The Past, Present and Future Survival of Radio

The mediageek radioshow’s informal multi-week focus on the medium of radio wraps up this Thursday with guest Jerry Del Colliano. For 28 years he published the radio industry newsletter Inside Radio, was clinical professor of the music industry at the University of Southern California and now publishes the blog Inside Music Media. Del Colliano had a unique vantage point to watch the consolidation and downfall of commercial radio, and he saw it coming. Now on his blog he documents the foundering of Clear Channel and other major broadcasters while forecasting the future of music media, with or without radio.

Tune in this Thursday June 18 at 9 PM CDT to 89.3 FM WNUR in Chicago on your analog radio or listen online at wnur.org. Of course the show will be available for podcast and download by Sunday at midnight at the radioshow site.

Continuing on the radio tip, I would like to now announce that I’ve embarked on a new group blog project focused on radio, along with two other collaborators who are both astute observers of the medium. The new blog is RadioSurvivor.com. My collaborators are the dogged FCC watcher, media historian and Ars Technica writer Matthew Lasar and Jennifer Waits, the woman behind the Spinning Indie blog and an expert on the history and vital role of college radio.

Our goal with the RadioSurvivor is to provide comprehensive coverage of radio from a variety of perspectives, from policy and regulation to technology and programming. We’re fans of radio and believe strongly in its viability as a medium with a future, despite the major commercial owners doing their best to run their stations into the ground.

Taking on RadioSurvivor doesn’t mean I’ll post here less. In fact, I think this will spur me to incorporate some new topics into the mediageek blog while I publish my more radio-centric material at RadioSurvivor.

Being a group blog our plan is to make sure RadioSurvivor has lots of fresh content every week — more than any one of us can do on our own. I hope you’ll check it out. Your comments are welcome!

Mediageek Radioshow Notes for April 9, 2009

I’m going to try and get back in the saddle with posting show notes for each week’s radioshow so that listeners can check out some of the news items and other relevant stuff that comes up during the show. Since the show is produced live, often featuring live guests, I’ll be treating these posts as dynamic documents. This means I’ll add links to stuff that comes up spontaneously during the show after the live broadcast is over, and maybe even after the podcast version is posted.

So, here’s the notes for the April 9, 2009 edition of the radioshow (now online):

Bloomberg – Todd Shields: FCC Head Says Agency Should Reconsider Newspaper Ownership Rule

Huffington Post – Jeff Jarvis To Newspaper Moguls: You Blew It

ArsTechnica – Julian Sanchez: AP launches campaign against Internet “misappropriation”

FCC’s Press Release on National Broadband Plan (PDF).

FCC’s Notice of Inquiry on National Broadband Plan (PDF).

Catching up with friends

My pals on the internets have been keeping busy informing the masses about what’s really going on with overlords of our media environment. If you don’t keep up with Matthew Lasar’s Ars Technica articles or John Anderson’s DIYmedia missives, here’s some recent posts you should check out:

• Matthew reports that FCC Democrat Jonathan Adelstein is now on board to approve the Sirius/XM satellite radio merger, but only with significant conditions. This makes him commissioner #2 after Chairman Martin. Matthew also digs up some interesting dirt about Commissioner Tate tapping industry lobbyists for advice.
• John comments on the “glimmer” of hope that the FCC would take real action against Comcast for its BitTorrent filtering being downgraded to a “mirage.”
  

  After about a day and a half of happy-buzz, Martin and the FCC clarified their position – Comcast will not be substantially penalized in any meaningful fashion for its data-discrimination practices. There will be no further investigation, no priority inquiry, not even a monetary forfeiture: instead, the FCC will require the company to “disclose” its bandwidth-management practices and “encourage” Comcast to adopt more “protocol-agnostic” methods of shaping the traffic that flows over its pipes.

• Back in June John noted the current trends in FCC enforcement action against unlicensed broadcasters, observing that “the FCC is on relative track to meet its record-breaking enforcement effort of last year.” However, the FCC isn’t collecting any more financial forfeitures, and
  

  Although the FCC is getting more diligent about reducing the time between finding out about a pirate and making contact with the station, there is no obvious correlation between a diminution of stations on the air as a result.