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In today’s Salon, reporter Eric Bohlert further deconstructs Clear Channel’s recent born-again decency: “But the pattern seems clear: Clear Channel turns a deaf ear to continuous complaints about its rampant consolidation and hardball business practices, but when Capitol Hill shows interest, the company springs into action. ‘They don’t want to be before Congress and they…

In what can only be described as a unique situation, U.S. Attorneys have contacted unlicensed Radio Free Brattleboro warning them that the FCC wants to take action to shut them down. This is unusual since it’s not typical for either the FCC or other federal officials to give such warning. Most of the time, when…

The first day of the Nat’l Conference on Media Reform was fun and exhausting. Most satisfying is that we carried off all the mp3/shoutcast audio streams without a hitch, maxing out the bandwidth for most of the streams. I think that means people were interested in hearing the sessions and that it was a valuable…

Today the company that bought Emusic, Dimensional Associates, put out a press release clarifying somewhat their intentions for the on-line music service. Here’s the meat of it, but please excuse the marketing hyperbole: “EMusic is partnering with the most renowned live music venues across the US to launch its new program, EMusic Live. The program,…

Last week the National Association of Broadcasters held its annual Radio Show convention in Philadephia, home to the Prometheus Radio Project. Jesse Walker from Reason magazine has written a nice report on the proceedings, emphasizing some of the emerging conflicts both inside and outside the NAB. By Jesse’s account (which is the only non-industry one…

Industry journal TV Week reports that Sen. John McCain, chair of the Senate Commerce Committee which oversees the FCC, has put a “hold” on the Senate’s approporiations bill that denies funding to the FCC for raising the national TV ownership cap from 35% to 45%. He says the FCC is his department, dammit, and so…

It’s worth mentioning that there’s a really good interview with Pete TriDish from the Prometheus Radio Project over at Columbia Journalism Review on-line. Although, as he mentions in the interview, Pete caught a lot of crap from the pirate radio community for working on licensed low-power FM, the work he’s done is amazing, and I…

John at DIYmedia.net notes that the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia decided on Monday that it would retain jurisdiction over the Prometheus/Media Access Project suit against the FCC’s media rules loosening. As John observes, this is important because the DC Circuit Court is the one that usually hears challenges to FCC regulation, and…

The article on alt. weeklies that I last blogged is part of a full-issue special report of the CJR on the New Alternatives. IMCistas have been buzzing away over the article on IMCs, entitled “Edging Away from Anarchy, Inside the Indymedia Collective, Passion vs. Pragmatism,” which for the most part manages not to misconstrue Indymedia…

The headline says it all. If you’re in the Baltimore area, you can just walk right in to Atomic Books and buy the mediageek zine. Or, you can order it on-line — click here and scroll down to the “zines” section.