Six Months with my Sanyo Xacti VPC-CG10 Pocket Camcorder

One of the biggest problems with most electronics product reviews is that the reviewer has a very limited amount of time to use and get to know a particular item. That’s why so many digital camera and camcorder reviews rest on technical specifications and relatively easy to measure qualities like resolution, image noise and sharpness. No doubt these are important aspects of any cam’s performance, but you can design a camera that has great tech specs but is also a pain to use.

That’s why I’m taking this opportunity to write about my Sanyo Xacti VPC-CG10 pocket camcorder, which I bought back in July. Although I had a positive opinion about the cam when I first wrote about it, I’d only had it for three weeks. Six months of regular use really makes the difference between an interesting toy and a useful tool. If a camcorder or other gadget proves to be too difficult, fiddly or simply un-user-friendly it’s likely to find a home at the bottom of a drawer or closet by the end of the year.

As one might guess from the very fact that I’m writing this update, I’m quite happy with this little camcorder after a half-year of use. Having a full 720p HD camcorder that fits into a small bag or large pocket is still really amazing. One of the features that moved me to choose the CG10 over one of the Flip or Kodak HD cams is its true 5x zoom lens. Though it’s hard to maintain a steady hand when zoomed all the way out, having the extra reach has really made the camera much more useful for me.

As a result, I think I’ve shot more video in my free time this year than I have in years. I’ve owned two miniDV camcorders over the last decade. While each got used, their relative bulk and reliance on tape meant that they still only were trotted out when I was absolutely planning on shooting video. By contrast, I’ve taken to carrying around the CG10 in my bag and shooting a little video whenever the moment strikes. Being able to easily import it to my computer as a file rather than capturing miniDV tape in real time means that I’ve been much more likely to actually edit and share my videos, too.

I’ve really come to like the CG10′s pistol-grip form-factor, finding it much easier to hold steady, especially with two hands, than the Flip-style camcorders. Yet, operating the zoom control is fiddly, making it nearly impossible to zoom smoothly. That’s one area where you can really notice the operational difference between an inexpensive pocket camcorder and a bigger, more sophisticated model.

Across the icy lake and lagoon from Paul Riismandel on Vimeo.

Like I mentioned, I do really like having a 5x zoom lens at my disposal, with a focal range equivalent of 38 to 190mm on a 35mm camera. The quality of the lens seems about par for an inexpensive point-and-shoot camera. That is, it’s plenty sharp in the center of the image, but gets soft on the edges. It also shows some barrel distortion at its widest setting, causing horizontal lines to bow down at the edges. With video I find this less of a problem than with still pictures. But these flaws really aren’t bad for such an inexpensive camcorder.

Another feature that drew me to the CG10 was the availability of manual focus, exposure, white balance and sensitivity/ISO. In practice I use the manual exposure, white balance and ISO quite a bit. Especially with video it’s nice to be able to set these at the start and then not worry about the video suddenly getting darker or lighter due to small ambient light changes. The manual controls themselves are buried in menus, but you can set up the camera’s little joystick control to shortcut to four different manual controls. I have mine set so that pushing left adjusts ISO, pushing right adjusts focus, pushing down adjusts exposure compensation and pushing up turns the flash on and off. While I like this ability to customize controls, the joystick itself is kind of tiny and easy to accidentally trigger. The camera mostly doesn’t let you change these settings while recording. On the one hand this doesn’t let you adjust settings as conditions change. But on the other you also can’t accidentally change exposure in the middle of a shot, either.

Much more so than a Flip or Kodak pocket cam, the Sanyo rewards an experienced shooter because of the relative flexibility of its manual controls. Even a lot of more expensive tape, hard drive and memory-card based camcorders from bigger brands don’t let you adjust exposure manually. It does take some time and fooling around to set up the camera the way you want it to function. But once it’s done, it’s done.

Prior to buying the CG10 I had been wary of hard drive and memory-card based camcorders, especially HD cams, because of the challenges presented by working with their highly compressed files. Therefore I was happy to find that the .mp4 files from the Xacti played in Quicktime without any processing. They also import right into iMovie ’08 without a problem, letting you get right to editing immediately. The big drawback with iMovie ’08 is that you can’t export a full 720p (1280×720) video. It only gives you a 960×540, which is kind of “near-HD.” I don’t have access to the most recent iMovie ’09, so I don’t know if the situation improves with the newer version.

