Month: July 2001

The Problem with Alternative Radio on Shortwave: WBCQ Shortwave radio station WBCQ is one of the 20 or so broadcast shortwave stations in the US, and amongst those one of only a few that aren’t exclusively religious or evangelical. Started by pioneering radio pirate Allan Weiner, who took to the seas with Radio New York…

DIY: Home Real-Time Video Editing Tom’s Hardware has a very comprehensive review of the Matrox RT2500 digital video editing system. It seems like a good system to consider if you want to do more complex projects than possible with just a plain ol’ firewire card.

Many folks don’t realize that it is possible to put a very low-power radio station on the air in the AM and FM bands without a license and without breaking any federal regulations. Under the FCC’s rule part 15 you can broadcast at low power levels in broadcast bands, which is what makes possible those…

KOPN Hangs in There: A Small Community Radio Station Struggles to Survive in Mid-Missouri John Tarleton writes at his Cybertraveler site, “KOPN is one of the nation’s oldest listener-sponsored, community-access radio stations. In the late ’70s it flourished as the center of Mid-Missouri’s alternative universe. However, by 1997 KOPN was on the verge of financial…

Very Independent Media Global Indymedia features links to reports and information on the the North American Street Newspaper Association gathering in San Francisco. Street Newspapers, like Chicago’s Streetwise, are published by people who are currently or have been homeless, which they frequently sell on the streets to help earn subsistence. Such newspapers are also frequently…

The Local Impact of an FCC Deal Yesterday I wrote a short commentary for our local Indymedia site where I try to assess the potential local impact of the News Corp. decision by the FCC, with specific regard to my hometowns of Champaign-Urbana, IL. If that sort of thing interests you, give it a read,…

Stay Underground I stumbled upon this near-manifesto about ‘zines called “Fuck quirky; Zines are dead, long live zines,” by Jim Munroe, on the Mass Culture website. It’s a good analysis about how at its height mainstream media coverage of the ‘zine movement focused on the safe, quirky zines and publishers–typically cute girls and safe white…

MSNBC publishes this article that is critical of the recent FCC decisions under Chairman Powell. Writer Eric Alterman, who also writes for the Nation, says of the News Corp. deal that “Powell, like Murdoch, is being more than disingenuous,” in his claims that the new triopoly (two TV stations and a newspaper) will not threaten…

Lighting-fast Deregulation and Consolidation: FCC Approves Fox/News Purchase of Additional NYC TV Station As the New York Times reports, the FCC approved, with commissioner votes cutting entirely down party lines, News Corp.’s purchase of Chris-Craft, which includes many more TV stations, most notably another TV station in the New York City market, where News already…

Comments Anyone? I just put this little java app called Reblogger on the page which allows you folks to comment on any of the posts and read any of those comments. Just click the [post/view comments] link at the bottom of each post. I saw it in use on boingboing and thought maybe a little…