The Radio Survivors return with a new episode! For this edition, recorded in July, 2022, our guest is Lori Emerson, Founding Director of the Media Archaeology Lab (the MAL). She’s also an Associate Professor in the English Department and Director of the Intermedia Arts, Writing, and Performance Program at University of Colorado at Boulder. Lori […]
For the first time in a while I needed to dip into my dwindling archive of cassette tape airchecks. A couple of tapes immediately caught my eye and spurred me to restart the digitizing project I’ve been working on and off for the last five years. They took me on a fun journey back in […]
This week we explore the role of radio as a tool for resistance with two of the eight organizers of the “Resistance Radio ‘The People’s Airwaves’” exhibit in Brooklyn, New York. Interference Archive volunteers Celia Easton Koehler and Elena Levi join us on the podcast to discuss the scope of the exhibit, which investigates a […]
Most press coverage of low-power FM focuses on particular stations, or the flourishing of the medium in the last half-decade. Not unexpectedly, rarely do articles delve into the deep history, which goes all the way back to 1948, with mileposts in the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s, leading up the FCC’s eventual creation of the […]
Here at Radio Survivor we are committed to weekly coverage of low power FM radio, so we’re very pleased to feature an interview with Christina Dunbar-Hester for our Academic Series. Dr. Dunbar-Hester is an Assistant Professor in Journalism and Media Studies at Rutgers University and she recently published a fascinating book on media activism and […]
Despite years of enforcement action and the establishment of low-power FM, unlicensed pirate radio has not gone away, though it hardly qualifies as a runaway problem or nationwide epidemic. True, there are some hotspots with a high density of communities underserved by local broadcasters–such as Brooklyn, NY and South Florida–where unlicensed broadcasting is arguably more […]
Stephen Dunifer has been called the “Johnny Appleseed” of free radio for his work with Free Radio Berkeley which has been making and distributing FM transmitter kits for more than 17 years. FRB inspired many unlicensed broadcasters to take to the airwaves in the mid to late 90s, in part due to the publicity the […]
This post by John Anderson originally appeared at DIYmedia.net and is republished here by permission. Two decades ago, thousands of people took to the air without permission from the FCC to protest the agency’s draconian policies regarding access to the airwaves. The microradio movement conducted a campaign of electronic civil disobedience, demonstrating that there was […]
Mbanna Kantako has been running one of the longest lived unlicensed radio stations in the US, Human Rights Radio in Springfield, IL. He served as the inspiration for Stephen Dunifer and other microradio activists who used unlicensed broadcasting as a means for civil disobedience in the 1990s. While Kantako has had several run-ins with the […]
Although Free Radio Berkeley has not been an operational radio station for over a decade, founder Stephen Dunifer continues to champion the cause of unlicensed micropower radio. In this spirit FRB just announced its 2011 schedule of summer radio camps. Each camp is a four-day workshop where participants learn to build a 10- or 40-watt […]