Still, iMovie ’08 is one of the worst versions of iMovie, and so I find it useful only for short cuts-only projects. For more complex editing I use Final Cut Express (FCE). Unfortunately FCE doesn’t not like to let you start editing the CG10′s .mp4 files right away, forcing you to render once you do any editing at all, adding lots of waiting to any project.

Luckily I found a very simple workaround that lets me use the CG10′s footage in FCE much more quickly. Using the free video transcoding program MPEG Streamclip I’m able to convert the Xacti’s .mp4 files into Quicktime .mov files in the Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC) very quickly. On my two-year-old MacBook Pro the conversion runs at about 10x real-time, which is significantly faster than FCE’s rendering time. While the AIC files are bigger than the .mp4 files, the AIC codec is native to FCE, so there’s no long rendering waits.

Since I’m primarily a Mac guy, I haven’t tried the Xacti’s footage with Windows. I’m interested to hear from any readers who have Windows experience to share.

After six months of using this little camcorder I can say I’m quite satisfied. It’s one main deficit is that it doesn’t have a microphone input. At the same time I haven’t yet had a project where that presented the problem. The built-in stereo mics are actually quite impressive, and you can hear in this video I shot of Chicago’s Environmental Encroachment marching band:

Environmental Encroachment live on the Mediageek Radioshow from Paul Riismandel on Vimeo.

I’m not sure that the CG10 is the best camcorder for the newbie or someone who isn’t at all interested in manual controls. Out of the box the camcorder is set up to be pretty annoying, with a dumbed-down menu and lots of unnecessary beeping. But, then again, I think most digital cameras come that way. So, perhaps it’s less of an issue than I’ve supposed. I’m pretty sure it’s still the only under-$200 pocket camcorder with a real optical zoom lens, which is its other big selling point.

It’s completely unreasonable to expect a $200 pocket camcorder to perform like a $1000 model. Yet I’m very impressed with the CG10 overall. As an experienced videophile I’ve learned to work around its limitations, while appreciating the convenience of having a video camera with me much more often. And with such a low price-point, I’m more willing to carry it around to events and other places where I might hesitate to bring a more expensive camera.

I must admit I’m quite curious to see where these little pocket HD cams are going next.

On Thursday’s Radioshow: Environmental Encroachment the Magic Circus Band

Independent media comes in all forms, next to ‘zines, podcasts and blogs there are trombones, drums and batons. In parades, clubs and gatherings of all types across the US, and across the world a fresh wave of marching bands are bringing musical chaos to the streets.

Insurgent marching bands from around the globe are soon gathering in Boston for the Honk! Festival. One of those bands will be Chicago-based Environmental Encroachment. But before they head to Beantown EE is making a stop into the WNUR studios for an appearance on the mediageek radioshow.

As a Magic Circus Band, EE uses circus acrobatics, live music and costumes to create unique entertainment environments. At the same time they bring incredible marching band interpretations of classic and modern rock that you’ll never hear on a high school football field.

It’s going to be a fun and unique episode of the radioshow. You can hear it live this Thursday, Oct. 1 at 9 PM CT on WNUR 89.3 FM in Chicago and online at www.wnur.org. Afterward listen to the podcast at the mediageek radioshow website.

Life Inc., Publishing and Radio

I really enjoyed my conversation with Douglas Rushkoff, discussing his new book Life, Inc; How the World Became a Corporation and How To Take It Back. The first part of this interview is on this week’s edition of the mediageek radioshow.

I find that Doug is articulating very clearly a lot of ideas that have also been rattling around my ahead for the last decade or so, but he’s made the effort to research them and flesh them out in print both in his book and in a growing series of columns and essays. What I like about his analytical approach is his willingness to attempt to get outside our contemporary assumptions about daily life and try to figure out when and how something, like the corporation, was brought into existence. I also appreciate that he’s willing to continue prodding at a question even when the answers are murky, showing a willingness to accept there are some apparent conflicts in the messy reality of daily life.

He recently wrote a piece for Publisher’s Weekly arguing that the publishing business is very ill-suited to corporate consolidation. He notes that book publishing is a sustainable business, but not a source of tremendous year-over-year growth of the sort a large corporation needs. But he remains sanguine about the future of publishing because the expert editors, publishers and writers haven’t gone away and are ready to rebuild the industry, perhaps with new independent houses.

I see some parallel with the radio business, although radio has been far more decimated than publishing. The root problem is the same: the large consolidating companies treated radio as a commodities business, seeking unreasonable profit growth that the business could not sustain. Radio differs from publishing in the fact that stations must be licensed and are therefore inherently limited in number, whereas publishing houses can be more easily started with less capital and require no licensing of any sort.

