On this edition of the show, we explore public radio history, specifically the origins of public radio in the United States, including the important role played by college and university-based stations. Josh Shepperd joins to talk about his new book, Shadow of the New Deal: The Victory of Public Broadcasting, which examines the intersections between the media reform movement, public broadcasting, educational technology and communications policy and research. Josh is an assistant professor of media studies at the University of Colorado Boulder and is Director of the Radio Preservation Task Force at the Library of Congress.

Show Notes:

• Josh Shepperd’s website at University of Colorado Boulder
• Radio Preservation Task Force of the Library of Congress
• Shadow of the New Deal: The Victory of Public Broadcasting (affiliate link on Amazon)
• Association of College and University Broadcasting Stations (ACUBS) evolved into the National Association of Educational Broadcasters (NAEB)
• Unlocking the Airwaves collection of NAEB materials
• Robert McChesney’s book: Telcommunications, Mass Media, and Democracy: The Battle for the Control of U.S. Broadcasting, 1928-1935 (affiliate link on Amazon)
• What is Low Power FM? (page on Radio Survivor)
• Podcast #333 – Low Power FM for Dummies (LPFM window opens Dec. 6, 2023)
• Prometheus Radio Project
• Common Frequency

Show Credits:

• This episode was produced by Jennifer Waits
• Hosted by Jennifer Waits, Eric Klein and Paul Riismandel
• Edited by Eric Klein

The post Podcast #336 – Educational Radio and the Beginnings of Public Radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Arlo Guthrie’s seasonally appropriate “Alice’s Restaurant” is getting dusted off once again for radio airplay this Thanksgiving 2023.

I’ve been documenting this radio ritual for many years (even while suffering with COVID last year) and was pleased to be able to speak to THE Alice in 2020. Our Radio Survivor conversation with Alice Brock is recommended listening, as it provides perspective on how Guthrie’s song came to be and why it has resonated with so many people.

This year, I was amused to see that there’s a podcast, 108.9 The Hawk, about a fictional classic rock radio station. Apparently in prior years they have done episodes about the rock station staple, “Alice’s Restaurant,” and for 2023 they have produced a mega episode. They write, “Well, now for the very first time, experience BOTH specials – ‘Alice’s Restaurant Attacks!’ and ‘Alice’s Revenge’ combined into one blood curdling, spine chilling, family dinner ruining episode!” Sounds intriguing.

Have a wonderful 2023 Thanksgiving celebration! If catching “Alice’s Restaurant” is part of your holiday tradition, read on for my guide to listening options on your radio dial for 2023.

As always, this is an incomplete list. DO double check with your local stations to be sure that times have not shifted. Additionally, I am only including stations for which I have verified that they will be airing “Alice’s Restaurant” for 2023. However, you may want to consult my prior radio guides to identify other radio stations that tend to play the song annually.

Pre-Thanksgiving Servings of “Alice’s Restaurant” on the Radio in 2023

“Alice’s Restaurant” is also airing before Thanksgiving on some stations. On Monday, November 20, WDIY 88.1 FM (Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania) airs “Alice’s Restaurant” between 7 and 9pm on Steve Aaronson’s “Folk Classics” show, which features a Thanksgiving theme. Additionally, on Tuesday, November 21, “Alice’s Restaurant” airs on WESU 88.1 FM (Middletown, CT) at around 7pm during the Acoustic Blender show.

On Wednesday, November 22, Angelica Community Radio WRAQ 92.7 FM (Angelica, NY) broadcasts it at 9am and WTMT-FM 105.9 The Mountain (Asheville, North Carolina) will air it at 6pm.

Alice’s Restaurant on the Radio on Thanksgiving Day 2023 – November 23, 2023

Last updated on November 21, 2023 at 5:21pm PT. Note that all times are local to the area in which the station is located.

Terrestrial and Online Radio:

WAMC Northeast Public Radio 90.3 FM and 1400 AM (Albany, NY) writes of its Thanksgiving Day plans: “At 12 p.m. we’ll listen to our traditional airing of ‘Alice’s Restaurant’” followed by an interview with Arlo Guthrie at 1 p.m.”

Wyoming Public Media will air “Alice’s Restaurant” at 11am on Thanksgiving Day, as part of the Wyoming Sounds Thanksgiving special (9am to noon) “with host Grady Kirkpatrick featuring roots music, Native American, and Wyoming artists along with the Arlo Guthrie Thanksgiving classic Alice’s Restaurant beginning at 11am.”

WRUR 88.FM at University of Rochester (Rochester, New York) will air “Alice’s Restaurant” at 11:30am during Open Tunings with Scott Regan. Kane O, who has been airing this song for many years, writes on Facebook, “BIG ‘Ups’ to my Pal, Professor Scott Regan for letting me crash his show to carry on our wonderful tradition! Thankful indeed! #42.”

WDRC 102.9 FM “The Whale” (Hartford, Connecticut) writes, “Tune into 1029 The Whale on Thanksgiving at 6a, Noon and 6pm we will be playing Alice’s Restaurant in it’s entirety!”

WCSX 94.7 FM (Detroit, Michigan) is airing “Alice’s Restaurant” at 10am and 4pm on Thanksgiving.

WMGK 102.9 FM (Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania) continues its annual tradition. According to the station’s website, “Everyone can enjoy the tradition of ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ on MGK three times on Thanksgiving day in 2023. Paul Kelly will start it off by playing the Arlo Guthrie Thanksgiving classic at 8 a.m., and Danny Ocean will play it at 1 p.m. and 4 p.m.”

WZOO 99.9 FM (Central North Carolina) and 700 AM (Asheboro) and 106.1 FM (Greensboro) writes on Facebook of its plans: “Are you wondering if WZOO is going to continue the tradition of playing Alice’s Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie on Thanksgiving? You bet we are! Listen at 12:05 pm, right after the news! Happy Thanksgiving from your friends at The ZOO!”

WAFX 106.9 FM The Fox (Chesapeake, Virginia) writes on Facebook, “The Thanksgiving tradition continues on Thursday at 12 noon with the airing of Arlo Guthrie’s performance of “Alice’s Restaurant” hosted by Mike Arlo!”

Rock Radio 559 (Porterville, California) posted on Facebook, “A radio tradition every Thanksgiving. Arlo Guthrie ‘Alice’s Restaurant Massacree’ 12 noon and 7pm Thanksgiving Day on rockradio559.com.”

WTMT-FM 105.9 The Mountain (Asheville, North Carolina) is airing “Alice’s Restaurant” on Thanksgiving Day and Thanksgiving Eve. On Facebook the station posted, “The Thanksgiving tradition continues! Alice’s Restaurant on 105.9 The Mountain. You’ll hear it on Wednesday night at 6pm and twice on Thanksgiving Day at Noon and 6pm.”

WTTS 92.3 FM (Indianapolis, Indiana) writes on Facebook, “Welcome to a short holiday week! We are all set to provide Thursday’s soundtrack. OverEasy Thanksgiving is back on 92-3 WTTS, with laid-back World Class Rock all day long. We’ll also play Arlo Guthrie’s Thanksgiving classic ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ four times: 8am, 12pm, 4pm and 9pm.”

WEZX Rock 107 (Scranton, Pennsylvania) plans to play “Alice’s Restaurant” according to its Facebook post, “Alice’s Restaurant has become a timeless tradition. Tune in Thanksgiving Day at 9am, noon, 3pm and 6pm You can get anything you want at Rock 107.”

WEHM 92.9 FM and 96.9 FM (Water Mill, NY) tweeted, “Thanksgiving Day, don’t miss out on Arlo Guthrie’s ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ hosted by Lauren Stone! Special airings at 12pm, 3pm and 6pm!”

107.5 The Breeze (Portsmouth, Ohio) tweeted, “We’re celebrating a Holiday Classic: ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ by Arlo Guthrie. Follow along as the story unfolds on Thanksgiving Day. It’s always brought to you by Preston Family Funeral Home on Rt. 5 in Ashland. Hear it this Thursday at 9am, Noon and 5pm.”

KPIG 107.5FM and KPYG 94.9 FM Cayucos/SLO (Freedom, California) reports, “On Thanksgiving day, tune into the pig and hear the full version of Arlo Guthrie’s ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ four times…at 9:00am, noon, 4:00pm, and again at 9:00pm. We hope you and yours have a safe – and healthy – Thanksgiving holiday.”

101 The Fox (Kansas City, Kansas) writes, “A Thanksgiving gift from our family to yours…This Thanksgiving day at 12:00 noon and again at 6pm. 101 The Fox presents all 18 minutes, eleven seconds of Arlo Guthrie’s epic Thanksgiving masterpiece!”

Backland Radio (online) reports that it is playing “Alice’s Restaurant” at 8am, noon, 5pm and 9pm Central Time on Thanksgiving on The Whip at Backland Radio.

92 KQRS (Minneapolis, Minnesota) reports of this year’s “Alice’s Restaurant” tradition: “Our long-standing tradition of spinning Arlo Guthrie’s ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ on Thanksgiving continues! You have three opportunities to hear it this year: Tune in at 9am, 12pm and 5pm on Thanksgiving Day. Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at KQRS!”

KINK 101.9 FM (Portland, OR): Per its website, “It wouldn’t be Thanksgiving if we didn’t play the Arlo Guthrie classic, now would it. Listen at noon for ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ and a full second helping at 5pm!”

WTHS 89.9 FM Hope College Radio (Holland, Michigan) is playing Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon on Thanksgiving Day.

WRHQ 105.3 FM (Savannah, Georgia) writes on its website, “Tradition! That’s what Alice’s Restaurant is on the Q and you’ll hear it three times Thanksgiving Day…. 9:30 in the morning, 12:30 in the afternoon and 6:30 in the evening presented by O.C. Welch Ford in Hardeeville.  Alice and Turkey on the Q!”

KOZT 95.3 FM/95.9 FM The Coast (Ft. Bragg, CA) will play “Alice’s Restaurant” at 12 noon on Thanksgiving.

WDVX 89.9 FM in Knoxville, Tennessee is playing “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon on Thanksgiving. Its website says, “WDVX serves up ‘Alice’s Restaurant Massacree’ a song by Arlo Guthrie and a long time Thanksgiving day tradition on WDVX.”

WUMB 91.9 FM (Boston, MA and environs) writes, “The Thanksgiving tradition continues with Arlo Guthrie’s ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ airing in the 9am, 12pm, and 3pm hours.”

KSER 90.7 FM (Everett, Washington) writes, “Listen at 2pm Thursday for our annual broadcast of the Arlo Guthrie classic.”

WBJB Brookdale Public Radio 90.5 The Night (Lincroft, New Jersey): Will be playing “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon and 6pm.

KTOJ 105.7 FM (Thousand Oaks, California) airs “Alice’s Restaurant” on Thanksgiving day at 9am, noon, 3pm and 5pm.

KTYD 99.9 FM (Santa Barbara, CA) writes on Facebook: “KTYD’s Annual Thanksgiving Tradition! Listen Thursday at 6:30 and 9:30am, 12:30, 3:30 and 6:30pm.”

WXOX-LP 97.1 FM (Louisville, Kentucky) reached out to alert us that they will be playing “Alice’s” at 9:40am on Thanksgiving Day.

WWSF Seacoast Oldies 104.3 FM (Exeter, Maine) will air “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon.

WMVY 88.7 FM (Martha’s Vineyard, Cape Cod and environs) aka MVY Radio writes on Facebook: “Be sure to tune in to MVYRADIO this Thanksgiving at noon as we play Arlo Guthrie’s Thanksgiving tradition, ‘Alice’s Restaurant.’ This will be the 40th year of this turkey day tradition.”

WQUT 101.5 FM Tri-Cities Classic Rock (Tri-Cities, Tennessee) reports on Facebook, “An enduring Thanksgiving tradition continues! Arlo Guthrie’s classic, ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ will play at noon and 6:00PM on Thanksgiving on WQUT!”

WEBN 102.7 FM (Cincinnati, Ohio) carries on the tradition. DJ Nudge writes on Facebook, “I have 0 clue why we do it or why it matters to you, I just know you go LOONEY for ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ getting a spin at high noon on 102.7 WEBN every Turkey Day” and asks, “Tradition for Tradition sake, I don’t think anyone high-a-top Frog’s Mountain knows why anymore. Why do YOU love us playing the song annually and what does it mean to you?”

WABF 1480 AM (Fairhope, Alabama) writes on Facebook, “Join us for Arlo Guthrie’s ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ Thanksgiving day at noon and 6pm.”

KWSC 91.9 FM “The Cat” (Wayne, Nebraska) at Wayne State College tweets that, “@ProfAhern brought a Thanksgiving tradition to KWSC-FM. Tune in at 12 on Thanksgiving to hear about littering, the draft and a swell Thanksgiving dinner at Alice’s Restaurant.”

WXPN 88.5 FM (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) reports that it will be continuing its tradition amongst its Thanksgiving Day special programming. According to its website, at “12 Noon: Mike V presents our annual airing of Arlo Guthrie’s ‘Alice’s Restaurant‘!”

The post Alice’s Restaurant on the Radio Thanksgiving 2023 appeared first on Radio Survivor.

This past Sunday, February 13, was World Radio Day. I’m a few days late in recognizing it, but still have something good to share. Like last year, the BBC tapped radio journalist David Goren to produce a documentary highlighting community radio around the globe. “World Wide Waves ’22” profiles four stations:

• Koori Radio is the only First Nations radio station broadcasting Sydney, Australia
• Arta FM is an independent, multilingual community radio station broadcasting in the Jazeera region in North-East Syria
• Radio Victoria is a social justice station dedicating to fighting poverty in El Salvador
• Machnoor, India’s Sangham Radio is owned, managed and operated by women from the margins of the society, who have been mostly excluded in public forums

Boston public radio station WBUR reports,

“A group of lawyers and activists from Massachusetts are celebrating a ruling by an international human rights court in favor of indigenous broadcasters in Guatemala.

Nicole Friederichs, who runs Suffolk Law School’s Human Rights and Indigenous Peoples Clinic in Boston, said it’s the first time an international court has upheld native people’s right to operate media outlets.”

The unlicensed station was operating without a license when it was shut down by the government. The station appealed to the country’s Supreme Court, arguing that licensure was prohibitively expensive, but was ruled against. But the station prevailed in front of the Inter-American Court in December, finding the Guatemalan government had violated the broadcasters’ rights to freedom of expression. The ruling has implications for dozens of similar stations across the country.

Mazda owners in Seattle who listen to public radio KUOW are finding their car stereos taken over by the station, and that they can’t switch away. In fact, other features, like Bluetooth, won’t work either. No one, including Mazda, is quite certain what has caused the problem, though there are suspicions that it has something to do with KUOW’s HD Radio signal. The only fix, right now, appears to be replacing the entire in-car entertainment system.

The post Rough Notes: BBC Profiles 4 Community Stations Around the World; Inter-American Court Sides with Indigenous Station; Mazda Owners Stuck on KUOW appeared first on Radio Survivor.

In the last few years a number of large and prominent public media organizations have been forced to confront the effects of sexism, racism and harassment within their own organizations that has been tolerated for too long. One clear cause is a serious lack of diversity, equity and inclusion throughout the public media system. Public Media for All is a diverse coalition of public media workers, led by people of color, that is organizing to raise awareness of the negative effects of this deficiency and the resulting culture in public media, and sharing solutions for individuals and organizations.

Sway Steward is on the organizing committee for Public Media for All, and joins the show to tell us more. They’re organizing a day of action and education on November 10, providing resources for people of color, white allies and organizational leadership to seek and create accountability and bring about positive change.

Show Notes:

• Public Media for All
• Current: Coalition organizes day of action for movement to fix public media’s workplace culture

The post Podcast #270: Public Media for All appeared first on Radio Survivor.

This week, we explore the ancestor of public radio in the United States: educational radio. Our guest, Stephanie Sapienza, helps to bring educational radio archives to life through her work on the multi-institution “Unlocking the Airwaves” project. As Digital Humanities Archivist at the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities at University of Maryland, Sapienza is working with audio from the National Association of Educational Broadcasters (NAEB). She describes the breadth of materials in the collection and its role in public radio history and also shares more about her unique (and entertaining) presentation at the Orphan Film Symposium in which she reported on old time educational radio in an old time radio style.

