Category: radio
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Radioshow Experiment a Partial Success
Last night I attempted to broadcast the radioshow live from Memphis using Skype to connect us with the WEFT studio. Here in Memphis at the Cook Convention Center we got a wired (rather than wireless) connection to the internet, which I understood was shared by very few people. I don’t know how many people were…
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Taiwan Pirates Protest for Communications Freedom
The Taiwan radio pirates certainly know how the value of banding together to fight against the selling off of the public airwaves. According to the Taipei Times, last week pirate broadcasters held protests in front of the National Communications Commission, their version of the FCC. Held back by rows of police in riot gear, angry…
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Pacifica and Uneasy Listening
This year historian Matthew Lasar published a recounting of what he calls the civil war inside of the Pacifica Foundation, where community radio began at KPFA in Berkeley, CA, titled Uneasy Listening. I haven’t yeat read the book, but it’s on my list. I very much enjoyed Lasar’s first book on Pacifica, Pacifica Radio: The…
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On the next radioshow: Update from Oaxaca
This evening I spoke again with Nancy Davies and George Salzman, two Americans living in Oaxaca, Mexico. They updated me on the situation there and I’ll play that interview on tomorrow’s radioshow, live on WEFT 90.1 FM in Champaign, IL. That program will be available for download by Sunday at midnight. George has been sending…
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Benton & SSRC Reports: Concentrated Ownership Does Not Correlate with Better, Diverse Media
Benton Foundation and the Social Science Research Council released their four reports on media ownership and concentration today. Without a doubt these reports explode the lies that the FCC majority, National Asociation of Broadcasters and major newspaper owners have been trying to push. The big media contentions, that more concentrated ownership results in more variety…
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Radio and Revolution in Oaxaca, Mexico
Although it has fallen out of the US mainstream news, a people’s uprising is still going strong in Oaxaca, Mexico, spurred on by the June 14 attacks by Mexican government forces on the striking teachers’ tent city in Oaxaca City. One main reasons for the attack was to destroy the teachers’ free radio station Radio…
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Mobile FM Transmitters — A Modulator Menace, or a Mountain out of a Molehill?
The traditional radio broadcast industry is getting pretty desperate lately. But while commercial radio has seen its fortunes slowly decline after squeezing out the consolidation profits, public radio has generally faired better. Nevertheless, there’s still some unregulated competition and interference coming from those little FM transmitters people use to pump their portable music players into…
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Quad Cities Pirates Fined Up the Ying-Yang. Is that the Price of Publicity?
John at DIYmedia.net has the dirt on the pirates behind Power 103.3 in Bettendorf, Iowa: Matthew Britcher, self-proclaimed “promotions director” of the commercial-format station, is being asked to pay $17,000 for running the station and refusing an FCC agent’s request to inspect it. Jason Duncan, quoted in local media as a “co-owner,” received a $10,000…
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Making Waves at Chicago Underground Film Fest
Michael Lahey’s documentary Making Waves is unflinching look at the politics and personalities behind the pirate radio scene of Tuscon Arizona. If you haven’t had a chance to see it, the film will be making an appearance at the Chicago Underground Film Festival at 1 PM on Aug. 19 and 6 PM on Aug. 21.…
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The Future of Cuba May Be on Shortwave
Back in ancient times, say before 1995, if you wanted to get up-to-the-minute news from far away places generally ignored by the western press, the best place to get it was a shortwave radio. While you were not guaranteed to get a professional, quasi-objective take on events, you would nevertheless hear voices much closer to…