If new independents could start radio stations without having to try and pry licenses away from the likes of Clear Channel and Cumulus, I think we’d already be seeing some innovative rebooting of the industry. Unfortunately, radio is more like a neighborhood where the landowners have all let their properties get run down but refuse to sell them because scarcity still keeps the going rate artificially high.

In some sporadic cases we see innovation happening in public and community radio, where license holders can keep their stations sustainable but don’t have to rake in enormous profits. I just keep hoping that Clear Channel will finally bite the bullet and need to start shedding stations left and right, giving an opportunity for smaller, local and independent owners to get back into the game. Admittedly, it’s a more distant hope than the reinvigoration of the publishing industry, since another smaller consolidator, like CBS Radio, might choose to pack its stables, outbidding smaller players.

That’s the problem with licensing, and, to an extent, why the founding fathers organized against the Stamp Act of 1765. As it was designed, radio pretty much needs to be licensed because it was premised on scarcity partially imposed by the technological limits of 1927. But it’s not necessarily an inherent fact about radio. Perhaps the future of wireless communications will render this period of licensing a short historical anomaly. It’s an open question and no better than a 50/50 proposition right now.

Doug has his own relatively new radio show, The Media Squat, on the great noncommercial station, WFMU. In the interview we talked about his program and our shared challenged of trying to do an original weekly program on a completely volunteer, non-profit basis. That part of the interview will air on the next edition of mediageek. You can listen to it live on Thursday, Sept. 10, at 9 PM Central time on WNUR 89.3 FM in Chicago and online at http://www.wnur.org. Of course, the program will be archived online next week.

Cassettes Are a Weird Way to Distribute Music?

My, oh my, where has the time gone. Sure, cassettes might be nearly obsolete and decidedly retro. But weird?

Wired’s Epicenter blog recently compiled “10 Weird Ways to Distribute Music.” But, really, the list might be more accurately characterized as “10 Unique Ways,” rather than weird. Seems that some popular indie bands like Dirty Projectors are now releasing some albums on cassette again, making the format #8 on Wired’s list. At least blogger Eliot Van Buskirk had the good taste of linking to my somewhat tongue-in-cheek 2007 post titled, “Next Big Retro Thing: The Cassette Revival.”

Of course, distributing new music on cassettes stands out only because the format’s been largely abandoned by the mainstream. I emphasize new music because I’ve certainly seen cheap cassette compilations of country classics and oldies still turn up at truck stops and dollar stores. Cassette-only labels were an underground music fixture in the 80s and 90s due to both the low cost of doing limited edition releases and the relative ubiquity of cassette players.

While mostly overtaken by CD-Rs and downloadable MP3s, cassette labels have survived. Plustapes is a Chicago-based label putting out new independent music on cassette each in limited editions of a hundred or so. Earlier this year the music blog Expressway to My Skull compiled a list of active cassette-only labels and places to find them.

Perhaps the greatest advantage of releasing music on cassette is that it’s possible to record and duplicate albums entirely in the analog domain easily and cheaply without a computer. If you want to get fancy you can find a cassette four-track at a thrift or pawn shop so you have more recording and editing flexibility. Then get a dubbing deck and you’re set. It doesn’t have to be about analog fetishism — it can simply be about being cheap.

Perhaps the enduring charm of the cassette has to do with its fundamental nature as a recording medium that is very accessible, but imposes real practical limits on its duplication. It’s easy for nearly anyone to duplicate several dozen cassettes using inexpensive dubbing decks, but quantities of much more than that require commercial duplicating services. Like ‘zines, cassettes can be a near-mass medium, where you can reach hundreds with a work that the creator still fashioned and touched with her own hands.

Now that we can take for granted the ability to reach a nearly unlimited audience with a perfectly-duplicable MP3 file, there’s something to be said for a sound medium that can’t be had by anyone with a ‘net connection, that didn’t roll off an assembly line. It doesn’t have to be a case of internet vs. cassette; I think there’s room for both to coexist, even in symbiosis.

FCC Steps Up Pressure on Boulder Pirates

A short blog post from Monk, formerly the brains behind the first iteration of Boulder Free Radio KBFR, reports that two separate unlicensed stations in Boulder, CO were recently “shut down” by the FCC. A new KBFR with new a new crew behind it has been operating in Boulder since sometime last year. Monk has no other details on these recent shut downs.