Show Notes:

• Stephanie Sapienza’s website
• The Orphan’s Radio Hour
• Orphan Film Symposium
• Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH)
• Unlocking the Airwaves
• American Archive of Public Broadcasting
• Radio Preservation Task Force website at Library of Congress
• National Association of Educational Broadcasters collection at University of Maryland
• Podcast #192: Saving Radio History with The Radio Preservation Task Force episode with Josh Shepperd

The post Podcast # 252 – Exploring the Seeds of Public Radio in Educational Radio Archives appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Raven Radio, KCAW-FM, serves Sitka and the remote communities of Southeast Alaska with public radio content, local news and volunteer-produced programming. Like “shelter in place” elsewhere in the lower 48, Sitka is on what they call a “hunker down” advisory. We talk with KCAW General Manager and friend of the show, Becky Meiers about how the station is balancing staff safety and vital public service during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Right now radio broadcasters are considered essential personnel, so they may travel to the station’s studios, but the advised 6-feet of social distance requires only two people can be on premises at any one time – one upstairs and one downstairs. That’s prompted some shifts in daytime programming when it’s important to have at least one news or operations person on hand at all times.

Because KCAW is often the only reliable information real-time information source for remote villages that have limited internet and landlines, Becky serves on the local emergency planning committee and coordinates closely with emergency personnel. At the same time, the station continues to provide music and cultural programming for that much needed break.

When news of the pandemic first hit, KCAW staff and management assembled a preparedness plan. Though there were no confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Sitka when we recorded on March 27, once a first case is confirmed, the station will move forward to the next phase of its plan. Learn what that plan is, and how KCAW engages with its community and listenership in this interview.

Show Notes:

• KCAW-FM, Raven Radio
• KCAW just received a grant from the Brown Institute for Media Innovation
• KCAW Coronavirus Information Hub
• “Have an Old Fashioned with a modern twist, thanks to Sitka’s virtual bartender“
• Podcast #84 – Improving Your Radio Reception
• Podcast #197 – Raven Radio in Sitka, Alaska
• Touring KCAW, Sitka Alaska’s Raven Radio

However,

The post Podcast #239 – Hunkering Down with Raven Radio in Sitka, Alaska appeared first on Radio Survivor.

On this week’s episode, Karen Cariani, the David O. Ives Executive Director of the WGBH Media Library and Archives, joins us to talk about the work of the American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB).

A collaboration between the Library of Congress and WGBH, the AAPB not only archives public radio and television; but it also makes material searchable and accessible through its website.

Show Notes:

• American Archive of Public Broadcasting
• WGBH – What’s Happening Mr. Silver (two online, more are available on site at WGBH or the Library of Congress)
• AAPB Special Collections
• AAPB Scholar Exhibits
• FIX IT+, Transcribe to Digitize challenge
• AAPB blog
• Open Vault (WGBH Media Library and Archive website)

The post Podcast # 218: Archiving Public Media appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Radio Survivor celebrates 10 years on the internet and four years podcasting with our 200th episode. Matthew Lasar joins Jennifer Waits, Eric Klein and Paul Riismandel for this review of the last decade in radio that matters.

Matthew tells the Radio Survivor origin story that sprang forth from his I.F. Stone inspired research deep into the digital catacombs of the FCC database, unearthing comments that broadcast execs never imagined would be public – such as one who accused prominent media reformists of being “communists.”

Jennifer recalls how a literature review for a journal article on college radio revealed how little scholarly work existed on the topic, compelling her to document this important media form that Matthew says he has learned is, “the first public radio.” “The present is future history,” Jennifer observes. This prompts Paul to comment how we’ve begun to fulfill that promise, given that Radio Survivor now has dozens of citations in scholarly works.

On the way through these stories, everyone notes the changes in the broadcast and online media landscape since 2009, how some publications have come and gone, and offering reasons why Radio Survivor has managed to survive. It’s a discussion of interest to anyone who has tried to, or wants to, sustain a passion project fueled primarily by volunteer labor.

We’re making a ‘zine!

As we announce on this episode, in August we’ll be publishing our first ever print project, hand made in the spirit of great independent radio.

We’ll send issue #1 to every Patreon supporter who gives at the $5/month level or more. But you have to be signed up by August 1, 2019.

Plus, every new sign-up gets us closer to our goal of 100 Patreon supporters so that we have a foundation to do the work of documenting the upcoming 20th anniversaries of Indymedia and low-power FM.

See our ‘zine page to learn more, or go ahead and sign up now.

Show Notes:

• A Decade of Radio Surviving
• College Radio Watch: Ten Years of College Radio Coverage and More News
• Lasar’s Letter on the FCC: VNR executive files e-mail with FCC against “radically left wing” group
• The Official Website of I.F. Stone
• Spinning Indie
• mediageek
• Matthew’s books:
  • Pacifica Radio, the Rise of an Alternative Network
  • Uneasy Listening: Pacifica Radio’s Civil War
  • Radio 2.0: Uploading the First Broadcast Medium
• Help Us Tell the History of Indymedia & LPFM
• RadioSurvivor’s Top Radio Shows – Paul’s #1: Free Speech Radio News
• A Sad Goodbye to Free Speech Radio News
• Garrett Wollman’s Radio Tower Quest
• History of the Grassroots Radio Conference
• Podcast #190: Radio Spectrum and Transmission Art
• Radio Survivor ‘Zine #1

The post Podcast #200 – How We Survived a Decade of Independent Publishing appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Alaska’s unique geography and way-of-life leads to unique radio. Raven Radio is a public and community station serving the city of Sitka, along with seven other small towns in Southeast Alaska. The station is not just a source of news, music and culture, but also a lifeline for people living in remote communities where there may not even be cell service.

Becky Meiers moved from Portland, Oregon and community station KBOO to become general manager of KCAW in fall of 2018. Paul made Sitka the last stop on his spring Alaskan vacation to visit her at the station this past Memorial Day weekend, taking time for an interview. Becky explains why the station airs a mix of conventional public radio programming, like NPR’s “Morning Edition,” alongside the kind of volunteer-produced programs that one associates with community radio.

Broadcasting in a market with just two other radio stations, Raven Radio really needs to be “all things to all people” in a way that is demanded of few stations in the lower 48. While a tremendous responsibility, it also leads listeners to learn how to use a station that doesn’t air the same programming 24/7, and to value the resource. The experience of broadcasting at KCAW informs takeaways about community radio in general that Becky shares with us.

Show Notes:

• Pictures and more from Paul’s tour of Raven Radio
• KCAW-FM Raven Radio
• City and Borough of Sitka
• Tenakee Springs, Alaska
• Coast Alaksa Public Media Cooperative
• Muskeg Message example: Roger Schmidt reads muskeg messages, with drum solo

The post Podcast #197 – Raven Radio in Sitka, Alaska appeared first on Radio Survivor.

For most people living outside Alaska, if they’ve heard of Sitka it’s because they’ve been on a cruise ship that stopped there. This small city of just under 9,000 people in the Southeast of the state, near the capital of Juneau, balloons in size when ships dock to give passengers an opportunity to take in the area’s natural beauty.

I visited Memorial Day weekend, experiencing bright sun, blue skies and high temperatures in the mid-60s. My friend Becky Meiers, who took over as General Manager of community and public station KCAW-FM in the fall of 2018, warned me that I was not experiencing typical weather. Though spring can be beautiful, this island region can also experience violent winds, storms and landslides.

As one of just three radio stations serving Sitka, KCAW, known as Raven Radio, is a vital lifeline for residents of the city and seven smaller towns in the area. I also visited one of these towns, Tenakee Springs, which has a single dirt road through town that does not permit cars–only bicycles and ATVs–and no cell service, though the library and many residents subscribe to satellite internet. Folks I was visiting with there talked enthusiastically of the station, which is dear to their hearts.

Founded in 1982, Raven Radio broadcasts a hybrid schedule of information and culture that includes public radio staples like NPR’s “Morning Edition,” alongside local news and volunteer programming. Listeners also tune in for detailed marine weather forecasts, updates from the city’s harbormaster and “muskeg messages.” Those are missives from listener to listener, the recipient often someone who might be fishing at sea or is otherwise inaccessible by phone or ‘net.

Raven Radio is the primary Emergency Alert System station for the region, and it’s not uncommon for residents to call the station for updates during power outages or other critical events to learn the latest.

A full-time staff comprises a general manager, program director, news director and city beat reporter. Paid journalism fellows also join the station in the winter and summer. Providing that local news coverage is a key part of its mission.

The station itself is located on the edge of downtown, near the water, just by the bridge that connects Baranof and Japonski Islands. Though car traffic passes over the bridge and around the city itself, there’s no driving to Juneau or the other communities the station serves, like Angoon or Kake. The only highway system is the Alaskan Marine Highway, a ferry service. The other option is a float plane, which is faster, but much more expensive.

KCAW resides in a house, with the lower floor occupied by the restaurant, Beak, and the studios filling the second floor. There is one studio located downstairs, able to broadcast live performances from the restaurant, along with a small Raven Radio Retail Store, full of station swag.

The upstairs station area was renovated in 2012 2011, featuring an open and airy common room, surrounded by a few offices, the main studio and newsroom. The walls are lined with CDs and vinyl LPs, along with station memorabilia, like the “Mug Museum” filling shelves above the kitchen area.

General manager Becky explained to me that the station features both public radio and community radio programming because listeners deserve news and information that connects them to the world, and to hear local voices and culture. She noted that there’s a strong tradition of radio theater. A documentary is in production about the 1980s serial, “Raven Haven Bay” that was produced there.

A vital mission of community media is to give a platform to voices and views left out of the mainstream media. But in Sitka and Southeast Alaska, KCAW is the mainstream. Becky said that even though there are plenty of residents whose views may contrast with what is sometimes heard on the air, they value and respect the public service Raven Radio provides, supporting the station financially. There’s a sense of community and inter-reliance that comes with living on a relatively remote island that contrasts with most other places in the continental U.S.

Of course, there is much to recommend Sitka, and Alaska, with more untouched natural environment than any other state, and stunning landscapes seemingly everywhere you turn. For anyone who loves the outdoors, the opportunity to hike mountains and boat or fish clear cold waters is tough to beat. I did my share during my time in the 49th state.

KCAW Raven Radio is a reminder of radio’s power and value to communities. Living in an urbanized area, like the majority of Americans, it’s easy to forget that radio is there, even when the electricity is out and cell service is down. But no community is immune from technological failures that can happen due to severe weather or natural disaster. It’s true that radio is still a technology, but a longstanding tradition of service lives on with at least a few stations in most cities and towns, where owners and broadcasters remain equipped and prepared for the worst.

But even in better times – most of the time – a station tuned in to its community, with real locals on air, is a lot more fun and informative to listen to. Just take a listen to Raven Radio.

The post Touring KCAW, Sitka Alaska’s Raven Radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

It’s become somewhat of a station tour cliche for me to write about the homey feel of the radio stations that I visit. But, Bellevue College’s public radio station KBCS 91.3 FM in Bellevue, Washington takes that vibe to another level, as its station is located inside an actual house.

After a full day of travel and tours of three high school radio stations last October, I walked to the station’s front door as the sun was setting. Interim General Manager/Music Director Iaan Hughes greeted me, welcoming me into the radio house.

Existing in one of those interesting radio station hybrid categories, KBCS-FM is an independent public radio station with around 100 community volunteers, located in a standalone house on a college campus. It airs a mix of syndicated and locally-produced news and public affairs shows as well as a broad array of music programs.

Although it has student roots, launching in 1973, KBCS has shifted over the years, moving from a student radio station to more of a community, then an independent public radio model.

Student activism plays a big part in the KBCS origin story. “Appropriately it started with a protest outside of the president’s office here at Bellevue College. At the time it was Bellevue Community College and students did a sit in after having their initial request for a radio station denied. And that was enough to get the license and get the college kind of on it,” Hughes relayed.

By around the mid-1980s, the college hired a General Manager for KBCS and the station shifted to more of a community radio model, according to Program Director Patrick Whalen. Today, the station is a bit of a mixture. Whalen outlined that, “We’re kind of a hybrid. We’re independent. We’re …obviously not affiliated with NPR. We don’t carry any of the large public media distributed programs…We’re with Pacifica…So we have…Thom Hartmann…Because we’re so largely programmed still by volunteers, we’re clearly a community radio station.” He added the caveat that, “Because of the market that we’re in we can’t only do that just to be able to build audience.”

Shelves of vinyl on the walls at KBCS reveal the music programming trajectory of the station. As we sat in a front room/LP archive, dubbed the “Vinyl Lounge,” Whalen pointed out to me that the station initially had a progressive rock orientation from around 1973 to 1983, but then switched to an “anti-rock” format, playing jazz, folk and world music. He joked that it’s amazing that a station in the Seattle area in the 1980s and 1990s had “nary a Sub Pop release in the library.”

In a metropolitan area known for its grunge rock history and awash in non-commercial radio offerings, KBCS has worked hard to find its niche. Whalen gave his take on the Seattle radio scene, arguing, “We’re in a really vibrant public media market. We have amazing radio stations here. Some of the top in the country in their formats, if not THE top, so we have this big shadow to work within…We have KEXP, we have KUOW, we have KNKX…, Dance 89…a top dance station, so… we have to play in a different sand box…”

Today, about a third of the station’s broadcast day is devoted to public affairs programming, with the rest comprised of music. Hughes elaborated that KBCS has a largely “AAA” upbeat music format on daytime weekday shows (noon to 7pm), peppered with “some classics” going back to the 1960s and 1970s, as well as new releases.

Public affairs has taken on a bigger role in the past couple of decades, with the largely volunteer-produced news/public affairs show “The Morning Blend,” a huge source of pride for KBCS during my fall visit. According to Hughes, “It speaks deeply to the communities here in the Pacific Northwest. It tells stories that are not covered nationally or locally really…”

As an added benefit, this daily news show also ends up being a recruiting tool for the station, working to bring in new listeners from a range of communities. Whalen explained, “Our news and public affairs ends up being kind of a default engagement strategy for us because there’s constantly people coming into the station and telling their stories..,” adding that News and Public Affairs Director Yuko Kodama “…makes a concerted effort and is focused clearly on social justice issues and on stories and individuals and on voices that aren’t normally heard on air in this market so her work and her passion and her professionalism is a huge asset for the station.”

As I was completing this article in April 2019, KBCS announced that “The Morning Blend,” time slot would be replaced by the syndicated hip-hop talk show Hard Knock Radio, with “…KBCS’ national-award-winning reportage focused on social justice issues within the Pacific Northwest” continuing during existing public affairs programs. Other syndicated news and public affairs shows on KBCS include the Thom Hartmann Program, Democracy Now!, and the newly added Rising Up (as of April 29, 2019). Specialty music shows are mostly hosted and curated by local volunteers, with the syndicated Grateful Dead Hour also in the mix.

Genres covered include the general categories of “Dance, Trance and Electronica,” “Folk and Americana,” “Jazz and Classical,” “R&B, Soul and Hip-Hop,” “Rock and Blues,” “World,” and “Variety” (including an experimental music show and a program focused on female artists).

The non-rock music legacy at KBCS is perhaps most interesting in the CD and vinyl library housed in the rear part of its dwelling. Music is organized in hyper-specific categories, particularly in the international music section, which includes Flamenco gypsy, Cuban, Hawaiian, klezmer, French-Canadian, Eastern Europe and Brazil among it subcategories. There are also sections for gospel, RPM, Native American, early music, hip hop, jazz and more.

Hughes pointed out that some of the larger music sections are extensions of long-running KBCS programs, including a 30-year-old Brazilian show (Raizes) and the beloved Saturday afternoon program, Hawai’i Radio Connection.

In the midst of a massive music digitization project, KBCS has already digitized over 100,000 tracks using a Cloud-based program. Initially starting with the bluegrass library, volunteers and a work study student had made their way through the R&B collection and were working on the blues section at the time of my visit. Hughes was excited about the progress, saying, “It to me feels like the future,” especially in light of increasing issues with the functionality of CDs and CD players.

As I wrapped up my visit, Hughes spoke a bit about his passion for KBCS and what drew him to the station back in 2001, revealing, “I love the variety and the eclecticism. That’s what initially drew me to the station. I was managing a music store and one of my employees did a late night jazz show here and knew that I loved country music and Americana music and when the opportunity kind of opened to do a late night show he said, ‘hey, you should check this out’ and it was just really amazing to flip yourself down to the low end of the dial and find an enormous palette of music. Things that I thought maybe no one else even knew about. Of course..I quickly learned my lesson of how little I knew and…it really felt like coming home in many ways.”

Thanks to Iaan Hughes and Patrick Whalen for the wonderful visit to KBCS. This is my 155th written station tour. Please, scan through my radio station tours in numerical order or by station type in our archives.

The post Radio Station Visit #155: Public-Community Radio Station KBCS-FM appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Every week we seek out compelling stories about sound and radio and share them on Twitter. Here are some of the most intriguing from the last week:

Vote looms on bringing jazz radio back to MHCC
“The Mt. Hood Community College Board will vote next week on whether to bring jazz radio station KMHD back to campus, but the chairwoman of the college board, for one, opposes the move.” 

