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.

“Integrity” as Marketing Bullshit, the Case of Indie 103.1

The big commercial radio story making the rounds this week is news of Los Angeles’ Indie 103.1 going off the air to being online only in order to “save” its “integrity.” While it’s romantic to believe the notion of a commercial radio station suffering for its art (a la FM), it’s a fantasy.

Indie 103.1 was a commercial alternative rock station that attempted to break out of the typical mold by hiring DJs who actually chose some of the music they played and having close ties to the alt rock community. For instance, former Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones had his own show for a while, as did Henry Rollins and Rob Zombie. But the station sort of stuck out like a sore thumb in owner Entravision‘s portfolio, given that the company is a mid-size player specializing in Spanish-language radio and television stations.

I’d listened to the station once or twice online since the format went live in 2003, and I will have to admit that it was refreshing compared to most commercial radio, but hardly freeform or revolutionary compared to most college or community stations. Still, now the dream is over, as the station is off the air and exclusively online.

But the hook that the transition online is some sort of play to preserve the station’s integrity in the face of ratings pressure is pure bullshit. I don’t doubt that ratings played a part in the station going off the air as Indie 103.1, but the reality of the transition to online is that the internet incarnation will bare little resemblance to the FM signal. According to the station’s music director, “None of the primary DJs or music programmers at the station are involved in the website and it’s not being run by people who ran the station.”

That quote was published last Friday, the 16th, and just a while ago on the 19th I checked the Indie 103.1 website and there’s a new message declaring that many of the station’s DJs actually will be doing shows:

In true Indie fashion, these DJs have offered to continue their labor of love and host their shows on-line. …

While some might view that as a victory, resulting from a public relations backlash, I say it’s still an example of consolidation in action. Sure, fans of Indie 103.1 will still be able to listen to some of their favorite shows online, but only while tethered to their computers–not yet on the go, in their cars or anywhere they don’t have a persistent internet connection. Furthermore, on the internet Indie 103.1 simply isn’t that special. The lower cost of entry means there’s hundreds of stations playing eclectic alternative rock that’s got more “integrity” than Indie 103.1.

What made Indie 103.1 special at all was the fact that it survived as an actual broadcast commercial radio station in the nation’s second market playing a less repetitive and not strictly playlisted format that still allowed DJs a hand in picking the tunes. If it had integrity, that’s where it was. There’s no indication that the staff and management were give the choice of go mainstream or go off the air. Rather, they were told they were going off the air, and their only outlet would be online. The whole “maintaining integrity” line is marketing bullshit, pure and simple.
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Lubbock, TX loses an alternative radio voice

I very much regret to report the news of yet another college station leaving the air. This time the news comes by way of Jennifer at Spinning Indie:

nearly 50-year-old college radio station KTXT at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas was abruptly shut down on December 10th by the university. Apparently the school is shifting its priorities as far as student media go, and the station was seen as a financial drain, and perhaps, not “new media” enough for the school. What’s shocking is that KTXT is a prominent 35,000 watt FM station that has played an influential role in radio, airing music not otherwise heard in the area.

I think this comment Jennifer quotes from a Houston Chronicle article sums up the value of KTXT:

KXTX is the only things that made Lubbock more than a cow town. Please don’t take this away from the kids struggling to live there now. – Anthony Armendariz, Brooklyn NYC

One can only guess what Texas Tech has in store for KTXT now that it’s been yanked from the students and community. 35kw is an enormously powerful signal for a college station, though certainly useful in the prairies of west Texas.

The university also owns and operates a public station, KOHM-FM, which has a mixed line-up of NPR news/talk and music (primarily classical and jazz). My cynical side would predict that the university would like to repurpose KTXT as an all-music or all-news/talk pubcaster. KOHM has double the power of KTXT, so my guess is that KOHM would become the news/talk station, since that format is regarded as the more profitable public radio format, with KTXT becoming all music so as not to alienate the wealthy local geriatrics who donate to keep the unthreatening pop classics on the air.