So I set about investigating what might be going on, since Boulder has been the site of free radio innovation for quite some time. I’ve not been able to find any news reports on any bust, but a check of the FCC’s most recent enforcement actions turns up four virtually identical Notices of Unlicensed Operation (NOUO) dated May 8. Three were issued to individuals and one was issued simply to “Boulder Free Radio, Boulder, CO.” There’s no indication in the NOUOs that the FCC talked to anyone associated with the station or gained access to a transmitter. Unusually, there aren’t even any street addresses listed. Likely this means that agents didn’t mail the notices, but left them at the door.

This evening I received email confirmation from Boulder Free Radio that there was another FCC visit to a transmitter location last Friday, May 29, and that they’re off the air. They’re planning to stay off the air for the time being while they assess the situation. However, their web radio stream continues to broadcast (on the internet only, of course).

The current KBFR is operating according to a similar gameplan as the original station, using the tactic of separating the studio and transmitter using an internet audio stream as the studio-to-transmitter-link (STL). If the transmitter is visited they pack up shop there and move to a new location without the studio or the on-air talent being affected. This method ostensibly allows the station to have a sizable staff of DJs without having to divulge to them the location of the transmitter, or expose the DJs to liability for the unlicensed broadcast.

Indeed, with this method there really isn’t any need for the persons behind the web stream to even know the persons operating the transmitters. This method also has been employed during large protest actions, where a live webstream will originate from a convergence center or Independent Media Center which is then rebroadcast for the duration of the protest by anonymous, unrelated pirates.

Monk and the original KBFR were able to keep up this tactic for nearly five years of cat and mouse games with the unusually aggressive Denver FCC office. He finally called it a day in January, 2005. According to Monk, the FCC agent on their case

bordered on (and in talking to lawyers we know, actually crossed the line) illegal activity. He harassed private citizens at their work place (accusing them, to their bosses, of ‘breaking the law on company time’) and the aforementioned roommate of the original Monk from Five Years Ago. We’ve since learned that this ex-roomie of the original Monk actually had to hire a lawyer to protect himself from having just been the roommate of one of us. And HALF a DECADE ago. …

The reason we shut down is our fear of innocents getting blamed for things they didn’t do…

Who knows if the FCC will be that aggressive with the new KBFR, especially given that the FCC agent in question supposedly retired four years ago.

As for the second station Monk reports being shut down: I’ve found no other recent actions against unlicensed stations in Boulder in the FCC’s enforcement action list. However I have heard that another station, unrelated to Boulder Free Radio, was operating.

Interview: The End of Television

Although the delay of the DTV transition to June 12 has taken a little wind out of the sails for the potential of a massive rude awakening for an American public unprepared for the sudden obsolescence of their analog TVs, the transition is still going to happen. While more households will have obtained DTV converter boxes (and that’s a good thing), the transition nevertheless will leave a huge swath of temporarily vacant spectrum ripe for the exploiting.

Back in December I blogged about a Pittsburgh-based project called The End of Television which planned an unlicensed analog TV broadcast of submitted videos on the original transition day of Feb. 17. I contacted Ian F. Page for an interview on the radioshow. At that point the transition was still more than two months off, so he suggested we do something over email, saving a phone interview for closer to the transition. Then Congress delayed our fun, but Ian didn’t give up — he just delayed the End of Television until June 12, too.

Ian was kind enough to still agree to do the email interview to explain the motivation behind The End of Television, and its relationship to other unlicensed broadcasting.

mediageek (mg): Please tell me the inspiration for the End of Television project.

Ian F. Page (IFP): I first heard about the transition to digital television a year and a half ago. The idea actually came up because some one explained to me that the streets would be littered with TVs and that there were specific protocols for recycling TVs. I had been thinking about ways to watch videos alternative to screenings and I began making a video that I wanted to show on TV. I had a burgeoning interest in electronics and after a little collaboration discovered that I could accomplish building a transmitter.

mg: Why is the transition to digital television significant, and why did you choose to mark it in this way, with an unlicensed broadcast?

IFP: I have always enjoyed moments in my life where some mandate or alteration in the daily round comes down from the mountain and WE have to adjust. I remember one day in high school when I overheard a classmate talking about how his cable company had switched the numbers of such and such channels. He was riled up about it. It is a totally insignificant change that somehow agitates the self-programmed thoughtlessness. It gives us a glimpse of the human behind the machine, a glimpse at the power of a medium, whatever that machine or medium might be. Daylight savings is another example, or when the fare for the subway goes up, or New Year’s eve. I like these moments and June 12th is another one of them.