College Threatens Student Radio With Probation Following Lil Pump Event
“A Harvard College official threatened Harvard Radio Broadcasting…WHRB –with ‘administrative probation’ because the group hosted a widely publicized event featuring the rapper Lil Pump, according to an email sent by the station’s president.”

New exhibit shares how the city’s hip-hop scene evolved through the decades
“…put on headphones and listen to music and old community radio stations — an outlet co-curator Dave Clarke says was essential back in the day. ‘Community radio stations were the backbone for emcees and DJ’s in the 90s,’ Clarke said.”

Strong: New Valley NPR station will be fully bilingual
“A new National Public Radio station for the Rio Grande Valley would be bilingual, with programming in Spanish and English, says W.F. Strong. The…educator is leading the effort to get UT-Rio Grande Valley to invest in a new public radio station.”

An On-Air Legacy: Loyola Remembers ‘Doc’
“He founded WLUW — Loyola’s student-run radio station — in 1978. WLUW’s debut was grandiose — the first song to grace the airwaves was the theme to ‘Star Wars’” according to current station manager Eleni Prillaman.” 

iHeart claims to launch first all-podcast radio station, but then folks remember CBS Radio’s KYOU which broadcast an all-podcast format to the Bay Area in 2005.

The post Sound Stories: Toronto Hip-Hop & Radio; First All-Podcast Radio Station In 2019 or 2005? appeared first on Radio Survivor.

In the provocative piece, WNYU, New York is “Almost Public Radio,” radio veteran Ken Mills posits that college radio station WNYU at New York University (see my 2008 tour) falls into the category of “almost public radio.”

Mills argues that stations in this category “copy public radio’s style, represent themselves as a public trust and/or are staffed by people who, frankly, would rather be working in public radio.”

I’m struck by his assertion that college radio stations like WNYU have public radio aspirations and somehow see their stations as lesser than public radio. This is a bold assumption that works to diminish college radio’s history and inherent strengths.

Of course there may be college radio participants with public radio dreams or commercial radio dreams or community radio dreams, but there are many who are focused on the day-to-day work, fun, and educational aspects of college radio.

Student-run college radio stations existed prior to public radio and a hallmark of many of them is creative freedom, student control, and adventurous programming. College radio stations pioneered many technological and programming innovations (with limited budgets and mainly volunteer staffs) that were later adopted by public radio stations, such as online streaming (credit to WXYC and WREK – see my tour) and international live remote broadcasts (shout out to KFJC, where I volunteer). Many music-oriented public radio stations took cues from their college radio forebears and some air underground music that first got airplay on college radio stations.

While there is crossover, with some public radio stations incorporating student staff (as I saw during my tour of Fordham University’s WFUV) and some college radio stations seeking out public funding; for the most part I see college radio as one category of stations and public radio as another.

A huge difference is budget and staffing. Despite a lower budget and smaller staff than public radio stations, Mills critiques WNYU for its small listening audience relative to its FM signal strength, saying, “Despite this capacity, WNYU has only a few thousand estimated weekly listeners. Except for the students who work there, the station is unknown to most people who live in the city.”

He speculates that, “In general, college stations have the smallest budgets of any noncommercial media type. This limits the opportunities for participating students.” While small budgets can lead to numerous challenges, I’m continually amazed by what college radio stations accomplish. Creativity often flourishes in the absence of monetary resources, with volunteer DJs and staff putting in countless hours (sometimes putting grades and graduation in jeopardy) for the love of radio.

Mills goes on to critique WNYU’s programming, stating that,

Another factor that may be limiting WNYU’s potential is their programming. To use a common phrase, WNYU is ‘too hip for the room.’ When the ‘room’ is New York City, there will be difficulty drawing a substantial audience. The good news is that WNYU is programmed 100% by students. The bad news is these students are probably the only listeners.

Ouch. Mills points to some intriguing programming, but dismisses it as having “very limited interest.”

I think that it’s wonderful to have a range of non-commercial radio stations on the dial, including well-funded (and not-so-well funded) public radio stations, grassroots community stations, tiny low power FM stations, high school radio in many forms, and the wide range of college radio stations. There is a place for unusual and niche programming on college radio. And that’s what keeps me glued to my FM dial.

More College Radio News

Radio Classes

• MCLA Students Upset after Radio Course Removed (WAMC)

Profiles

• After Hours: The Faces Behind the Radio (The Shield, University of Southern Indiana)
• Manchester Community College Radio Station Celebrates 10 Years (Journal Inquirer)

Budget

• Campus Radio Asserts Provincial Cuts will Reduce Job Opportunities and Services to Students (The National Campus and Community Radio Association)

Awards and Accolades

• Another “Best of” Nomination for WPSC (Radio Ink)
• UNK Students Named as Finalists for College Media Awards (Net Nebraska)

Alumni

• Dyana Williams Biography (The History Makers)

Programming

• Campus-Based Podcasts (Inside Higher Ed)
• WSBU-FM Staffers from St. Bonaventure Make Connections in Georgia, the Site of Sunday’s Big Game (TAPinto)
• Third Season of Bloomfield’s Health Beat Radio Show (TAPinto)

History

• Time Marches On: A Look Back at L’Amour and Metal History (Brooklyn Daily Eagle)

Launches

• Manhattan College’s Radio WRCM Makes a Comeback (The Quadrangle)

License Sales

• Antioch College to Sell Public Radio Station WYSO to Community Group (Dayton Daily News)
• Antioch College Establishing WYSO as Independent Public Radio Station (ABC 22)
• WYSO to Become an Independent Public Radio Station (Dayton Business Journal)
• Quinnipiac AM Community Radio Station to Be Shut Down in June (UConn Daily Campus)

The post College Radio Watch: Is College Radio ‘Almost Public Radio’? and More News appeared first on Radio Survivor.

From the “Classical Radio Era” to today’s hottest podcasts, we’re here for the love of radio drama and fictional sound-art. Our guest is Neil Verma, author of a book and teacher of classes on the subject, although as he tells us on today’s episode, the class became a lot more popular with students after he changed the name from “Radio Drama” to “Audio Drama.”

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Help us sustain and grow this show by contributing as little as $1 every month. With four episodes every month, that’s just 25 cents for each one.

Make your monthly contribution at http://pateron.com/radiosurvivor.

Show Notes:

Theater of the Mind – Imagination, Aesthetics, and American Radio Drama

Neil Verma essay on The Shadows

Some audio drama recommendations from this episode

The Classical Radio work of Norman Corwin

J.G Ballard’s Radio Plays on the BBC

The Shadows

Wolverine: The Long Night

The Truth

Homecoming

Classic Radio’s The Shadow

Nightvale and affiliated programs

Pacific Northwest Stories

Ars Paradoxica

Limetown

Deathscribe

Jennifer Waits’ article on Unshackled

Matthew Lasar writes about and speaks on the podcast about Mae West

The post Podcast #176 – Audio Fiction’s very long history of innovation appeared first on Radio Survivor.

National Radio Day is approaching this Sunday, August 20 and in advance of that, public radio station KEXP in Seattle is doing a week’s worth of special programming “dedicated to celebrating and remembering radio stations that went off the air or changed formats,” according to a press release.

It’s rare that radio stations pay homage to other radio stations, so I was certainly intrigued by this project (see more back story in HuffPo). When I tuned in today, the mid-day show waxed nostalgic about former Long Island commercial radio station WLIR while playing mainly 1980s classics from the likes of R.E.M., David Bowie, Squeeze, Siouxsie and the Banshees and more. It took me back to the days of my own favorite commercial radio station from the past: KQAK “the Quake” in San Francisco. Hearing this type of music in the early 1980s paved the way for me to explore college radio.

Other stations being highlighted this week include WOXY, WFMU, WFNX, KJET and more. On top of that, influential DJs and hosts like DJ Rodney Bingenheimer will be featured throughout the week’s programming.

Additionally, KEXP and Brown Paper Tickets are hosting a community radio volunteer fair in Seattle on August 20. Representatives from Rainier Valley Radio KVRU 105.7 FM,
RainierAvenueRadio.World (online), KBCS 91.3 FM Bellevue/Seattle (full power), KBFG 107.3 FM NW Seattle, Hollow Earth Radio KHUH 100.3 FM, SPACE 101.1 FM KMGP Magnuson Park, OneAmerica Radio 106.5 FM SeaTac, Earth On-the-Air Independent Media KODX 96.9 FM, and Valley KAPY 103.1 FM Duvall/Carnation/Redmond Ridge will be there to talk about their stations and recruit potential volunteers.

It’s nice to see that KEXP is sharing radio love for not only stations from the past, but also for local Seattle-area community radio stations operating today.

The post KEXP Celebrates National Radio Week by Honoring Other Radio Stations appeared first on Radio Survivor.

No two radio station tours are alike. More often than not I’m solo, trekking into hidden corners of campuses from early in the morning to late at night. Occasionally family, friends or radio colleagues will join me, sometimes tag teaming with me as I interview station personnel. My visit to Fordham University’s music-focused NPR-affiliated public radio station WFUV on March 28 exists in a category unto itself, as the tour was arranged by the Dean of Fordham College at Rose Hill, who happens to be my husband’s sister. Relatively new to Fordham, Dean Maura Mast had yet to tour WFUV, so my visit provided the perfect excuse to arrange an official visit.

Dean Maura Mast in her office at Fordham University. Photo: J. Waits

After arriving at the Bronx, New York campus, my husband, daughter and I first met up with Dean Mast in her office. Soon after, we were joined by one of WFUV’s many student staffers, Mary Munshower, who filled me in on the role of students at the radio station. WFUV actually drew her to Fordham University, as she wanted to take advantage of the hands-on learning opportunities that the station provides. Just wrapping up her junior year at the time of our spring visit, Munshower is a musician with dreams of working in the music industry.

Mary Munshower, Brian Mast (in background), Dean Maura Mast and Chuck Singleton in live studio at WFUV. Photo: J. Waits

At WFUV, Munshower started out as an intern and is now a paid video engineer, filming live sessions at the station and at various off-site concerts. With a strong emphasis on music, WFUV has musicians playing at the station at least once a day, with each session getting filmed and recorded. Footage is meticulously edited and then shared with WFUV listeners on both the station’s website and on the public radio digital music site VuHaus.

A look at some of the live sessions recorded for WFUV. Photo: J. Waits

It was nice to get Munshower’s take on the station before my official tour, as it helped to shatter some of my assumptions about the role of students at university-based public radio stations. I later learned that around 80 students work at WFUV, a staggering number for a station not run by students.

Sound board at WFUV. Photo: J. Waits

My public radio visits have been limited (tour #22 to KZYX, tour #45 to KALW, tour #67 to NPR headquarters, and tour #70 to KEXP) and this was actually my first trip to see a college-based public radio station. My impression is that most public radio stations are professionally-run with limited opportunities for students, except for a few internships here and there. WFUV intentionally breaks from that mold, with student participation critical to not only keeping the station running from day to day, but also to staying on top of the latest in technology.

Press clippings about WFUV’s video operation. Photo: J. Waits

When we made our way to see WFUV’s basement home (our group was an entourage of five, including my family, Munshower and Dean Mast), General Manager Chuck Singleton confirmed that WFUV’s situation is “unique,” telling me that it’s unusual for a professionally-run station to have a large student staff.

Studio at WFUV. Photo: J. Waits

With a history stretching back to 1947 (yes, it turns 70 this year!), WFUV began as a part of the school’s communications department and initially served as a learning lab. Singleton said that by the late 1960s, it was broadcasting at 50,000 watts. Then part of the Student Affairs division, WFUV was run by students.

LPs at WFUV. Photo: J. Waits

Regular rock music shows began at WFUV in 1970, which was not common for the era according to Singleton. He recounted that in the ensuing years, WFUV’s mix of shows were hosted by students, alumni and community members, forming a “crazy quilt of specialty shows” ranging from classical to rock, Latin music, Italian pop, Christian music and more.

Accolades and ephemera in the WFUV hallway. Photo: J. Waits

Singleton went on to explain that after WFUV’s second full time General Manager retired in the mid-1980s, the university decided that it wanted to increase the public service and community impact of the radio station. Part of that mandate included reaching a more substantial audience while at the same time preserving the student training component. To help reach those goals, by the late 1980s, WFUV had become a public radio station. Today, it has a full time staff of 30, a part time staff of 15, and between 70 and 85 student workers. In 2017, students are working mostly behind the scenes, mainly in news, sports and engineering/production.

WFUV Program Director Rita Houston showing off vintage gems in her office. Photo: J. Waits

As far as programming, WFUV’s emphasis is on “music discovery,” with a particular focus on “adult album alternative music.” The weekday schedule is made up of WFUV-hosted music shows along with the syndicated “World Cafe” (2am to 4am). Weekends feature more of a mix, including some specialty music shows (ranging from folk music to music from the 1920s and 1930s), talk shows, public affairs programming, and Catholic Mass on Sundays.

CDs in WFUV studio. Photo: J. Waits

One long-running show, “Ceol na nGael,” (Music of the Irish) was launched by Fordham students in 1974 and continues to be hosted by students every Sunday from noon to 4pm. In addition to airing Irish music, the program features news and sports updates from Ireland and a community bulletin board.

Staff at work in WFUV news room. Photo: J. Waits

WFUV also has a number of show hosts who’ve been connected with the station for many years. During my visit, I met Darren DeVivo, who began DJing at WFUV when he was a freshman at Fordham in 1983 and “basically never left.” Another long timer, DJ Paul Cavalconte, got his start at WFUV more than thirty years ago and after stints in commercial and satellite radio he returned to the station as a guest host in 2013.

WFUV host Darren DeVivo. Photo: J. Waits

Today, WFUV occupies spacious digs in the basement of Keating Hall at Fordham. Way back in the 1940s, the station started out on the 3rd floor of its building, moving down to the basement in 2005. Singleton happily shared some lore about the location, telling us that the 1929 building was featured in a “WPA Guide to New York” for its “collegiate gothic architecture.”

Keating Hall at Fordham University – home to WFUV. Photo: J. Waits

The basement used to house a cafeteria, which moved out in the 1960s, creating a “creepy fallow space” with secret tunnels leading to a hospital morgue, according to Singleton. Adding to the mystique, a scene from the Exorcist was filmed across the hall. Post-renovation, the basement is bright and delightful, housing not only WFUV, but also the department of Visual Studies.

Bookorder Tape recorder disguised as a Bible in WFUV General Manager Chuck Singleton’s office. Photo: J. Waits

While making our way through the station, we saw staff offices with whimsical decor (including vintage records and audio equipment), a working news room, an air staff room, studios (including Studio A, where bands perform live), a video production work room, conference room, and a music library. Walls were dotted with awards, gold records, and displays of past CD compilations put together by WFUV, making for a lively and colorful environment at the radio station.

FUV Live compilation displayed on wall at WFUV. Photo: J. Waits

Thanks so much to my sister-in-law Maura Mast for arranging the visit to WFUV and to Chuck Singleton for taking the time to chat with us while leading us on a station tour. I’m also very thankful to Mary Munshower for sharing her added insights about WFUV and for leading my family on a bonus campus tour.

Equipment in WFUV live room. Photo: J. Waits

This is my 139th radio station field trip report, which means I’m nearly caught up on my recent visits, with just two more remaining from my New York and California travels. My most recent field trips can be found on Radio Survivor and a full list of all my station tour reports is compiled on Spinning Indie.

The post Radio Station Visit #139 – WFUV at Fordham University appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Copernicus is generally credited with developing the first heliocentric model (‘helios’ meaning ‘Sun’ in Greek) of the Solar System in which planets orbit around the Sun, which vastly differed from the geocentric model (typically credited to Claudius Ptolemy) in which the Earth was believed to be located at the center of the entire universe.  Most people, including many intellectuals of the time, were (as is typically the case with most paradigm shifts) extremely hesitant to adopt the new model, even with vocal proponents like Galileo Galilei, who attempted to compare the two models in his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems.  You may, however, remember that Galileo was ultimately charged with heresy for his beliefs and was subsequently placed under house arrest until his death in 1642 (almost a century after Copernicus’ death in 1543, the same year Copernicus published his seminal work).

How is it that, almost 400 years after Galileo’s death, such a large portion of the U.S. population still disputes the fact that the Earth orbits the Sun?  How have people been able to remain so painfully ignorant in this glorified Information Age?  I think that answers to these questions lie in two, fundamental issues: education and sources of information.

How is any of this related to radio?

