National Radio Day is approaching this Sunday, August 20 and in advance of that, public radio station KEXP in Seattle is doing a week’s worth of special programming “dedicated to celebrating and remembering radio stations that went off the air or changed formats,” according to a press release. It’s rare that radio stations pay homage […]
While making plans for my trip to Charlottesville, Virginia for the College Radio: Then, Now and Next symposium, I was looking forward to seeing all three radio stations that have an affiliation with the University of Virginia: WTJU (see my tour report #129), WXTJ and WUVA. Each has a distinct personality. WTJU is a non-commercial […]
Recently a reporter asked me how common independently-owned commercial radio stations were. I told him that they were a dying breed and another example of this disappearing category is talk radio station WYBG-AM in Massena, New York. After 57 years on the air, the station shut down on June 30. Its owners still hold out […]
iHeartMedia (née Clear Channel) CEO Bob Pittman and radio/TV host Ryan Seacrest were both present at the Consumer Electronics Show this week, and they were stumping for radio. Pittman began an on-stage interview on Wednesday declaring that “radio is probably the most relevant product that rides on all this technology… radio is your best friend.” […]
There are a number of radio and music scholars who write for both academic and non-academic audiences. Eric Weisbard is one example of that. In the 1990s, he made his living as a rock critic for publications such as Spin and the Village Voice and today he is an Assistant Professor of American Studies at […]
Darryl Parks is the former corporate brand manager for Clear Channel talk stations and was program director for Cincinnati news/talk WLW-AM. Now independent, Parks keeps a blog where he recently has trained his sights on his old business. A couple of weeks ago he dissected the plummeting ratings across the mostly-conservative AM talk radio format. […]
Just what is Classic Rock? It’s a question that has vexed many a radio listener tuned in to a set that includes Billy Joel, Led Zeppelin, the Clash and Motley Crue, artists that likely wouldn’t have been played together on any other format. What’s the connecting feature? What’s in the center of that Venn diagram? […]
When we last wrote about Jelli it was nearly five years ago. Jennifer wrote about their user-controlled radio model, which lets listeners choose upcoming songs on a local station using its website or the Jelli smartphone app. That version of Jelli still kind of exists at about a dozen stations, but you’d hardly know it […]
This week the FCC released its quarterly list of the total number of licensed broadcast stations in the United States. Based on FCC statistics through December 31, 2013, the number of licensed broadcast radio stations is still on the rise (in keeping with a 20-year trend), with 162 more radio stations at the end of 2013 […]
A new survey by Brandwatch reconfirms earlier findings about United States radio stations and Twitter—the relationship could be a lot more dynamic, particularly for commercial music radio stations. Here is some of the Brandwatch data: Only around 0.06 percent of radio listeners tweet about a US radio station. “This is 10 times less frequently than […]