I find the June 12th switch amusing in that the switch cannot happen unless people get involved with their televisions, so a passive medium gets a little physical attention. It is also amusing because the whole ordeal shows our faith in everything digital, the event is a nice marker on the way to accepting anything and everything more efficient and newer. The political activity behind the switch is also a loud declaration that TV is a right, not a luxury. The delay was a very interesting revelation for me, to read speculations and think about what it would be like if people didn’t have TV anymore. It brought back a conversation that I hadn’t heard in a while and from, what I read, the debate was really polarized.

mg: Is the project a political statement?

IFP: I am not approaching it in a political way at all, but the project leads to an interesting idea – the privatization of the electromagnetic spectrum. The idea of owning or trespassing on a person’s radio waves is silly to me. I do not think that someone or some corporation should be able to own a frequency. At the same time I do understand the need for regulation and allocation, since so many lives rely on communications.

Companies own wavelengths, like colors for example. John Deere green is just a wavelength like 88.3FM and both are private. The problem is that the frequencies for the public are ever decreasing. There was never any massive preservation projects for the electromagnetic spectrum like there was for parks, so now experimenters are confined to small frequencies. So if you want to experiment with radio waves and not become a ham radio operator, it is inevitable that you trespass.

mg: What relationship, if any, does the project have to unlicensed or pirate radio?

IFP: It is similar, the difference is only that I am modulating a video signal and audio signal onto a radio wave, rather than just an audio signal. That, and it is at a different frequency, but otherwise they are the same.

mg: Are you willing to share the technical details of your broadcast set up?

IFP: The set up is mostly commercial equipment and some modified ham radio equipment, nothing out of reach.

mg: How many submissions have you received? Can you tell us about any of the more interesting ones?

IFP: To date there are over 30 hours of footage, with more submissions coming in hopefully. The submission deadline is May 25th. I was excited to receive a submission from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE, a local filmmaker who is getting involved in the project. The video is something he has wanted to have on TV for a while now and we are glad to give his work the setting it needs.

mg: Finally, besides the obvious need to delay the debut of the project, is there any other affect the June delay of the digital TV transition has?

IFP: The delay revealed to me the elaborate process a bill has to go through to get passed. It also means not as many stations will be turning off at one moment, which potentially lessens the impact of the project on the viewing audience, since there are more people prepared to receive digital television and not analog. Other than that, it is pretty much the same.

Thanks for the interview, Ian!

The End of Television is accepting submissions on VHS or miniDV tape through May 25. Send to:
The End of Television
331 S. Aiken st
Pittsburgh, PA 15232

On Tonight’s Radio Show: The Value of Retro & Vintage Technology

On tonight’s radioshow my guest with be Bohus Blahut, one of the bloggers behind the popular Retro Thing blog which tracks vintage gadgets and technology. It’s a site I’ve been reading for a couple of years not just because I have my own love for vintage tech, but because I think there’s value in holding on to, preserving and finding continual usefulness in the tools and gadgets which the mainstream consumer products industry would have us believe need to be tossed out and replaced.

Bohus lives in Chicago, so he’ll be live in the studio which gives us an opportunity to take some calls in the second half of the show. If you’re in the Chicago area, listen live at 9 PM CST on WNUR 89.3 FM, or tune in online (live stream). The studio line is 847-866-WNUR (9687). If you miss the live airing, catch it online at the radioshow website, or any of the show’s affiliate stations like WRFA, Jamestown, NY and WTND, Macomb, IL.

Cheapskate Audiophile

As a geek videophile audiophile there’s the tendency for that interest to be conflict with my critical side that questions our modern consumerist capitalist economy. I believe that balance can be found, as long as one accepts that it’s nearly impossible to be entirely non-comsumerist without checking out of modern technological society altogether. Yet, it is possible to temper the consumerist side while still having enthusiasm for good audio and video and the aesthetics of sound and vision.

In particular, I think I’ve always been an audiophile. I’ve been obsessed with sound and music since I was a child, and I’ve always been interested in finding better, more pleasing, more realistic sound reproduction. While in high school in the mid-80s I bought my first component cassette deck, amplifier, CD player and turntable. All of this gear was decidedly “mid-fi” by audiophile standards, but still whet my appetite for sound that was significantly better than the boomboxes and discount-store compact stereos used by most of my peers.