On January 31st U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn of Colorado introduced two bills, H.R. 726 and H.R. 727, to defund both the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and NPR.  This is not the first time public broadcasting has been under attack since the CPB’s creation under the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, which encountered early resistance during the Nixon Administration and notably inspired Fred Rogers (known to many as ‘Mister Rogers’) to testify about the importance of public television in front of the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee in 1969.

The first point of the Public Broadcasting Act states that “it is in the public interest to encourage the growth and development of public radio and television broadcasting, including the use of such media for instructional, educational, and cultural purposes,” a statement that, as shown by a recent Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) study, is supported by roughly 73% of American voters.  The same study also revealed that more than 80% of those surveyed “have a great deal or fair amount of concern that ending federal funding for public television could eliminate local stations’ public safety communications services like AMBER alerts and severe weather warnings.”  In addition to supporting local communities and cultural diversity, the CPB and PBS have a history of partnering with institutions like the U.S. Department of Education to improve educational programming nationwide, including a recent effort “to give young children from low-income families a strong foundation in early science and literacy by identifying and working with community partners.”

The CPB appropriation history shows a budget of $445 million for the fiscal year, which, once distributed across a nationwide population of roughly 325 million, amounts to less than $1.40 per person per year.  How many lives have been touched by NPR and PBS programs like Sesame Street, Barney and Friends, All Things Considered, and Car Talk (a personal favorite)?  Would you pay more than $1.40 a year to preserve them?

What happens if the CPB loses all of its federal funding?

In March 2008 the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a media ownership study titled ‘Economic Factors Influence the Number of Media Outlets in Local Markets, While Ownership by Minorities and Women Appears Limited and Is Difficult to Assess,’ which highlighted the importance of diversity on the air, particularly in local environments.  The same GAO study mentions Free Press research showing that “women and minorities own about 5 percent and 3 percent of full-power television stations, respectively, and about 6 percent and 8 percent of full-power radio stations, respectively.”  A helpful infographic shows little change in these numbers by 2012, and more recent studies conducted for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) still show cause for concern as does a chilling six-month study of the 2012 election coverage conducted by 4th Estate and further reports from the Free Press.

Cutting federal funding to the CPB promotes further media consolidation, even less minority and local representation, and could ultimately result in the privatization of public broadcasting, which could cause shows like PBS’s Bill Nye the Science Guy to be replaced by the likes of Ancient Aliens on the History Channel.  It’s this decline in proper educational programming and lack of diversity on the air that has largely contributed to a quarter of the U.S. population that, even with the existence of modern telescopes and the internet, still believes in astronomical views commonly held more than a thousand years ago.

What can you do to help?

In one of my favorite quotes Isaac Asimov argues,

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been.  The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

In the seven years I spent formally studying physics, astronomy, and history I eventually lost track of the number of folks who tried to mansplain basic concepts from my fields because of something they heard/read/watched ‘somewhere.’  Were most of their sources credible?  Upon further probing, including several lengthy discussions I had with the parent of one of my astronomy students (a 9yo girl) who regularly quoted from Ancient Aliens in an attempt to refute established astronomical literature (and widely accepted facts) and every person I’ve seen interrupt a planetarium show to dispute the Moon landing, I suspect that the answer is a resounding “NO.”

• Do your homework.

  Did you hear an interesting ‘fact’ or ‘statistic’ somewhere?  Is it actually supported by a study or citable research?  If so, can you find the study, and do you agree with the research methodology used?  What’s the citation count like?  In other words, are scientists from that field actually looking at this research, or is it being largely ignored by actual experts?  I should mention that this is essentially the process I go through every time someone sends me something about a new space drive, something traveling faster than the speed of light (I still occasionally hear about OPERA), the discovery of an alien civilization… You get the idea.

• Use credible sources.

  Did the cool story you just read provide actual sources, or did it just spout numbers that it pulled from somewhere else?  Can you find those numbers and facts elsewhere, or does it seem like they’ve just been circulated around a bubble with zero support from actual experts in that particular field?  Do most of the websites you’re viewing end with ‘.com,’ and, if so, are you looking at government (.gov) and educational (.edu) websites too?  If discussing an event, like a press conference, have you watched actual video coverage, or have you relied on what others have had to say before forming your own opinion?

• Educate yourself.

  Want to learn more about the world but find yourself limited by things like budget?  Check out this No Excuse List, which offers loads of free and credible learning resources that you can explore on your own schedule.

• Preserve public broadcasting.

  Preserving our democracy depends on it, and even Senator John McCain agrees that a free press, as much as he ‘hates’ it, is necessary.  Groups like Protect My Public Media have started to form in response to recent attacks on the press, and both NPR and PBS will gladly accept your tax-deductible donations.  History shows that the road to many a dictatorship has started with the suppression of media and the (often literal) death of intellectualism.  It’s not too late to fight for your First Amendment rights and for those of the press!

I fear that, if appropriate action is not taken soon, T.S. Eliot’s words from The Hollow Men will ring true…

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

The post The ‘Right’ Voices appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Last week we learned that University of Massachusetts Dartmouth was in talks with Rhode Island Public Radio and plans to sell the FM license for college radio station WUMD. Paperwork was filed with the FCC, so the clock is ticking for public comment. Station participants and listeners were still adjusting to the news, but by this week, those opposed to the sale have begun to organize and speak out.

WUMD volunteer Toni Pennacchia helped to put together the Save WUMD Facebook page and issued a press release that says in part, “The proposed takeover has met with quite a bit of skepticism from many affected in the listening area. A main concern has been the secretive nature of the negotiations between RIPR and university administration. The university did not solicit input from WUMD staff or management, UMass Dartmouth students, or the general public, including station listeners. Given that both RIPR and UMass Dartmouth are allegedly operating in the public trust, this sort of closed-door approach is worrying.” She continues, “The station members are not going down without a fight and have started on a #SaveWUMD campaign on social media with a dedicated page. The campaign is seeking community members to join their voices in opposing this maneuver on the part of the university and RIPR. The public is able to petition against this sale until February 3rd, either by emailing Tom.Wheeler@fcc.gov or writing a petition to deny.”

I reached out to Pennacchia and she told me that she’s been with WUMD since 1996 and serves as a show host and as the station’s World Music Genre Director. Over email she expressed sadness about the news, saying, “January 13th, 2017 will mark the 45th birthday of this station’s broadcast…I am devastated as are the DJs and listening community and I am very disappointed with the actions of the university but not completely surprised as the university has given us less support over the years in making awareness of us on campus and beyond.”

Adam Lawrence, co-host of the WUMD show “State of the Queer Nation” and host of the music show host “Broadband Noise,” has been with the station since 2007. He emailed me that he was “heartbroken” by the sale news, adding, “We have an incredibly devoted audience, some of whom I’ve been lucky enough to know by name and speak to weekly when they call in to my show.” He told me that listeners had been offering words of support. He recounted, “I’ll usually have 5-10 calls in the course of a show, but last night I was taking calls almost non-stop at times – I think I was on the phone more than I was on the radio mic. To have heard from so many people from all different walks of life calling in to voice their support and to ask how they could help nearly brought me to tears on-air. I firmly believe we have the greatest audience, and as a volunteer team, our efforts at the station have always been for them and our love of the music.”

According to Providence Journal, “John Hoey, assistant chancellor for public affairs at UMass Dartmouth…pointed out that WUMD’s programming would not be ‘lost,’ since the station will continue to be available on the internet.”

However, Lawrence expressed concern over WUMD moving online-only, arguing that, “Our FM presence is important to us because it’s both the most straightforward way to hear us, and the way that most of our listeners have found us. When we chat with our listeners, we very often hear that they’d previously had no idea we existed, but were tuning through the FM band one day, found music they loved on our station, and stuck with us ever since. By going online-only, we risk becoming a very small needle in an absolutely monstrously huge haystack.”

Those opposing the sale are also pointing out that music-oriented WUMD will be replaced by Rhode Island Public Radio’s mostly syndicated programming. Pennacchia’s press release states, “Unlike RIPR’s approach of rebroadcasting national content and having a skeleton crew to operate locally, WUMD has actively engaged in student and community outreach in its forty-five years of existence. The station currently allows community members to participate in programming, providing unique educational and volunteer opportunities that a small outlet of a national organization like NPR cannot match.” According to South Coast Today, “Torey Malatia, RIPR president and CEO, in a an email to The Standard-Times, acknowledged that currently, the majority of the RIPR slate is syndicated.”

The post WUMD Participants Speak out against Planned College Radio License Sale appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Yesterday, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth announced plans to sell the license for music-focused college radio station WUMD-FM to Rhode Island Public Radio (RIPR) for use as a talk-oriented public radio station. Today, FCC paperwork was filed, revealing more details about the deal. In addition to UMass Dartmouth’s application to assign the WUMD license to RIPR, RIPR also filed a construction permit, requesting that WUMD’s transmitter site and city of license be moved from North Dartmouth, Massachusetts to Tiverton, Rhode Island. Both applications require FCC approval and now that paperwork for the sale is on file with the FCC, the public has 30 days in which to file petitions to deny the license assignment application.

In a statement included with its filing, RIPR writes:

The WUMD transmitter site is currently located on the campus of The University of Massachusetts at North Dartmouth, Massachusetts. RIPR proposes to relocate the WUMD facilities to the WLNE-TV (New Bedford MA) tower located at Tiverton, Rhode Island, and to change the station’s community of license to Newport, Rhode Island. WUMD has served as a campus and community station operated by the students and faculty of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. RIPR’s acquisition of the station will enable it to expand its program service in furtherance of its goal of providing service throughout the State of Rhode Island.”

RIPR’s President, CEO and General Manager Torey Malatia told me over email today that this proposed transmitter move will help with coverage, saying, “Our request was to move the transmitting antenna south from its current location in North Dartmouth MA, across the Rhode Island border to a tower at Tiverton, RI. This specific location will result in an increase in the signal’s geographic spread and an increase in the population density of the station’s reach. Moved into Rhode Island like this, our request for a main studio waiver (meaning the studios are not physically in the building also housing the transmitter) changes the city of license to a location within a limited area. That will be Newport, RI.”

An Asset Purchase Agreement dated December 22, 2016 is included with the FCC filing and indicates that Public Media Company (previously known as Public Radio Capital, a company that has helped broker a number of college radio station license sales, including KUSF) served as a broker for RIPR for this deal. Malatia told me that “PMC mainly handled engineering studies” and UMass Dartmouth’s Assistant Chancellor for Strategic Communication, Media Relations and Special Projects John Hoey also addressed this with me via email, saying that RIPR reached out to him directly. Malatia elaborated, saying, “Really, John Hoey from UMass Dartmouth and I were the main point people on this project, although many of the administrative staff at UMass Dartmouth were involved in helping plan the design of the relationship. PMC didn’t function actively in the talks, planning, negotiations, or project ideas associated with the collaboration.”

Terms of the deal include a $1.5 million purchase price, $617,100 worth of underwriting over the course of 10 years (which will consist of the on-air announcement every two hours: “Reporting on South Coast communities, is an initiative of the Rhode Island Public Radio/University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Journalism Alliance”), as well as offers of internships, cross-promotion, etc. The agreement also states that UMass Dartmouth will retain the call letters WUMD as branding for its radio station, with RIPR seeking new call letters for 89.3 FM.

The long-time college/community radio station WUMD is expected to transition to an online-only station (WUMD already has an established online stream) and RIPR has promised assistance with the station’s online presence. The agreement states, “UMass Dartmouth will assist RIPR in establishing an on-line radio service (“WUMD Radio”). Such assistance will take the form of discrete consulting services and will not include payment of any out-of-pocket expenses by RIPR. The parties will agree on the number of hours per year in services in this regard that RIPR will provide to UMass Dartmouth; the service hours will not exceed 40 hours during the Term.” Although the “Term” is a period of 10 years after the closing date of the deal, Malatia explained to me that those 40 hours would be “largely performed at once, immediately after license transfer.”

RIPR also agreed to promote WUMD radio on its own website through January, 2019, with the expectation that WUMD Radio would also include a link to RIPR on its website. The agreement further states that, “Through March 2018, WIPR will promote WUMD Radio features, content, and programs on RIPR’s website, Twitter, Facebook, and other social platforms on which RIPR regularly interacts with followers.” Currently, RIPR has over 6,000 likes on Facebook and more than 23,000 Twitter followers, compared with WUMD’s 2,000+ Facebook likes and 1,500+ Twitter followers.

A unique aspect of the deal involves members of RIPR’s Board of Directors being appointed by UMass Dartmouth. The agreement states: “Upon the closing and throughout the Term, at least one (1) member of RIPR’s board of directors will be a designee of UMass Dartmouth, subject to RIPR standard Nominating and Governance Committee review; and, within three (3) years of the Closing Date, at least three (3) members of RIPR’s Community Advisory Board (“CAB”) will be appointed by UMass Dartmouth’s Chancellor, subject to CAB membership committee review, with preference given to individuals residing in the Dartmouth-New Bedford-Fall River, Massachusetts areas.”

Malatia explained the benefits of this arrangement for RIPR, telling me,

We see the UMass Dartmouth relationship as an ongoing collaboration so a board member who has been put forward by UMass Dartmouth and approved by the RIPR nominating process helps assure that UMass Dartmouth and its community are represented in our governance. UMass Dartmouth is deeply connected to the civic and socioeconomic issues of the region. Supplementing Rhode Island community representation on our Community Advisory Board with representatives of South Coast communities is an essential step in making sure that the entire public within our service area is served by our journalism.”

Hoey pointed out why this is beneficial for UMass Dartmouth, telling me that, “This recognizes that UMass Dartmouth is a major cultural and economic force in Southeastern Massachusetts and can assist RIPR in serving the region, which will comprise about one-third of its area.”

As far as the timing of the agreement and announcement during winter break, Malatia spoke to the lengthy process involved, saying, “It just takes a long time. UMass Dartmouth and RIPR started talking about this last winter and my board’s final vote to approve occurred on December 20^th.” Hoey explained, “The paperwork is dated December 22, two days after the RIPR Board voted on the matter. Classes ended December 12. Most students and faculty had left campus for break before December 20. We did not want to make an announcement of this importance during the holiday week. Students return on January 23.” He said that “Most WUMD staff and DJs learned of the announcement on Tuesday and Wednesday” [January 4 and 5]

When I asked Malatia how RIPR listeners have responded to the news of the pending license purchase, he said, “Overwhelmingly well.” In contrast, Hoey reported to me that that the mood at UMass Dartmouth and at WUMD is quite different, saying, “There is certainly a feeling of sadness about the news, which is understandable because these are people who have devoted their hearts and souls to this station, some for decades. We greatly value their talents and contributions, and want them to continue serving the community through the online station. We believe there are some very interesting models around the country to consider as we move forward.”

WUMD currently runs a variety of programming, with students, alumni, faculty, and community members (even high school students- as revealed in this UMass profile of a college freshman who started at the station as a high school sophomore) serving as volunteer hosts and DJs. Music shows cover a wide range of genres, including jazz, blues, world, folk, Celtic, alternative, reggae and electronic music. Additionally, WUMD airs a variety of public affairs shows and some syndicated programs, including Democracy Now! and CounterSpin.

Looking ahead, Hoey said that in regards to his hopes and goals for the future online-only version of the UMass Dartmouth station, “…there are some exciting models around the country — Radio Depaul in Chicago and Radio Free Brooklyn, for instance — but ultimately WUMD will and should become what members and the community want it to be.”

I reached out to WUMD and the station had no comment about the forthcoming changes.

The post UMass Dartmouth Files FCC Paperwork for Proposed WUMD College Radio Station License Sale appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Today, it was announced that University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth intends to sell the 89.3 FM license for its college radio station, WUMD-FM, to Rhode Island Public Radio (RIPR) for $1.5 million. Paperwork, which has yet to be filed, requires FCC approval.

Students at University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth are currently on winter break and members of the WUMD station staff reportedly learned of the planned license sale today, although a statement on the UMass, Dartmouth website is dated January 2. (Update: The statement was removed and a new one was posted later today and is dated January 4)

Over email, RIPR’s President, CEO and General Manager Torey Malatia told me, “Long before I came here RIPR’s management and board had an interest in adding a principal frequency to our repeater array. When I arrived, we approached UMass Dartmouth and over a year’s time, developed collaborative plans and a purchase agreement.” Malatia corroborated reports that students at WUMD were not aware of the planning process surrounding the pending sale, saying that, “The head of Student Affairs—which oversees all the station operations—was involved. The student hosts and DJs were not.”

University of Massachusetts Dartmouth’s Assistant Chancellor for Strategic Communication, Media Relations and Special Projects John Hoey explained over email that, “RIPR approached us about a year ago, and we have spent the last several months crafting a collaboration that we believe will benefit our students and the region we serve. We brought various stakeholders in to the conversation at different times over the last several months.” In regards to the FCC filing, he told me, “We expect the paperwork to be filed this afternoon.”

