mediageek

Category: community radio

  • How I Became the Cassette King of Community Radio

    In the late 1990s, when I was in grad school at a major Midwestern state university, my assistantship was working in the Language Learning Lab, supervising the video facilities – delivering VCRs on carts and maintaining an aging and lightly-used production studio. There was also an audio lab that was managed by a full-time professional,…

  • Lots of interesting non-comm and pirate radio in Western Washington State

    Jose Fritz of the great Arcane Radio Trivia has been traveling around and writing about what he hears on different regional radio dials. He just posted from the Seattle-Tacoma area and it’s interesting that he picks up a very diverse set of noncommercial stations featuring indie rock, NPR news, jazz and even dance music. He…

  • People’s Radio in Rogers Park

    I’m a little bummed that I didn’t know about this project that happened in my Chicago neighborhood this past weekend – People’s Radio at Mess Hall: People’s Radio will be a fully functioning radio station aimed at promoting alternative and local points of view, non-mainstream music, creating a dialogue about the “Commons”, and to demystify…

  • Missives from Deep Wireless

    I wish I had the time and money to go to the Deep Wireless Festival of Radio Art and Radio Without Boundaries conference up in Toronto which wrapped up this past weekend. The Festival is “a month-long celebration of radio and transmission art including performances, installations, broadcasts, workshops, (and) a Youth Radio residency.” It’s interesting…

  • Chi Journalism Town Hall Reveals Creative Tension b/w Old and New Media

    This week’s radioshow is now online, with audio from a national conference call on low-power community radio along with excerpts of last week’s Chicago Journalism Town Hall. I meant to comment on the Town Hall earlier, but then all of a sudden already a week passed. First, I want to say that I was glad…

  • On Thursday’s Radioshow: New LPFM Bill & Journalism Town Hall

    Another new Congress, another new low-power FM bill. In what’s become a tradition since Congress voted to stunt the growth of low-power radio back in 2000, a new Local Community Radio Act has been introduced. But this time around the bill arguably has the best chance of passing yet. We’ll hear from some of the…

  • 12th Annual Homelessness Marathon Examines Post-Katrina Poverty

    The Homelessness Marathon is one of the best annual grassroots radio events. The only unfortunate thing about the Marathon is that it continues to be necessary every year. It’s a 14-hour live broadcast from the streets of a different city each year, highlighting the causes, problems and experiences of homelessness. The most important aspect of…

  • Canadian Community Station Threatened by US Godcaster

    In the US grandfathered Class D low-power FM stations (under 100 watts) and translator stations–which only rebroadcast the signal of a full-power station–are the only classes of broadcast stations that don’t enjoy any protection for their spot on the dial. If a full-power station wants to increase power, move its transmitter or make other changes…

  • 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.…

  • 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.…