While I’ve been willing to spend some amount of disposable income on audio gear, I’ve also been hestitant to lay down the kind of cash required to buy in to what is considered the “high-end” of audio gear. This is the world of $1000 CD players, $5000 turntables and $10,000 speakers. Certainly, the kind of craftsmanship and design excellence that goes into many of these products has real value. At the same time I think much of it is the audio equivalent of Ferraris and Lamborghinis — semi-impractical exotica meant to give the affluent something to spend their money on, while giving the less-affluent something to aspire to.

My experience in slogging around in the low-end of the high-end has proven to me that good sound does not have to be an exotic rare commodity only for the rich and golden-eared. In fact, very pleasing and accurate sound can be had for as the same or less money than it costs to buy a home-theater in a box system at Wal-Mart or Best Buy.

There are multiple paths to being a cheapskate audiophile, many of them DIY. The more industrious or crafty amongst us build some of their own gear, either from kits or from scratch. Others perform minor modifications on mass-market gear that results in sonic gains.

Possessing neither the skill nor patience to take these routes I instead keep my eyes and ears open for the bargains — gear that achieves unusually good results at an unusually low price-point. The ‘net is a real boon for all of us cheapskate audiophiles by giving us easy access to this sort of info that otherwise would come by word-of-mouth, technical books or low-circulation specialty magazines and newsletters.

To demonstrate I’ll show off my current cheapskate system which I use in my home office for music listening and audio production. The core cheapskate item in the system is the Sonic Impact T-Amp, which I’ve written about before. It’s a cheap, plastic $25 stereo amplifier based on a new digital amplifier design that rocked the audio world three years ago by producing sound more like an amp some 20x its price. The T-Amp is rated to produce 15 watts of power, and I think that’s probably stretching it. More likely, it delivers around 8 watts into most speakers. But they are still an incredibly clean, transparent 8 watts.
Read more »

Is The End of Television The Beginning of a New Resistance?

I’ve discussed the idea of reclaiming the analog TV spectrum when the digital changeover happens in February, and talked to Free Radio Berkeley’s Stephen Dunifer about his unlicensed TV transmitter kits. Now it looks like someone is ready to put the idea into action with The End of Television project.

The project is accepting video submissions on miniDV and VHS of programs that will air on VHF channel 2 in Pittsburgh, PA on the day of analog TV turnoff, Feb. 17, 2009.

Of course there’s a small element of risk in pre-announcing the broadcast, but the flip-side is that it’s difficult to pull of a collaborative art project without some degree of publicity. I hope that the folks behind the project don’t intend to broadcast from the address they’ve listed for sending the videos. Yet, if it’s just a one-day broadcast the risks are pretty slim, especially since I’m guessing the FCC will have it’s hands pretty full that day depending on how smoothly the changeover goes. I wonder how many phone calls field offices will be taking from puzzled viewers whose analog sets all of a sudden quit working (except for channel 2).

It would be great if TV microbroadcasters across the country would take the abandoned analog airwaves on Feb. 17 as a coordinated act of resistance against planned obsolescence and the accompanying handover of free but enormously lucrative digital spectrum to the nation’s major broadcasters (who then tried to lobby to keep their analog channelspace, too).

I’ve already exchanged emails with Ian, one of the principals behind the project, and plan to do an email interview for the blog, followed up with a phone interview for the radioshow closer to Feb. 17.

Tom Roe on free103point9′s New FM Station and Microradio Past

Tom Roe, program director for free103point9, was my guest for last week’s radioshow where we discussed that organization’s approach to transmission arts and how they were able to obtain a rare noncommercial full-power FM broadcast license. That show is now available for downloading or listening online.

In the second half of the live broadcast version of the show Tom and I talked a little about the fact that free103point9 actually started out as an unlicensed micropower station in 1997, before deciding to go online only. This makes free103point9 one of only two contemporary broadcast stations to have roots in unlicensed radio. The other one is shortwave station WBCQ whose operator, Allan Weiner, was the man behind the infamous Radio New York International, a station which in 1987 attempted to emulate European pirates by operating off-shore. Weiner wrote a memoir of his pirate radio days called Access to the Airwaves: My Fight for Free Radio. Unfortunately the publisher, Loompanics Press, went out of business in 2006, although it looks like new and used copies are still available online.

Fully indulging in the tangent, after the jump you can watch a compilation video of news coverage of Radio New York International from 1987.
Read more »