According to a statement posted on the WUMD website, “WUMD will continue to deliver its programming online. Under the terms of the collaboration, UMass Dartmouth will immediately receive $1.5 million in cash from RIPR to endow need-based financial aid and community engagement funds, $617,100 in underwriting time on the RIPR network and additional on-air promotion over the next 10 years. UMass Dartmouth and RIPR will also collaborate on a series of academic and community engagement activities, including internships and public forums.”

Additionally, RIPR plans to work with the future online-only version of UMass Dartmouth’s radio station. Malatia shared further details with me, explaining that, “We will be assisting WUMD with ramping up their features as an internet radio station (borrowing from many best practices out there: TRP, CKUT, WKCR, KALX, WBCQ, Brooklyn Radio and many others), including video streaming, and the like. We will also be cross-promoting WUMD on our RIPR website and on our social media, and, yes, there are a number of internships and project-related collaborations that we will be committing to with UMass as part of this.”

WUMD’s history dates back to at least the 1970s and the station has had a series of call letters, including WUSM and WSMU. The WUMD website states that, “On June 10, 2006 WSMU moved from 91.1 FM to 89.3 FM and changed its call letters to WUMD. The new station/frequency operates at a licensed power of 9600 watts and broadcasts with state of the art HD technology.” WUMD’s emphasis has been on new and local music. According to its website, “Like most radio stations on the non-commercial end of the dial, WUMD serves up a daring departure from the mainstream.”

Rhode Island Public Radio runs talk-oriented public radio stations, airing mostly syndicated programming from NPR, BBC, and PRX. It holds two full power radio license, WRNI-AM (which it leases to Latino Public Radio) and WRNI 102.7 FM. Additionally, it has agreements to air its programming over two additional stations: 91.5 FM WCVY, owned by Coventry Public Schools and The Wheeler School’s WELH 88.1 FM. Radio Survivor readers may remember that college radio station Brown Student Radio (BSR) went online-only in 2011 after its 14-year time share agreement with WELH ended.  BSR applied for a new low power FM license during the 2013 application window and was awarded a construction permit for a new FM station, WPVD-LP at 101.1 FM, so may return to the Providence, Rhode Island airwaves soon as part of a three station time-share.

RIPR expects that it will be several months before its purchase of WUMD goes through. Additionally, RIPR hopes to move WUMD’s transmitter. According to a post on the RIPR website: “The move is also aimed at improving spotty reception for listeners from parts of Providence to the East Bay…Malatia said RIPR plans to spend an additional $1 million to move the transmitter for WUMD from North Dartmouth, Massachusetts, to Tiverton. He said RIPR’s board will launch a capital campaign to pay for the costs of acquiring WUMD and to also invest in the station’s digital infrastructure and its reporters.”

One long-time WUMD volunteer told me that she was “very sad and shocked” to hear the news today and social media reaction has been mixed. RIPR posted on Facebook: “Good news: RIPR is expanding its potential audience,” and comments in response ranged from “Congrats!” to Liam Gray’s: “Oh what a bummer. I hate it when NPR stations gut college programming.” I’ve yet to hear an official response from WUMD.

The post UMass Dartmouth Plans to Sell License for College Radio Station WUMD to Rhode Island Public Radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

When last we left the KUSP-FM in Santa Cruz drama, the struggling public radio station had not succeeded in meeting its fund raising goal: $300k in around a month. And so the signal has laid off most of its staff save its Operations Director, now the General Manager. It has replaced its daily live deejay broadcast with a single stream. “Essentially, the whole library is on random,” notes Joshua Huver over at the Bay Bridged indie music news blog.

Then the foundation met on May 4th and authorized its board to “pursue a sale of KUSP’s license if the station could not otherwise be saved.” I attended that meeting. It was tense, but informative and helpful towards my writing something along the line of what various Radio Survivor readers have asked me to assemble, an analysis of why it has been such an uphill struggle for KUSP’s new Adult Album Alternative format. But before I get to that, I want to reiterate what I’ve repeatedly said on these pages: in its brief existence as a live broadcast, KUSP’s “Triple A” stream was a wonderful thing, with tremendous potential to revitalize community based rock radio in the Santa Cruz / Monterey area. It is worth the investment of the greater Santa Cruz community.

In a nutshell, KUSP-FM embraced a deejay oriented contemporary rock/pop format.  It drew from an online database of new and older tunes (a sort of millennial/boomer mix), then gradually integrated music from the station’s record library. When the new approach launched some months ago, I wasn’t sure what I thought about it. But eventually I realized that I had stumbled upon what I’ve missed for decades, a rock/pop radio station that played recent and new music, curated by live people. As I wrote back in December: “Listening to the new KUSP I feel like somebody invited me back into the club, into the party, or back into some scene from which I’d been secretly disinvited.”

To be blunt, KUSP’s Triple A format made me feel young again. And it obviously reached a critical mass of individuals, who donated over $100k to the station over the course of its emergency fundraising marathon month. This approach has been embraced by at least 100 radio stations across the United States. My brother Raphael listens to and loves a AAA style public signal in New Jersey, 90.5, WBJB-FM, Brookdale Public Radio. The station, he notes, plays contemporary and classic rock, pop, and folk music:

    “Pete Fornatale, one of the great DJs from the heydays of ’70s rock radio broadcasting at WNEW in NYC, was a mentor to the founders of 90.5 in 1975. The station promotes and supports local musicians hosting concerts and on air live performances and interviews.”

    “The DJs at Brookdale are locals, many having attended Brookdale CC and other local schools. They know the area and report news relevant to the community. Their banter is the banter of neighbors. And they are terrific people who know and love music. In the past few days we’ve been treated to Paul Butterfield, a Prince instrumental cover of Whole Lotta Love, Howlin’ Wolf, new music from Graham Parker, and if I’m not mistaken, a Zappa tune. And a bunch of new artists I’ve never heard of but deserve my attention.

    If you love radio and you haven’t given them a listen, you should. If you are local, you should consider supporting them. They are Radio Done Right. Brookdale is truly a community treasure for the Jersey Shore.”

KUSP has the potential to become that. But it faces some very difficult hurdles.

First, when the station abandoned its NPR format, it lost a bunch of listeners. To be fair, it appears that there was no avoiding this. KUSP had to drop NPR. The station simply could not compete with neighboring NPR station KAZU-FM in Monterrey and had accrued a large debt to the public radio news service. But unloading NPR came with a price: a suddenly diminished audience.

Second, KUSP owes money in addition to NPR. According to the figures I received in a handout at the meeting, approximately $780,000. Here’s the breakdown:

   $170,000 in secured loans
   $90,000 in unsecured loans by individuals or guaranteed by individuals
   $450,000 in unpaid programming fees to NPR, American Public Radio, and Pacifica radio
   $70,000 in unpaid accounts payable

Third, my impression is that KUSP’s Santa Cruz/Monterey demographic base is somewhat smaller than the regional reach of comparable Triple A stations elsewhere. The Monterey/Santa Cruz/Salinas area comes in at 84 on the Fall 2015 Nielsen market survey.

Fourth, some people in and around the KUSP community never really supported the Triple A plan. At the meeting I came away with the distinct impression that some of them want it to fail (or think it already has). One man behind me angrily called the new format “crap,” and all but accused its advocates of dishonesty in their original representation of the new programme. What they want, as far as I could tell from the discussion, is a volunteer run and staffed, music and public affairs oriented community radio station. I even heard suggestions that the station generate income by charging people for deejay time.

Obviously there’s a hugely subjective element to this discussion. On that level I can’t argue with what other people want, especially individuals who I strongly respect for having given years of their lives to KUSP.  If that is ultimately what the KUSP board embraces, so be it. But I doubt that I will listen to that station. I also fear that, given the resources at hand and the conflicting expectations of so many people, even if relatively well planned it will drift into something resembling a time sharing operation. I agree with my colleague Paul Riismandel that volunteer oriented community radio stations not infrequently suffer from a “culture of time ownership.”

“While a sense of shared ownership over the station can be a good thing, the sense that one owns her own slot of time on the schedule tends to be detrimental,” Paul writes. “That’s because it encourages DJs to be conservative, as in conserving their space on the air, ready to defend it. This results in resistance or even downright hostility in shifts to the program schedule that are intended to adapt to changes in the listening habits or other factors.”

The big challenge for community oriented public radio stations is to make the leap from community level support to audience level support. Community level support often comes from groups of people who support various shows on the station, in part because they interact with the programmers in other cultural, social, or political contexts.  Audience level support comes from people who listen to the station as a whole. My sense is that the Triple A plan has the potential to take that audience level leap and to make a real difference for the Santa Cruz cultural scene. It has a chance to bring different generations together, and in particular to bring the Spotify generation back to traditional radio listening. KUSP could become a significant advocate for local musicians and musical spaces. By centering its discourse around live deejays, it could become a strong promoter of local cultural and social organizations.

But to do this, KUSP will have to overcome significant financial and structural obstacles, and to some degree transcend its own institutional history. If I was a philanthropist, I would give money to KUSP. I think the project that it has undertaken is well worth it, enough so that I continue to hope against hope that it prevails.

The post The case for KUSP-FM of Santa Cruz as a community rock station appeared first on Radio Survivor.

I was as shocked as everyone else yesterday when I glanced up at a TV screen at my local diner and saw the breaking news that Prince has died. I voiced my disbelief and soon there was a chorus of commentary from my fellow restaurant patrons. Wasn’t Prince just in town performing? Was he really only 57 years old?

Later when I checked email and scanned social media, there was plenty of evidence that people were turning to radio in order to process the news. Public, college, commercial, and satellite radio stations switched to all-Prince programming and fans were delighted. KEXP (a former college radio station that still has a collection of Prince LPs from its days as University of Washington station KCMU) in Seattle began playing Prince in the afternoon and continued until 6pm (except for a break for a live band).

Minnesota Public Radio’s The Current (in Prince’s hometown of Minneapolis) went all-out with Prince tracks in chronological order all day and into the night. They even plan to top that tonight, when the station begins a 24+ hour Prince special, airing Prince’s music in A to Z order. College radio also joined in with numerous impromptu Prince marathons, including one by WCBN (University of Michigan) from around 1:30pm to 6pm yesterday.

As I will discuss on next week’s Radio Survivor Podcast, it became clear that radio became an outlet for collective mourning and that there was something magical about people from all over the world tuning in to the exact same music at the exact same time. My friend Howard Ryan (aka DJ Schmeejay) brilliantly explained this in a post on his Facebook page, saying,

I realized something today when I was walking through the Financial District in San Francisco this afternoon. I was listening to The Current out of Minneapolis loudly on my headphones doing their all-day, in chronological order Prince marathon and we’re at 1984. DJ just played DMSR. ♡. Purple Rain next, right? So, I am waiting for the light to change on Kearney and suddenly I AM PLAYING AIR GUITAR TO THAT FUCKING SOLO IN LET’S GO CRAZY. This is not like me. But, today I am like that. And when, a few blocks later the title track comes on, some tears start rolling out of nowhere, I realize there are probably 1000s of folks back in the Twin Cities doing the same thing AT THAT VERY MOMENT LISTENING TO THAT SAME SONG. DAMN.”

To me, that is one of the amazing things about radio; that it can bring us together for shared experiences, as it did yesterday. In addition to radio’s role in the mourning process, it’s also interesting to note that college radio is inextricably linked to Prince for many people. On social media a number of fans recounted stories of discovering Prince through college radio and others shared tales of playing Prince on college radio.

On Twitter, Garrett Lanzy (@GarrettL62) wrote, “…I started playing Prince as a college DJ when playing him on the radio was a subversive act (Controversy era).” Ben Smith (@BenMSmith) expressed similar sentiments, saying, “I need to dig into his catalog, but one thing I remember about Prince is thinking I had broken broadcast guidelines during college radio.” Others mentioned that Prince crossed genre lines, which meant that many different DJs played his material. Ken Hart (@KenofGhastria) said, “I was a college radio DJ when #Prince released 1999. We had rock, punk, R&B and jazz shows, & I think ALL of us played that album. Genius.”

Do you have any college radio anecdotes related to Prince? Let me know in the comments.

More College Radio News

That’s all I’ve got today…but be sure, as always, to listen to this week’s Radio Survivor Podcast for more college radio discussion. In this week’s episode I recap the UCRN (UC Radio Network) conference that I attended at University of California, Santa Cruz.

The post College Radio Watch: Celebrating Prince on the Radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Public radio station WPPB-FM in Southampton, New York must forfeit $10,000 to the U.S. government due to public file violations. According to an order released by the FCC this week, the station, whose license is held by Peconic Public Broadcasting, neglected to maintain 13 of its quarterly issues and programs lists. After the FCC issued a Notice of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture to WPPB in March, 2015, WPPB replied, asking for the fine to be reduced due, in part, to financial hardship.

According to the March 2015 order, Peconic Broadcasting acknowledged the missing issues and programs lists in its renewal application, stating that “In connection with this renewal process, management has overseen the transfer of this pre-existing program information from the logs into the form of thirteen (13) quarterly issues/program lists, all of which have now been placed in WPPB’s public file.”

Peconic Public Broadcasting purchased the radio station license from Long Island University in 2010. WPPB-FM, formerly known as WLIU, was located at the former Southampton College campus. Long Island University initially put the station up for sale in 2009.

In its order this week, the FCC writes, “Although we are mindful of Licensee’s efforts to preserve the Station, we reject the claim of financial hardship due to Licensee’s failure to document that claim.”

This serves as another remind that the FCC is quite serious about the importance of stations regularly maintaining public files.

The post Peconic Public Broadcasting Asked to Forfeit $10K for Public File Violations appeared first on Radio Survivor.

The Copyright Royalty Board recently released two orders that affect community and college radio stations. The CRB sets the royalty rates that webcasters pay for the right to play recorded music. Royalties are paid to SoundExchange, a non-profit group that distributes payments to musicians and record labels. These payments only apply to online streaming broadcasts, not terrestrial over-the-air broadcasts.

First, the CRB approved a settlement between College Broadcasters Inc and SoundExchange which pretty much leaves the current rates in place. It sets a minimum annual fee of $500 for each channel (online stream) for up to 159,140 aggregate tuning hours (ATH). The new deal gives stations the ability to opt out of filing “reports of use” of every song played if a station streams less than 80,000 aggregate tuning hours (ATH) per month, and increase of 35,000 over the previous standard. ATH is the count of how many hours were streamed to individual (listeners). For example, if fifty listeners each listened for 20 hours, then the ATH is 1,000.

The CBI deal applies only to high school or college stations that are federal tax-exempt, substantially operated by students, and do not also qualify as a public broadcaster.

Community and public stations qualify for rates that remain substantially unchanged from those paid in the years 2011–2015, as negotiated by public radio groups. These stations must be an affiliate of NPR, American Public Media, PRI or PRX, or a member of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters. Stations can expect to be notified of details by the broadcast organizations they are affiliated with.

The CommLawBlog has the full rundown of these deals, along with what’s going on with the royalty rates that will be applied to other web casters.

The post Webcast Royalty Rates Set for College, Community & Public Stations appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Today it was announced that Centenary College plans to sell the license for its public radio station WNTI 91.9 FM to University of Pennsylvania for use as another outpost for programming from its Philadelphia-based public radio station WXPN-FM. The sale price is $1,250,000. Additionally, part of the contract specifies the equivalent of $500,000 in underwriting for Centenary College over the course of 10 years. The deal still needs to be approved by the FCC, although WXPN programming will begin airing over WNTI beginning at noon Eastern time this Thursday, October 15 as part of a lease agreement.

As we wrote last week, WNTI has been a locally-oriented public radio station in New Jersey, which up until recently aired a mix of syndicated shows, NPR news, and adult album alternative music programs hosted by local DJs.

According to a joint press release issued by WXPN and Centenary College today,

Roger LaMay, WXPN General Manager, said, ‘WXPN was approached with notification of the proposed sale of WNTI. Although we were not looking to purchase another radio station, we quickly realized that WXPN was the best option to preserve WNTI’s long tradition of musical discovery for listeners in Northern New Jersey and Northeastern Pennsylvania. We will extend WXPN’s demonstrated commitment to local artists, music and events in the communities we currently serve to the WNTI community, and will apply our deep experience in public music radio management to strengthen its overall operations.'”