In any event, this is another unfortunate reminder of the difference between a college station and a true community station. Most (but not all) community stations are run by local non-profit corporations with by-laws that ensure a level of democratic governance accountable to member donors. While not fail-safe, this sort of structure typically complicates efforts to shut down or radically alter the mission of a community station without community input. No such safety mechanism exists for a station owned and operated by a university or college, even a public one.

I don’t bring this up as an argument against college stations. Heck, I’m the adviser to one. Rather, it’s a reminder not to take these stations for granted, whether you’re a student, volunteer or listener. The temptations to sell of increasingly valuable non-commercial licenses or repurpose stations into supposedly more lucrative public radio affiliates are difficult to resist when you’re a college administrator faced with budget shortfalls.

According to the student station manager of KTXT, having on-air fund drives was “not encouraged” by the unviersity. In retrospect that only seems like an inducement to fail, given that the financial drain of maintaining the station is blamed for the shutdown. I hope that this serves as a warning to students (and advisers) at other college stations to pay attention to that bottom line and not be discouraged from finding ways to help fund the station if need be.

I really don’t want to blog about another 50-year-old student-run station leaving the dial.

Limited Area Broadcasting

I’ve just spent a little chunk of time plowing through the archives of the Low Power Radio blog, which I found through my referrer logs. It promises insight on “how to set up and operate your own low power radio station.” By low power, the blogger Kev means:

Micro radio, micro power broadcasting, part 15 radio, community radio, neighborhood station, experimental broadcasting, hobby broadcasting – I love it all!

It’s primarily a pretty good compendium of annotated links that’s been going with a few posts a month since February. Indeed, I found info about many more part-15 low-power transmitters for both AM and FM than I knew were available. There’s been a community of so-called “legal” low-power broadcasters in the US for a very long time. Many enthusiasts and broadcasters have been congregating for years at a message board called “Community Radio USA”. One of the denizens of that board has his own site called HobbyBroadcasting.net HobbyBroadcaster.net, which I found while reading through the Low Power Radio Blog.

While here at the ‘geek the focus is often on unlicensed broadcasters operating with power above the part-15 limit (roughly 100 milliwatts or so), there’s much utility to be found with part-15 stations, especially in dense urban areas or similar circumstances. Since FM part-15 limits are based on field-strength it’s relatively difficult to build a station with much reach that remains truly legal — even if you pump only 10 milliwatts into a very efficient antenna several hundred feet off the ground you’ll likely be reaching further than part-15 regs allow.

However, AM limits are specified in antenna length and power (100 milliwatts), allowing much more room for creative engineering and getting more broadcast range without breaking the law. Kyle Drake’s excellent LPAM handbook is a great reference for anyone wanting to try out legal part-15 broadcasting on the AM dial.

Much of the info that the Low Power Radio blog has dug up is more historical in nature, culled from both internet and print sources, like this 1991 handbook for starting a station. While the references to equipment manufacturers and sellers may be outdated, there’s still some decent tech and historical info to glean. I’m glad that someone is compiling and sharing this stuff and I hope that the blog sticks around a while.

On this week’s radioshow: The Falsies

There is pollution in the radio environment, and there are polluters. For the last five years the Center for Media Democracy has bestowed a special award on those who pile it high and deep — the Falsies. On tomorrow night’s radioshow][/caption] I’ll be talking with Senior Researcher, Diane Farsetta, who will tell us more about this years lose…. er, winners, including the first ever recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Falsie.

Tune in live at 9 PM CST to WNUR 89.3 FM in Chicago or online at wnur.org (live 128kbps stream). The show will be available at the radioshow page this weekend.

Another College Station Bids Farewell

Over at Arcane Radio Trivia, Jose Fritz laments the passing of college station WAWL on Dec. 10, formerly broadcasting from Chattanooga State Technical Community College . The college sold off its license for 91.5 FM for $1.5 million to Christian broadcaster Family Life Radio, based out of Tuscon, AZ.

