to know. We all have questions about the possibility of AM stations going all-digital, including the FCC. The regulatory body released the things it wants to know about how digital stations would work, […]
As we approach the end of 2019, I’m starting to reflect back on not only the year in college radio, but also the decade in college radio. While 2009 doesn’t seem like all that long ago, some major changes have occurred in the radio and technology landscapes, which have had implications for student radio. Beginning […]
On this week’s Radio Survivor show and podcast we delve into some recently digitized recordings, including some focused on college radio, that are part of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters Archive. Of note for college radio historians, our guest Laura Schnitker points out a recording focused on the story behind a temporary shutdown of […]
On this week’s Radio Survivor Podcast/radio show, I’m pleased to share two of my most recent college radio station tour reports. In the episode, Paul Riismandel and I chat about my visits to WIIT at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago and WKCR at Columbia University in New York City. Both stations are super interesting, […]
Conventional wisdom says young people don’t listen to the radio. Jennifer Waits talks to two college broadcasters from KUOZ-LP at the University of the Ozarks who bust that myth. She also takes us on a tour of a new community LPFM, KPSQ-LP, located in a hotel in Fayetteville, AR. But first, Paul and Jennifer discuss […]
For at least the past year there have been more regular grumblings about the status of CMJ and this week Pitchfork is reporting that, “For the second week in a row, CMJ has not published its weekly college radio charts, calling into question the fate of an institution that has tracked the music played by college stations around […]
The FCC just released its long-awaited revision to media ownership rules. After years of back-and-forth with the Third Circuit Court of Appeals there are very few changes. Prof. Christopher Terry, of the University of Minnesota School of Journalism, argues this represents a monumental failure that places all media ownership rules at grave risk. He joins […]
This week Stereogum’s Managing Editor Michael Nelson penned an in-depth piece called CMJ Sure Seems to be Over. So How Come Nobody is Talking About It? In the article, he outlines the history of college radio stalwart CMJ (it dates back to 1978, when it began as a college radio chart report called College Media […]