As we learned last week, Centenary College plans to use its campus radio studio for a new Internet radio station for both students and community DJs. A statement by Centenary College President Dr. Barbara-Jayne Lewthwaite promises that

Centenary will continue to operate its own Internet radio station at WNTI.org to enhance our curriculum and involve students and community volunteers in programming. Centenary students will be afforded opportunities to intern at WXPN at the University of Pennsylvania. We intend to reinvest the proceeds from the license sale in building Centenary’s academic offerings, to support student recruitment and retention, and fuel Centenary’s role as an economic engine in Warren County, New Jersey.”

WNTI supporters had been speculating last week that WXPN could have been a potential purchaser of the station. Although there are some similarities between the two stations musically (WNTI aired and will continue to air the WXPN-produced World Cafe), supporters are concerned about the loss of local New Jersey hosts when the station transitions to a feed from WXPN. It remains to be seen if there will be different content on WNTI-FM now or in the future.

The post Centenary College Radio Station WNTI to be sold to University of Pennsylvania’s WXPN appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Today Centenary College announced that it plans to sell the license for its community/public radio station WNTI-FM in Hackettstown, New Jersey to another, yet to be identified, public radio station. Up until this point WNTI has been an Adult Album Alternative-focused station airing a mix of local, community-produced programming, NPR news, and syndicated shows like Acoustic Cafe, NPR’s World Cafe, and Little Steven’s Underground Garage.

The sale announcement is on the heels of a purported shut-down of WNTI on Monday. NJArts reported that, “The large staff of DJs at WNTI-FM found out today that their services are no longer required. As DJ Mike Watterson wrote on Facebook, ‘WNTI as we know it is no more. Locks have been changed & the studio is dark.'”

Although it seems that WNTI is mostly a community/public radio station, students have utilized some of its facilities as part of radio and television coursework and as interns at WNTI, according to the Centenary College website.

There weren’t too many specifics on the rumored sale until today, when Centenary College released the following statement:

Centenary College’s mission is to provide a quality liberal arts education with a strong career focus. To deliver on this promise, we constantly evaluate Centenary’s operations and assets to ensure we are delivering on our top priority — providing our students with a rewarding educational experience that prepares them for the future.

As part of this ongoing review, we have decided to transfer Centenary’s broadcasting license to another public radio station.  We are in the process of finalizing the sales agreement with the new operator, who shares WNTI’s commitment to great music and has the resources to serve the needs of local listeners for many years to come. The proceeds from the sale of the license will be re-invested in Centenary’s academic programs, to benefit current and future students.  Centenary will retain its on-campus studio and will continue to operate an internet radio station at WNTI.org, and we will develop new opportunities for students to participate in its operation, along with WNTI’s community volunteers.

WNTI was established over 50 years ago as a college radio station to serve the Centenary campus and to help our students gain first-hand experience in broadcasting.  Over time, WNTI evolved from a student-run station into a National Public Radio station serving a regional audience, with a dedicated team of community volunteers and many loyal listeners.  Now WNTI is going in a new direction. The change we are undertaking is difficult, but we firmly believe is in the best long-term interests of Centenary College and the greater community served by WNTI.

We cannot disclose the identity of the new station operator until the details of the transaction are finalized. We intend to share more information as soon as we can make it available, which will probably be near the end of October.”

It’s interesting to note that the statement indicates that a new online radio station will be created and that it will provide “new opportunities for students to participate in its operation, along with WNTI’s community volunteers.” My understanding is that the most recent version of WNTI was not student-oriented, so the license sale may actually herald the return of student radio at Centenary, although the fate of the WNTI FM signal is still uncertain.

As we await more details, fans of WNTI have already started to protest the impending sale. A Facebook group called “Protest Centenary’s WNTI Takeover” has been established and as of tonight has more than 540 members.

The post Centenary College Plans to Sell License for Public-Community Radio Station WNTI appeared first on Radio Survivor.

For the last six months the community around struggling community/public radio station KUSP in Santa Cruz, California has been rethinking itself in terms of trees. Earlier this year the signal posited a host of models, among them scenarios dubbed “fig” (news), “walnut” (BBC), and “maple” (NPR on the hour). But in the end, after shedding its general manager last month, the operation appears to be moving towards a music format adopted by around 150 radio signals across the United States: Triple A, aka “Adult Album Alternative.”

The plan can be found in KUSP’s new report titled “Assessment Report and Change Recommendation Public Radio Station: KUSP.” Here’s the bottom line, according to the Public Media Company authored document:

“PMC sees potential in a programming/format shift to a local, professionally programmed and hosted music format that would be described, in radio format terms, as Triple-A (or ‘AAA’) . . .

The Music Format, if done right, will share audience rather than compete for audience with KAZU. It will also be connected to the Santa Cruz/Monterey Bay region and residents by programming regional music and musicians, convening and partnering with local events and with community and cultural groups.”

If you are looking for extant public radio AAA models to grok this recommendation, the document cites Minnesota public radio’s The Current, Austin’s KUTX, and WXPN in Philadelphia. The Assessment Report also rather strongly suggests that KUSP’s current format, an NPR laden schedule designed to compete with neighboring station KAZU in Monterey, has failed. “KUSP’s news and information audience and loyalty is low and, for the most part, secondary to KAZU’s news and information audience,” the document says. “While there have been suggestions that improving or adding additional local content might improve audience, our analysis is that it will not.”

The report describes AAA stations as emphasizing a less mainstream music format than commercial stations, foregrounding acoustic rock, blues, roots, bluegrass, folk, and world music. “The station’s image is local, friendly, informative and personality (DJs) driven. These stations are very rooted in their local communities.” The assessment includes a sample program schedule for the new KUSP:

From this hypothetical schedule, it looks like KUSP will stream some popular public radio programming like World Cafe, This American Life, and Car Talk re-runs, while stripping in local music shows across the day. I’m guessing, however, that the actual music content lineup is still very much up in the air. In any event, all this will have to happen quickly, the outline notes. “KUSP is financially broke,” it warns, operating without any unrestricted cash surplus despite several recent donations of over $250,000. “At this point, the history of the Station’s financial crises is not relevant. It is a fact that must be dealt with.”

The recommended transition schedule goes as follows: first hire an interim general manager, which has already happened. His name is Lee Ferraro (formerly of WYEP in Pittsburgh) and he is charged with getting the new AAA format running by November 1. Ferraro must also raise around $150,000 by then via major donors and/or foundations. This should be accompanied by the hiring of a permanent general manager (if possible), a development director, and the obtaining of an additional $200,000 through December. The Holy Grail is holding KUSP’s first Triple-A membership campaign sometime between January and March of 2016.

Here’s a chart outlining the hoped for financial future of KUSP under the new format.

This summary barely touches on the content of the report, which is definitely worth reading in full. Only lightly mentioned in the assessment is how the new KUSP will coexist with the Santa Cruz area’s various music stations: KPIG, KKUP, and the University’s KZSC-FM, among them. But the document does suggest that the transition will have to be closely managed.

“Triple A programming will draw listeners from KUSP’s tent poles, KAZU and KPIG,” it advises. “In order to make this decision work, KUSP will need to devote resources to their decision. KUSP will need to have control over music selection and how the air talent presents the music to make sure there is a consistent appeal.”

The post Inside KUSP-FM of Santa Cruz’s Triple A music plan appeared first on Radio Survivor.

On Monday, Amherst College’s student-run radio station WAMH-FM in Amherst, Massachusetts began airing daytime public radio programming over its 89.3 FM channel as part of a new partnership with the New England Public Radio Network (NEPR).

Today I spoke with WAMH’s Executive Director (and Amherst College senior) Robert Neel, who told me that this deal was supported by students at the radio station. Under the new arrangement, student programs will air from 4pm until 2am and syndicated public radio programming will run from 2am to 4pm on weekdays. Public radio shows airing on WAMH will include the BBC World Service, NPR’s “Morning Edition,” “BBC Newshour,” “On Point,” “The Takeaway,” “Here and Now,” “Fresh Air” and “the World.”

WAMH’s diverse, music-oriented programming will air starting at 4pm weekdays (and throughout the weekend) and according to Neel, it’s often a range of indie rock, alternative, pop, and hip hop. Although students used to clamor to fill 24 hours of programming every day and more than 100 student DJs were on the air as recently as 2000, in the past few years it’s been a challenge to fill more than 10 hours a day. Neel explained that, “as a result of various different things” including “radio falling out of favor” and “poor leadership,” student participation at WAMH has dwindled and around 3 years ago reached its lowest point. At the time, WAMH was in serious danger of disappearing and that, in part, is why the arrangement with New England Public Radio Network was so appealing. WAMH hadn’t been airing student programming during the early part of the day and Neel told me that students at Amherst College prefer time slots after 4pm.

Neel said that there has been a lot of work done to increase student participation at WAMH and that it’s been a “big initiative” for him. He guessed that there are currently around 40 DJs, with most slots from 4pm to 2am now filled. However, it’s often a struggle on a small campus of only around 1500-1600 students. Although Amherst College is part of a larger student community through the Five College Consortium (in which students can take classes at other schools in the consortium, including Hampshire College, Mt. Holyoke College, Smith College, and University of Massachusetts-Amherst), students tend to DJ at the stations on their home campuses and the Amherst station has traditionally been solely comprised of Amherst College students. Interestingly, back in 1950, there was a concerted effort for stations in the consortium to collaborate and WAMH (then a campus-only carrier current station) and several other stations in the consortium formed the Pioneer Broadcasting System and worked to share radio programs with their fellow stations.

School has only been back in session since September 8 at Amherst College and student shows on WAMH started on Sunday, September 20. Neel told me that students are excited about the partnership with New England Public Radio, which was approved by the station’s executive board and DJs, with the blessing of the student government and the administration at Amherst College. He said that it was really important that students maintained control of the station and there’s a clause in the contract that if a student would like to be on the air during the daytime hours currently allotted to public radio news, than the student show can take priority. Neel said that it was important for him to ensure that the deal made sense for their DJs, telling me, “my job was to protect the student resource.” He also told me that the administration said that “this was something that the students had to make the decision on.”

Currently the deal with New England Public Radio is a semester-long “trial” arrangement and either group can pull out of the partnership at the end of the semester. When I asked Neel about how the partnership will specifically benefit the station, he told me that it will help to attract a larger audience for WAMH and that there are also some extras that NEPR is offering to the station. Some of the possible ways that NEPR will assist WAMH include potential equipment purchases and studio updates, help with digitizing the music library, engineering help, and the development of a WAMH app to help with station visibility. Additionally, NEPR may develop a news and broadcasting course on campus for Amherst students, which will be run by NEPR through the college. Neel speculated that the class could have “broad reach” and may attract students interested in “story telling” and “podcasting” in addition to radio.

A piece for the Daily Hampshire Gazette includes a statement by NEPR’s executive director of programming John Voci, who characterizes the new WAMH schedule of programming from both NEPR and Amherst students as a “mash up” of news along with “the often experimental nature of college radio.” When I streamed WAMH today, I heard public radio programming later than 4pm Eastern time and it sounds like while new students are being trained, it’s possible that NEPR programming may extend later into the evening, as WAMH is still working to schedule new shows. It will be interesting to see what listeners think of the mix of sounds on WAMH in the weeks to come and also to see if this partnership works to increase student interest in radio at Amherst College.

The post Amherst College Radio Station WAMH Now Airing Daytime Syndicated Public Radio Programming appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Today iBiquity, the parent company behind HD Radio technology, was acquired by DTS, which is best known for creating multi-channel digital cinema sound systems. DTS is a public traded company, while the majority owners of privately held iBiquity are banks and private equity firms.

The primary reason for the $172 million deal appears to be two-fold. First, it places iBiquity in the hands of a company that specializes in digital audio. Second, DTS creates products for automotive integration. iBiquity CEO Bob Struble told Radio World that, “it’s a complementary business overlap.”

While HD radio is typically thought of as an audio product, the bigger reason why iBiquity is attractive to DTS is the technology’s ability to transmit traffic and weather data to cars over terrestrial broadcast stations’ HD signal. While mobile HD Radio reception can vary wildly with changes in terrain and a car’s position, data transmission doesn’t require constant reception. Access to this technology could give DTS an edge in creating in-dash information systems that are independent of cellular data and internet services.

Of course, this has nothing to do with actual radio as an audio medium. But as it has evolved HD Radio is less and less about actual radio, since receivers are mostly in cars and often spotty reception makes it a mediocre-at-best listening experience. My guess is that DTS clearly understands this, and so we can expect to see much more rapid development of the non-radio side of HD Radio.

NPR Podcasts Celebrate 10th Birthday

Ten years ago Apple added podcasts to its nearly-ubiquitous iTunes software, helping to push the nascent medium into the mainstream. In August of 2005 National Public Radio gave it another shove, when NPR podcasts made its debut, with a whopping 174 programs from the network and affiliate stations. Like now, most of those programs were podcast versions of broadcast programs, yet at the time it was an audacious leap into a new, untested medium.

In a blog post, NPR’s GM of sponsorship Bryan Moffett tells writer Caitlin Sanders how he remembers being pitched on podcasting by the team behind the Odeo podcasting platform, including Evan Williams, Noah Glass, Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone. Now they are better known for one of the most famous “pivots” in dot-com history, when they ditched podcasting for 140 character social messaging.

Today NPR is widely considered one of the strongest brands in podcasting, even if many of the top public radio podcasts actually come from member stations, the Public Radio Exchange or independent producers. That early bet on podcasting surely paid off for public radio in general, as podcasting has popularized the well-honed “NPR sound,” in turn providing new career avenues for public radio professionals at podcasting start-ups like Midroll Media (my employer) and Alex Blumberg’s Gimlet or at companies like Audible, Buzzfeed, and Slate, which have all made significant podcasting investments this year.

The challenge for NPR is that listeners spoiled by the bounty of audio programming now available are demanding more than just on-demand versions of syndicated programs (though, they still want those, too). While the network saw nearly immediate success with the debut of Invisibilia earlier this year, the key will be replicating the formula of launching born-digital shows that are broadcast-friendly, but don’t require the famously long gestation period most previous new NPR shows have required.

Still, I think all podcast fans owe NPR their thanks for its role in feeding this young medium.

The post Digital Watch: HD Radio Parent Is Acquired; NPR Podcasts Turn 10 appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Houston Public Media announced yesterday that it plans to sell off its KUHA 91.7 FM license (aka Classical 91.7) and will move its classical music programming to HD radio (via 88.7 FM HD2). Radio Survivor readers may recall that the license for 91.7 FM was previously held by Rice University and was the former home to college radio station KTRU-FM. Back in 2010 it was announced that the license would be sold to University of Houston (which runs Houston Public Media), which planned to use 91.7 FM in order to divide its talk and classical public radio programming across two frequencies.

Despite high profile protests, legal filings, and petitions to the FCC, the $9.5 million deal went through in April, 2011, allowing Houston Public Media to have a dedicated classical station.

Rice’s student radio station KTRU has continued as an online/ 90.1 FM HD2 station. Earlier this year, Rice University was also awarded a construction permit in order to build a new low power FM (LPFM) radio station, which KTRU hopes to get on the air by the end of the year on 96.1 FM. According to an announcement on the KTRU website in February, 2015, “KTRU, Rice University’s student-run radio station, will use this permit to broadcast a signal from atop Rice Stadium, at 96.1 MHz. The construction of the transmitter is being funded from the proceeds of the 91.7 sale in 2010.”

In recent years there were rumblings that University of Houston’s classical station KUHA was struggling. We reported back in 2013 that local hosts were eliminated and replaced with syndicated programming.

According to a post by Houston Public Media,

General Manager Lisa Shumate told University of Houston officials she wants to sell the frequency and transmitter for the station. No layoffs are planned. Since the classical music station is licensed to the University of Houston, the UH Board of Regents has final say over any changes. Full-time classical programming will be available on 88.7 HD 2, online streaming at Houstonpublicmedia.org, free applications like iHeartRadio and TuneIn, and via television at TV 8.5.

‘We are making this change in recognition of the growing popularity, superior broadcast quality and greater efficiency of digital broadcasting,’ Shumate said in a statement. ‘Placing our focus on HD radio and digital streaming for our classical music programming enables us to make the best use of technology and resources to continue providing the music and arts and culture content that our listeners enjoy.’

The University of Houston Administrative and Finance Committee made the recommendation to the full board of regents, which is expected to approve the plan during its meeting on Thursday.

KUHA 91.7 FM was purchased from Rice University for $9.5 million in 2010. Most of the classical music and arts programming produced by Houston Public Media moved to the new station, along with live broadcasts with the Houston Symphony, the Houston Grand Opera and local performing artists and groups. KUHF then adopted a 24-hour all news and information format.”

This has to be bittersweet news for KTRU fans and supporters who fought so hard to try to keep the license only to see it up for sale 5 years later. There’s no word yet on if there are any interested buyers for the 50,000 watt license.