$1.5 mil is a pretty big chunk of change for just one station in the 106th largest radio market in the US. I think that price conveys the relative scarcity of prime, full-power noncommercial channel space, even compared to commercial stations. It also demonstrates how the evangelical religious broadcast business is booming despite the down economy (perhaps even because of the down economy, feeding on people’s desperation).

Unfortunately, Family Life Radio’s gain is Chattanooga’s loss, as the city has a source for radio programming in touch with the local community and culture replaced with cookie-cutter, satellite-fed godcasting. What’s all the more rotten is that much of Family Life Radio’s programming is already heard on several other stations in the Chattanooga area, whether its contemporary Christian music or segments from Focus on the Family.

Chattanooga resident Paul Jackson articulates the loss in an opinion piece for the Chattanoogan:

when a 20-year non-commercial staple in this market that provides programming not offered by any other outlet (nor has any other throughout most of its existence) is simply auctioned and sold to a special interest group, could this raise a question of the importance of radio serving the interests of the community?

This is a side of deregulation and the resultant consolidation of the radio dial that often goes unnoticed. The growth market in Christian satellite-fed radio has caused the market value of noncommercial licenses to bubble in an area of broadcasting that was never intended to be subject to the so-called free market. The Clear Channelization of noncommercial radio has been slower than consolidation in commercial radio, but will only get worse as institutional owners of noncommercial college, educational and community-service stations strain under the bad economy, tempted by the opportunity for a quick buck obtained by selling off their radio licenses.

I might be more forgiving if Family Life Radio were at least going to broadcast a healthy schedule of locally-originated programming, supplemented by syndicated shows. But I see no indication that any of FLR’s station air much in the way of locally produced content — it’s the same lineup in Tuscon as in Lubbock as in Kalamazoo.

Now, Family Life Radio is still just shy of the 20-station limit that was in place before 1996, but the ability to buy a station in Chattanooga for $1.5 million indicates that this godcaster is ready to blow past that benchmark as long as it can find willing sellers. And once it does, another community will lose a local voice in favor of another homogenized godcaster from a 24/7 satellite signal.

Live on WEFT this Afternoon – 5:30 PM on 90.1 FM, Champaign-Urbana, IL

I’ll be literally phoning it in to my old haunt WEFT, 90.1 FM in Champaign-Urbana, IL, at 5:30 PM to do a special edition of the mediageek radioshow for their pledge drive. Long time readers/listeners may recall that WEFT is where the radioshow got its start and where it originated until April of this year.

WEFT station manager Mick Woolf will be in the studio there while we discuss the Tribune bankruptcy, the Obama plan for media and internet and, of course, the still relevant vitality of community radio.

If you’re in the Champaign area tune in, and please consider a donation to WEFT. If you’re elsewhere you can still tune in online.

Spinning Indie, a College Radio Blog

Once in a while I get comments here on the mediageek blog, and it’s especially great when they aren’t grammatically disastrous ads for v1agrA. So imagine how glad I was to receive a comment on my post about college radio from Jennifer Waits, who writes the Spinning Indie blog which is all about college radio.

Jennifer is on a mission to visit or do virtual visits and interviews with college stations in all 50 states, and it makes for great reading. Apparently she made an in-person visit to my backyard at WNUR last month, interviewing the general manager, Taylor Dearr. I’m sorry I wasn’t around for her visit.

Thanks to Jennifer’s virtual tours I’m learning about lots of stations I’d really never heard of that are bringing great radio to places like Fargo, Fairbanks and Stony Brook. It’s helpful to be reminded of the common challenges that college and noncommercial stations face, whether it’s managing music libraries or the vagaries of streaming, and possibly picking up some new approaches.

I hope Jennifer keeps up the posting.

Another “Reformed” Pirate

Following up on my tangent that veered onto the infamous off-shore US pirate, Radio New York International, the Radio Kitchen has a new post about WHVW in New York’s Hudson Valley, an eclectic AM music station owned and run by “Pirate” Joe Ferraro, who partnered with Allan Weiner in RNI. In addition to shortwave station WBCQ, WHVW makes for another licensed broadcast station run by a former unlicensed broadcaster.