Other College Radio Headlines

U.S. Court of Appeals Rejects IBS’ Challenges to Copyright Royalty Board Webcasting Rates (Radio Survivor)

The skinny on the recent decision over royalty rates for student stations that webcast

Radio Survivor Podcast #11: National Radio Day, Princeton Review Rankings, and More (Radio Survivor)

In this week’s podcast I go into further detail about the U.S. Court of Appeals decision regarding copyright royalty rates for student webcasters. I also fully dissect the recent Princeton Review list of the “best” (really “most popular”) college radio stations, walking listeners through the survey methodology, explaining what the list really means.

Radio Punks: The Student Radio Story Documentary Covers History of Student Radio in New Zealand

I would love to see this documentary. Stuff describes it as a “fascinating chunk of New Zealand social history,” which shows how vital pre-Internet student media was, saying, “It’s hard to realise now – in these electronically-connected days – that student newspapers and student radio were the only links available to the young.” View some highlights from the documentary here and read another review here. Also take a look at another New Zealand station’s website, where there is a 40 part audio documentary about bFM’s station history!

New Documentary Looks at Influential College Radio Hip Hop Show (The Chicago Defender)

According to the Chicago Defender, the new film Stretch & Bobbito: Radio That Changed Lives “looks at the eight years the two DJs spent on the airwaves at WKCR 89.9 FM, or 89 Tec 9 as some fans may remember. The show came to earn a special place in hip-hop history…”

Radio Host will Talk about Her Student Days (Sunderland Echo)

Former student radio DJ (and recent graduate) in the UK spoke about her transition to commercial radio

CBI Begins to Announce Finalists for its Student Production Awards

Check back on the CBI website for updates. Winners will be announced at CBI’s convention in October.

Remembering Pump up the Volume: Pirate radio as Inspiration for Future College Radio DJs and Podcasters (A.V. Club)

A.V. Club’s loving ode to the classic pirate radio flick Pump up the Volume is full of great college radio anecdotes as well as reflections on how a teen pirate radio DJ is akin to today’s podcaster.

Big Band Radio Show Moves to College Radio Station (Tulsa World)

Interestingly, the Tulsa Community College station, The Grid, had to make some adjustments as its DJs don’t use records or CDs.

Behind the Scenes at Rat and Roach-Infested WBAR

This short video from earlier this year really gets at the sad conditions at some college radio stations, with anecdotes about vermin and roaches in WBAR‘s basement digs. I visited the station in 2009 and remember hearing similar stories even back then! It’s unfortunate, as WBAR is an extremely popular student activity at Barnard College.

We cover the culture of college radio every Friday in our College Radio Watch feature. If you have college radio news to share, please drop us a note at EDITORS at RADIOSURVIVOR dot COM.

The post College Radio Watch: University of Houston to Sell Former KTRU Frequency + More News appeared first on Radio Survivor.

A report from a committee of advisers to struggling community radio station KUSP in Santa Cruz, California, offers an updated overview of the signal’s financial situation.

“There has been a focus in the public discussions on the NPR cost, with the mistaken assumption that the cost of NPR programs was the primary contributor to the KUSP programming costs and the budget deficit,” the Community Leadership Planning Group’s recommendations say. “This is not true.” Around two thirds of the costs “are attributable to programming staff” and the rest to “program acquisition costs.”

A recent meeting about KUSP in Monterey.

The CLPG is something akin to a blue ribbon panel for KUSP, which came close to selling its license not long ago. It includes a former KUSP station manager, the Chair of KUSP’s Board, several members of the group KUSP Forward, a consultant, people from other public radio stations and community groups, and even a Netflix engineer.

It looks like KUSP’s Board will consider the suggestions of the group at this Monday’s meeting at the Community Foundation building in Santa Cruz. Here are some of the planning group’s assessments and recommendations:

• KUSP has debts and liabilities of around $870,000.* The station lost around $213k and $175k in fiscal years 2012/13 and 2013/14. Losses through May were less because of a “one-time bequest” of a little over $150k.

• The station must reduce expenses during a five month interim period lasting from August through December, cutting down paid staff to six positions: a Manager, a Development Director, an Operations Director, an Underwriting Sales person, a part time on-air host, and a part-time bookkeeper. During this interim period, the station should rely on national programming to make up for on-air staff reductions, plus “consider a limited use of volunteers.”

• KUSP’s fundraising goal for the interim period should be between $350,000 to $500,000.

• KUSP’s leadership needs to launch a three year major donor/capital campaign to create an endowment for the station.

Proposed KUSP transition chart.

“KUSP clearly has strong support in the community,” the report notes. “Many public meetings in the past two months have reflected a strong expression of support for KUSP as a treasured community resource.” The station has also grown its audience. But: “The ability of KUSP to survive will be largely dependent upon cutting operating costs near term, the KUSP board adopting a viable interim operating plan, and then using this interim plan as a basis for a fundraising appeal to major donors.”

* Editor’s note: There appears to be a typo in the report, which cites the number “$870,0003.” I’m assuming one zero too many to the right of the comma. – Matthew

The post Report: NPR costs not “primary contributor” to KUSP financial woes appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Non-commercial radio station KEXP has created quite a name for itself with its emphasis on live in-studio sessions in its Seattle digs and has been recording hundreds of performances every year. Beginning this fall, KEXP will start sharing select live performances with college and community radio stations (including new low power FM stations) from all over the United States. Its new syndicated radio series, “Under the Needle: the KEXP Sessions,” will be released for free to partner stations every week.

According to KEXP, “Every year for the last five years, KEXP has recorded over 500 live on-air performances featuring great artists from across the musical spectrum.” With such a large collection of music content, the station decided that it would like to make that music more broadly available.

When I caught up with KEXP’s Senior Director of Programming Kevin Cole by phone, he explained that KEXP wants to help people to discover new music. Although KEXP already airs these performances over its FM signal, through its online stream, in archives on its website, and via various online outlets, including YouTube, the station realized that it “would be really incredible” if it could also provide recordings to other radio stations who may not have either the “access to the bands” or the “production capacity” to record live performances, according to Cole.

After floating the idea of a syndicated “live session” series by a number of radio stations, KEXP decided to focus on a weekly series featuring a different live performance each week. Currently, KEXP is in the midst of signing up college and community radio stations for the series. The plan is for each weekly episode to run for approximately 15 to 25 minutes, including the live performance as well as a brief introduction and some closing words. The final list of artists has yet to be determined, but a short demo show was released to partner stations this week, featuring a set by Australian singer-songwriter Courtney Barnett.

Cole explained that Barnett will be one of the first artists featured, but that others are still to be determined. He explained that, “At this point, given that we’re three months out from officially launching, I can’t say with 100% certainty who we’ll be featuring. The approach we’ll take is to pull from the best sessions we’ve recently produced, from timely and topical artists.”

Cole told me that he’s really excited about the series, telling me that, “it’s good for music lovers, it’s good for the stations, and it’s good for the artists” to have these performances shared widely.

Recognizing that college and commercial radio stations don’t have massive resources, Cole explained that KEXP will be making it “super easy” for stations to sign up to air “Under the Needle.” The show is expected to launch in early September. Interested stations can phone Ethan Raup, the General Manager of Broadcast at KEXP (206-897-1496) in order to get more scoop on how to participate.

The post KEXP to Launch “Under the Needle: the KEXP Sessions” over College and Community Radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

For quite a few years I’ve been intrigued by and obsessed with the handmade 3-dimensional radio station call letter signs that I’ve seen at numerous college and community radio stations all over the United States. One of the signs is posted at KFJC, where I volunteer and DJ, so I see it every week. I probably first started to notice that other stations had similar signs as soon as I started doing radio station tours back in 2008.

Leo Blais sign at KFJC in 2014. Photo: J. Waits

After a few years, it became a goal of mine to seek out these signs whenever I toured a station. If I don’t immediately see a sign, I now make a point to ask, “do you have a hand made call letter sign?” Sometimes people are confused by the question, whereas other times, I’m immediately led to the sign. I’ve seen the signs prominently displayed in station lobbies (at Northeastern University and at Pomona College), in on-air studios (at North Central College), in back hallways (KBOO), and in offices (KEXP). Most of the time, DJs and station staffers have no idea where the signs came from. Some people have told me that they were made by a fan.

I even saw some of these iconic signs in a photo accompanying a newspaper article about NPR’s “Tiny Desk Concert” series. When I did the public NPR tour last year I made a point to mention my interest in the signs and managed to talk my way into a special stop at Bob Boilen’s desk, where a collection of these signs (reading: Bob Boilen, NPR, All Songs Considered, and Robin Hilton) is prominently displayed atop his shelving unit. I’m sure the tour guide thought that I was insane when I started talking about my obsession with 3-D radio station signs, but Bob Boilen was welcoming and let me take photos galore.

Leo Blais Signs at NPR. Photo: J. Waits

Back in 2013, I finally found out the identity of the sign maker. Of course I’d had clues all along, as each sign contains a short handwritten message signed by “your friend Leo,” but it wasn’t until a commenter provided me a link, that I knew for sure that the signs were made by musician Leo Blais. It turns out that the Leo Blais sign project is much bigger than just the radio station call letter pieces. He also made album artwork using the same method, so some signs depict lengthy song titles. They are all crafted out of cardboard and are painted white/gray.

Leo Blais note on WMBR sign. Photo: J. Waits

I’ve seen the signs at college radio stations, community radio stations, and public radio stations, including: KFJC, KCSB, KSPC, KZSC, KBOO, KDUP, NPR headquarters, WONC, WRFL, KEXP (I only saw a sign featuring a DJ name), WLOY, WRBB, WMBR, WFMU, KUCI, KUSF, WPGU, SCAD Atlanta Radio, and KDVS.

It’s funny, now that my Leo sign scavenger hunt is in full swing, scouts have begun sending me pictures of signs that they’ve seen in their travels. Sharon Scott of ARTxFM texted me a great photo of one at St. Louis community radio station KDHX. Although the picture makes it look like this sign is gigantic and installed in a gallery, it’s actually the same size as the others.

KDHX sign crafted by Leo Blais. Photo: Sharon Scott

After some recent correspondence, Leo Blais agreed to answer all of my burning questions about his ambitious project. After sending off my query to Leo, I had some twinges of regret, as it’s been kind of fun to wildly speculate about these signs for all of these years and keep the mystery alive…

In part one of my interview with Leo Blais, he gives some back story about the signs. In a future post, we’ll delve into more details about the scope of the project.

Radio Survivor: When did you start making radio station call letter signs?

Leo Blais: The first signs were made around the time the ‘Slow Drivin’ maxi-single was released in 2008. I started sending them out as a way to thank the stations for playing the records. Also the letters represented the actual artwork that went into each album. People would send me photos they found on the internet with the signs being spotted in the background or on the stations walls. It was really nice to know how happy it made the people who received them. The signs had this magic behind them. I remember my manager Steve Theo telling me he got a call from Bob Boilen and Robin Hilton at ‘All songs Considered’ asking about me and the project. It was wild. Suddenly these signs were opening doors of conversation with people I really never dreamed possible.

Radio Survivor: Do you remember which station you sent a sign to first?

Leo Blais: I believe the first station was probably 92.5 WXRV, but I could be completely off on that. I had made a sign for each of the DJs too. They have given independent artists great support over the years. I think they were one of the first stations, if not the first, but then again I’d have to check with UPS on that one.

Radio Survivor: How many signs did you make and during what time period were they sent out?

Leo Blais: I must have made hundreds of them during the time of the releases. I would try to send out around 5-10 each week, but some weeks it’d be more or less depending on what I was working on. I really wish I had an accurate tally of how many were done. I hope to have time do it again someday, but maybe not so many. You would have certainly gotten a surprise one in the mail Jennifer! I believe they were sent out during 2008-2011/12. I think there are still a few boxes I have yet to send that are in storage. I guess I never got to send them before moving to New York.

Leo Blais “Cheryl” sign at KEXP. Photo: J. Waits

Radio Survivor: How long does it take you to make each sign?

Leo Blais: It all depended on how big each sign was really. There were song titles that took a week to construct. The radio station call letter signs didn’t take as long, but could take 2-3 hours of total work time. I never really timed myself though. There were a few steps that went into preparing to do them. Before I’d leave work I’d cut out 1 1/”2 inch strips of cardboard to be used for the gray 3D sides. Then I’d use a metal sheet shear so they’d be accurate when cutting them. It made them easier to photograph, but also allowed them be hung flat on a wall if that was to be their new home. Then I’d steal all of the cardboard I could find around the drill shop to use them for the station call letters front panel. I’d draw them out with a sharpie and then each one was cut out with an X-acto blade that eventually led to a permanent callous on my writing finger. Then it was rolls and rolls of 3/4″ tape and lots of paint. The process was really laborious, but it was really just because of the scope of it all. It got a little out of control.

Thanks so much to Leo Blais for talking to me about his radio station call letter sign project. I hope to post part two of my interview in the coming weeks. In the meantime, here’s a video from Leo’s website, which shows the sign-creation process.

The post Solving the Mystery of the Ubiquitous Radio Station Call Letter Signs: The Leo Blais Interview appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Today, students at college radio station WRAS-FM at Georgia State University (GSU) announced that they have filed an appeal (PDF) against the University System of Georgia (USG) Board of Regents, protesting the university’s decision last year to allow Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB) to broadcast over WRAS-FM during daytime hours. The appeal argues that the school misused student organization funds, specifically mandatory student activity fees, which were used for WRAS expenditures that are now benefiting a local public broadcaster. According to the appeal,

The Agreement [with GPB] creates a new mission for WRAS­Album 88 and the students of WRAS­Album 88 were in no way informed or given an opportunity to comment on this change in mission and the redirection of fees that would follow. When implemented, student fees and facilities originally allocated for WRAS­Album 88 were used to purchase equipment, pay for employee time along with other expenses for the support of GPB…GSU administrators have simply altered the mission of this student organization without any input from those students affected or the CSC and spent funds intended for support of WRAS­Album 88 in a way that is inconsistent with the established mission of providing a terrestrial radio station operated and programed by students that has been in place for the past 44 years.”

Specifically, the appeal argues that student activity fees were used for large station expenditures that have provided benefits for an outside group (GPB):

Since 2013, the Administration of GSU has been using fees allocated for the operation of WRAS­Album 88, an established SO [Student Organization], in support of The Agreement. Without SAFC [Student Activity Fee Committee] approval or knowledge, fees have been used for the purchase of a new transmitter, other engineering purchases, employee hours for the station engineer, and numerous other costs. The expenditure of these funds in this manner represents a significant change in the purpose of student activity funds from supporting the terrestrial student broadcast to supporting the broadcast of a private statewide government broadcaster, Georgia Public Broadcasting.”

Additionally, the appeal alleges that GPB has violated FCC rules during the time in which it has been airing programming over WRAS’ FM signal:

…WRAS­FM (GSU) was issued a warning by the FCC in August 2014 due to GPB’s failure to comply with hourly station identification regulations. The Agreement exposes the university to FCC penalties should GPB fail to remain in compliance with FCC directives governing how broadcast outlets must operate…these instances of non­compliance place GSU at financial risk and, based on the policies governing student fees, place student activity fees at risk.”

Of most interest to me, are the allegations about the use of student activity fees to purchase a new transmitter. Ever since GPB’s takeover of WRAS’ daytime programming, I’d heard discussion about the transmitter purchase. According to the appeal, when seeking student funds for the transmitter purchase, GSU did not reveal that it was in talks with GPB and that GPB would benefit from the transmitter upgrade. The appeal states:

In April 2013, The Administration representatives Dr. Douglas Covey, vice president of student affairs, and Mr. Jeff Walker, WRAS­Album 88 faculty advisor, approached the SAFC to request funds to purchase a new transmitter to carry the WRAS­FM terrestrial signal. When approaching the SAFC with this request Dr. Covey and Mr. Walker pointed to several reasons for the purchase request. (1) The current transmitter was installed in 1985 and needed to be replaced due to age, (2) increased signal strength would increase access by students on campus as well as increase availability inside buildings, such as the Georgia Dome and the GSU Arena where GSU football and basketball games are respectively held, (3) improved market penetration into northern GA serving to increase the exposure of the university and would as a result have promoted student recruitment, (4) protect the terrestrial WRAS­FM signal against other stations encroaching on its bandwidth.

When making this request to the SAFC the Administration representatives failed to divulge that the Administration was well into negotiations with GPB over the use of the terrestrial WRAS­FM signal…It was discovered through Open Records Requests that in January 2013, senior GSU administrators and GPB representatives had already began discussion about the funding and operation of a new WRAS­FM transmitter. Given this information it is reasonable to assume that GSU and GPB had full intention to enter in to this contract and in doing so GPB would become the primary beneficiary of this new transmitter purchase. The Administration representatives had a responsibility to disclose that this transmitter purchase, which was estimated to total $676,000, would not go to solely supporting student organizations.