As the Radio Kitchen’s Professor describes:

It’s funny. Joe’s patter reminds me more than a little bit of WBCQ’s Allan Weiner. Which makes sense, because they were friends at one time– fellow radio pirates in fact. Sadly, they had a falling out, which I once heard Allan mention in passion on his show. Apparently money was a problem and maybe some broken promises too. I don’t know the details. But it occurred to me as I was listening to Joe’s show, that if you could somehow combine WBCQ and WHVW into one radio station, it could be a killer combination. Then again, they already kinda did that, as two kids sharing an illegal frequency back in the 1970’s.

It sure seems like the radio dials would be a little less rich without the contributions of these former pirates.

NY Times Discovers College Radio Doesn’t Suck… er, no duh.

It’s got to be tough to be a NY Times reporter. As the stalwart standard-bearer of US print journalism, whenever you report on a cultural phenomenon you’re responsible for ostensibly declaring it as new, or newly rediscovered, newly viable…. newly whatever. While at the same time cultural insiders view that coverage with both “no duh” knowing disdain, along with the muted pride of being noticed by the Old Grey Lady.

So, that’s my stance on the Times’ recent article on continuing relevancy of college radio, spotlighting WRPI at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and KWVA at the University of Oregon. But primarily I’m glad to see the Times taking notice of what feels like an increasingly forgotten form of radio.

I got my start in college radio at WTSR-FM at the College of New Jersey (it was Trenton State College when I was there), and I’m very glad to say that ‘TSR is still a truly student-run station. Now I have the great privilege of being the adviser to student-run WNUR-FM at Northwestern University. Although it seems the bloodshed has slowed, during the 90s and early 00s there seemed to be quite a slate of student stations being reclaimed by college administrations in order to be repurposed into public radio stations or even sold off to the highest bidder (usually a church or christian broadcaster). It seems that things have now stabilized, and I hope that the remaining student-run stations are able to stay that way, although I fear the economic downturn again will make college-owned stations seem like tasty prospects for quick cash.

Along with community radio, student-run college radio is one of the last strongholds for independently programmed radio that is responsive to local community. Student-run stations are often criticized by students and non-students for being comparatively elitist and unrepresentative of both campus and local community. I remember in my college days the station being criticized for playing mostly indie rock that many (if not most) of my fellow students weren’t interested in. They’d tell us that they would listen more if only the station would play more mainstream pop and rock like the local CHR station. While the management of the station might have liked to believe these students, even then we all had enough of an instinctive understanding of basic political economy to recognize that our little college station was no match for the commercial CHR’s advertising and market power. In essence, it was absurd to compete with the commercial stations on their own turf, and a complete waste of the noncommercial license to even attempt it.

As an adviser to a college station in 2008 I see the same trends noted in the Times article, in that the contemporary college student listens to way less radio now than when I was a freshman in 1989. It’s no longer the case that the average college student prefers the local pop station to their college station. Rather, the average college student really does prefer her iPod.

Yet, I argue that true student-run and programmed college stations play a valuable role of cultural and political education in their communities. It’s often overlooked that most college stations are also staffed by a percentage of community volunteers who bring in both community representation and a broader range of experience. While not the same as community radio, any community that has a student-run station should be thankful that this beacon of noncommercial integrity often comes as a partial or wholly-funded gift from the college or university that sponsors it.

Yes, it may esoteric, amateurish or occasionally sophomoric, but I also know that without college radio many a community would have no jazz, classical, bluegrass, blues or experimental music on its airwaves, in addition to the more youth-associated genres of indie rock, metal, rap, dance and electronic.

Sure, many people now turn to the internet, satellite radio and downloads for the music they would have once gotten on the airwaves. But what about those without the resources, money, knowledge or wherewithal to use the ‘net or iPods? Or who want to be able to tune in anywhere without any hassle? Radio isn’t dead, even if the proclivities of the professional middle class are changing.

Yuppies (even if they look like hipsters) never listened to music radio much anyway….