…the purchase of the new transmitter would provide the university with HD radio capability was a capability crucial to execution of the agreement, a fact that was not divulged to the SAFC and likely played a role in the timing of the request to purchase the new transmitter. The Administration had full intention at this time of allowing GPB on 14 hours of daytime terrestrial analog WRAS­FM broadcast time which encroaches on points (2), (3) and (4) as given by The Administration. Therefore when the SAFC was tasked by the Administration with approving the request it could not make an informed decision on the impact The Agreement would have on students, student organizations, or the University and if this request fell within the policies laid out by the University and the BoR. The Administration failed to provide complete information that would have allowed the SAFC to make an informed decision and in doing so renders the decision void.”

Additionally, the appeal argues that since the agreement with GPB went into effect, WRAS has lost listeners (even over FM), the station has become less influential in the music industry, and students have diminished opportunities to air sports programming. Sadly, WRAS has also seen a dip in station morale, a decrease in student engagement with the station, and diminishing awareness of the station on campus, according to the appeal. The appeal states,

The Agreement has caused a large drop in morale and the engagement of students continuing to work at WRAS­Album 88. The large loss in caller feedback and community support caused by the sharp decline in listenership to the station has caused fewer students to be willing to participate…While the station recently reached 76,300 listeners prior to the agreement , the stream students are delegated to during the day limits them to 250 concurrent listeners. This has significantly limited the input that the music department relies from.”

In its appeal, the student staff and management of WRAS are seeking redress from the Georgia Board of Regents. Specifically, they are asking for “full use of the WRAS­FM transmitter and the WRAS­FM terrestrial signal,” as well as a severing of the GSU/GPB agreement through its “exit clause.” They are also asking for GSU to “enter into mediated negotiations with the student staff and management of WRAS­Album 88 and their representatives concerning the creation of a binding operating agreement or charter for the organization to govern future operations and interactions between the University and WRAS­Album 88.” Finally, the appeal calls for a review of GSU processes regarding “the oversight of mandatory student fees” and a subsequent policy update “to insure proper and consistent oversight of student mandatory fees.”

To see the entire appeal, which includes an appendix full of supporting information, take a look at the PDF posted here. We will continue to monitor the situation at WRAS. See all of our WRAS coverage here (and take a look at my 2012 field trip to WRAS on Spinning Indie) and follow @SaveWRAS on Twitter for the most recent updates.

The post Students at College Radio Station WRAS File Appeal with USG Board of Regents Over GPB Deal and Use of Student Fees appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Portland-based podcaster Julie Sabatier has been producing the Destination DIY podcast for going on five years. The show highlights people and groups who are doing all sorts of things themselves, from making music to butchering meat. I first talked with Sabatier in November 2013, when she was conducting a crowdfunding campaign to cover monthly production in 2014.

Since then Destination DIY joined the Mule Radio Network, which downsized last June, and then found a new home with Maximum Fun, the artist-owned and listener-supported podcast network founded by Jesse Thorn, host of the podcast and public radio program Bullseye. Now the show announces a name change, to Rendered.

“After an uphill battle explaining that the show was about more than home improvement and crafts, it was time to rename the show to expand the association in people’s minds,” explains creator and host Julie Sabatier. “Rendered can have so many different meanings in a wide variety of creative fields from design to video games to cooking.”

The podcast’s first episode under the new moniker is a collaboration with Roman Mars and his popular show 99% Invisible. It explores the distinctive carpeting at Portland International Airport (PDX)—which is now being retired after decades of service–and the love so many travelers have for its funky, and even disorienting, 1980s palette and design.

The post The ‘Destination DIY’ Podcast Is Now ‘Rendered’ appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Chris Bannon

One of the movers and shakers of East Coast public radio is moving to podcasting. Chris Bannon will soon take the position of Chief Content Officer at Hollywood based Midroll Media. As a Vice President of WNYC-FM in New York City he oversaw Freakonomics Radio and the station’s top talkers: Leonard Lopate and Brian Lehrer. Bannon also played a big hand in recent transitions for WQXR and New Jersey Public Radio.

I suppose I could crank out a couple of quotes from the Midroll press release on Bannon, but I think his recent tweets are a lot more fun. Here are a few.

On the elderly:

Props to the 70 year old gent at my gym who took a break to smoke his cigar between bench press sets.

— chris bannon (@cjbannon) February 18, 2015

On technology:

I’d love a weather app that could actually do something about this weather.

— chris bannon (@cjbannon) February 9, 2015

On housing:

Finally found something in the @nytimes real estate section that I can afford. pic.twitter.com/4jtJazA4Rw

— chris bannon (@cjbannon) February 8, 2015

. . . and the White House:

Pleasantly surprised when I heard on the radio today that Loretta Lynne might be our new Attorney General.

— chris bannon (@cjbannon) January 29, 2015

I’ll bet she’d stand by her man. Anyway, looks like Bannon won’t be trekking to the west coast. He’ll move to Midroll’s New York office’s in March. Midroll serves as the parent company for two podcasting networks, these being Earwolf and Wolfpop. The company sells advertising for around 200 podcasts, all told.

The post Top podcast company hires WNYC’s Chris Bannon; we read his tweets appeared first on Radio Survivor.

HD Radio is back on my mind after reading a recent article in Current about how public stations are using the technology. iBiquity, the company behind HD Radio, has hired the former director of NPR Labs to survey stations on the technology, obviously with the hope of encouraging more use.

Writer Scott Fybush talks to a handful of stations about their HD Radio operations. Only some of them use their HD2 and HD3 channels to broadcast additional program streams. It appears that one popular use is not necessarily to reach listeners directly with digital subchannels, but to use them to serve programming to translator stations. One station in Rhode Island re-started its previously dormant HD transmitter for the express purpose of leasing its HD2 channel to a former commercial station so that it could feed an previously online-only broadcast to a translator.

I’ve not been shy expressing my opinions about HD Radio. Squeezing a digital signal in with analog is too much of a compromise to deliver consistent digital reception, while at the same time it exacerbates congestion on the dial, in the worst cases causing interference with fringe stations. The good-on-paper idea of doubling or tripling the number of channels available on the dial is faced with the hard reality that those channels are mostly only receivable on car stereos–HD receivers exist in very few homes–and only for a portion of a station’s analog service area. On top of that, in my listening tests the sound quality of HD2 and HD3 channels ranges from acceptable to pretty awful.

What this adds up to is that HD Radio isn’t really a radio service–at least not one aimed at listeners. While iBiquity claims that 50% of new car models include HD Radio, and nearly 10 percent of those on the road can receive it, I seriously doubt many actual listeners are taking advantage of it. Sure, they may have a slightly less staticky signal when in the digital service area. But as my experience driving across half-way across the country demonstrated, it’s takes incredible luck to scan the dial and turn up an HD2 or HD3 channel. A listener has to know the HD2/3 channel is there, actively seek it out, and then be in range to receive it reliably. Not a formula for attracting big audiences.

The rule change that created the ability to feed an HD2 channel to a translator has been a boon for these repeater stations, which are specifically prohibited from originating programming. In effect, that means most listeners to an HD2 station are actually hearing it on an analog translator. That’s made translators more valuable, and increased their market value. It also turns HD2 channels into something more like a satellite distribution system or an ersatz studio-to-transmitter link, not a radio service like originally intended.

Some data, like album art or traffic information, can be served over HD, with a slightly larger geographic reach than an audio program, since the data stream doesn’t have to be continuous and is more tolerant of interruptions. Again, that’s not radio, but traffic data in particular is a potential revenue stream for broadcasters when licensed for use in hand-held and in-car navigation systems.

Even so, you might ask why anyone should care about HD Radio, since it seems like just a fringe service. A reason for concern is that HD Radio represents a shift from AM and FM radio being primarily for listeners to becoming utilities for broadcasters and data services. This is a subtle shift, and not one that has gone very far yet. But do not doubt that many broadcasters, as well as iBiquity, would not mind at all shifting much of their business to wireless data transmission.

It’s not that such wireless data transmission can’t be a good supplement to radio broadcasts; I’m not arguing real-time traffic info in the car is a bad thing. What concerns me is that any push to expand HD Radio isn’t really about providing better broadcast service to listeners. Rather, it’s a trojan horse to move the broadcast bands away from actual broadcasting.

Consider the very serious proposals to have the AM dial go all HD, a concept that was tested last year in Seattle. Even if stations are permitted to go all-digital on a voluntary basis, as proposed by iHeartMedia (née Clear Channel), just who is going to be tuning in those HD-only stations on the AM dial? How many listeners will go out of their way to get HD receivers to tune them in?

Will these really be broadcast stations, or effectively just a repurposing of AM bandwidth for traffic or other information services?

Since 2009 we’ve had digital television in the US, with most viewers switched over to the service. And it’s still primarily a TV service, with even some new burgeoning networks finding a home on the digital subchannels.

Arguably, the success of digital TV stems from the fact that all full-power stations had to make the transition, requiring viewers to buy digital TVs or digital tuners. It wasn’t a painless transition, but it worked. Perhaps a hybrid analog/digital system also would have worked. Though, I suspect the transition would have taken even longer, despite the fact that television receivers tend to stay in one place, unlike radios.

HD Radio is a compromise that doesn’t force a digital transition, but also ends up not offering much incentive for listeners to make that transition, either. I don’t expect HD Radio to go away, and as long it remains mostly harmless I’m fine with leaving it be. But I am suspicious of efforts to grow its use, especially in the form of all-digital stations.

Indeed, the digital radio ship may have sailed in the US. It was already well out of port by the time HD Radio finally came on the scene a dozen years ago, and has passed over the horizon as the growth of mobile broadband makes digital radio even more accessible.

This all begs the question of whether digital broadcast radio is even necessary. That’s a topic for another day.

The post Digital Watch: Why HD Radio Isn’t Actually Radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Today is the third annual World Radio Day as declared by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The focus for this year’s recognition and celebration is youth and innovation in radio.

In a World Radio Day message UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said, “As the international community shapes new sustainable development goals and the new global agreement on climate change, we need to hear the voices of young women and men loudly, strongly and urgently.”

As Jennifer reported in yesterday’s LPFM Watch, this evening the Seattle Public Library is hosting an event and live broadcast celebrating the new low-power FM stations that will be going on the air in the Puget Sound region. Community radio WORT-FM in Madison, WI has been celebrating all day long culminating with the station’s 2nd annual live blues broadcast from a local brewery.

Elsewhere in the world the Media Institute of Southern Africa put on a live broadcast in Botswana, and South African President Jacob Zuma said, “In South Africa, radio still plays a prominent role as an affordable means of communication for all the people in the country, including even the underprivileged communities in remoter parts of the country.”

A two-day Radio Fair was held in Bhubaneswar, India featuring live music performances and an exhibition with a large sand sculpture of a radio, along with vintage radio equipment and a shortwave listening stall. In Nepal UNESCO organized a town-hall meeting in Kathmandu in partnership with the Association of Community Radio Broadcasters broadcast on local FM stations.

A map detailing all World Radio Events is available here.

UNESCO also put together a fact-filled infographic, highlighting that radio is the most accessible medium for disadvantaged groups, 76% of farmers in Africa use radio, and that, sadly, 65 radio journalists have been murdered in the last two years, and almost half were under the age of 30.

The post Happy World Radio Day 2015! appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Edison Research released some early results from its updated fall 2014 Share of Ear survey of American listening habits. The big news is that podcast listeners now listen to more podcasts than any other kind of audio, which represents a significant change just from the spring report.

The average podcast listener spends six hours and eight minutes a day consuming audio, and 30% of that (110 minutes) is dedicated to podcasts. AM/FM radio, which had the number one spot last spring, is now in second place, making up 21% of listening. Additionally, Edison says that podcast listening amongst all listeners grew 18% from the spring to the fall.

To learn a little bit about the proclivities of one set of podcast listeners, take a look at the results from StartUp’s listener survey. A whopping 73% of respondents indicated they learned about StartUp from another podcast. Not surprisingly, more than half the referrals came from This American Life, which ran a version of the first episode as a segment. Geez, Ira Glass could probably auction off segments on his show to budding podcasters for a fortune, except for the fact that wouldn’t be cool with either the FCC or the public radio establishment.

Half of the StartUp respondents also say they listen to podcasts more than seven times a week.

Cons for Podcasters

There are two podcasting events coming up this year, both focused on the production side of things.

The New Media Expo is co-sited with the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas for the first time this year; previous shows were held during the Consumer Electronics Show in January. The NMX highlights media makers working blogging, online video and podcasting and also features the 10th annual People’s Choice Podcast Awards. Nominations for the Podcast Awards are open now until Monday, February 2, at midnight, in twenty-two categories.

The Podcast Movement returns for second year, billing itself as “the world’s largest podcaster conference.” The conference happens August 1 and 2 in Fort Worth, Texas, and boasts Serial host/producer Sarah Koenig and Aisha Tyler of Girl on Guy amongst the keynote speakers. Registration opens on Monday, February 2.

NPR Podcast Directory

NPR just launched a new directory to help listeners find podcasts from the NPR family. The front page highlights well-known featured shows like Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me and Fresh Air, and offers categories to browse, such as arts, business, comedy and technology.

It’s nice to see some member station shows that one might not otherwise know about, including the travel show Journeys of Discovery with Tom Wilmer from KCBX in California’s Central Coast and Commodity Week from WILL in Urbana, IL. However, the categories really aren’t quite fine-grained enough, nor are the shows well organized within a category. Browsing the arts category yields what seems like hundreds of podcasts in no discernible order, mostly without even any cover art to serve as a guide.

But, like everything on the web, the directory is a work in progress, and NPR promises more features to come next month.

We cover news and analysis of podcasting every Wednesday in our Podcast Survivor feature.

The post Podcasting News: Podcast Listeners Listen More, Cons for Podcasters appeared first on Radio Survivor.

In this week’s podcasting news: Current debuts new podcast about public media; NPR Labs gives an update on viral audio experiments; are audiobooks benefiting from the podcast boom?

Current Invites You to the Pub

Current, the print and digital news source covering public media, just launched its own weekly podcast, The Pub. It’s hosted by Adam Ragusea, a public radio journalist and a visiting professor of journalism at Mercer University. It’s

The first episode features an interview with Canadian podcaster Jesse Brown who helped break the news of CBC radio host Jian Gomeshi’s alleged history of sexual assaults against women. Future guests include former Marketplace Money host Tess Vigeland on why she left her dream job, and veteran NPR contributor Jacki Lyden who discusses why public media should take fashion seriously.

The new show makes for a nice complement to WNYC’s On the Media, while with The Pub it looks like we can expect more radio-centric coverage. Starting with the Gomeshi story is a strong indicator that The Pub is willing to be critical, and the first episode gives me every incentive to click subscribe.

This Is the Audio that Might Go Viral

NPR Labs is working on the hard question of what makes audio go viral. In light of the exploding and unexpected popularity of Serial last fall, it certainly seems like the proposition that audio can’t be viral has become more suspect.

Eric Athas reports on the effort the NiemanLab. NPR Labs worked with 12 stations in two six-week pilot projects experimenting with ways to get people to share and interact with audio. The experiment included 44 audio pieces with an accumulated 500,000 listens, with an overall listen rate of 56%. Not too shabby.

Based on this data NPR Labs broke things down into four types of audio people are likely share: Audio Explainers, Whoa! Sounds, Storytellers and Snappy Reviews. Read the whole piece to get the full lowdown.

As Go Podcasts, So Go Audiobooks?

Finally, journalist and creative strategist Simon Owens dropped me a line to let me know about a recent post he wrote, asking the question if audiobooks are benefiting from the podcast boom.

Not to spoil things too much, but it looks like the answer is yes, they are. Owens talks with folks from Penguin Random House Audio and Audible who describe the current trend, which does look a lot like podcasting.

The post Podcasting News: The Pub Podcast for Pub Media; Viral Audio Update appeared first on Radio Survivor.

During a trip to Seattle in October, 2014 for the College Broadcasters Inc. (CBI) conference (see my report on that event), I carved out time to visit five radio stations in the area. My first stop was to public radio station KEXP-FM in Seattle.

KEXP in Seattle. Photo: J. Waits

After flying into Seattle on October 22, 2014, I picked up a rental car and made my way to KEXP on apparently the rainiest October 22nd in Seattle history. Located on busy Dexter Avenue in Seattle, the station occupies a 6,000 square foot building. While it seemed spacious to me, KEXP is outgrowing it and is making plans to move to bigger digs. Plans are in the works and a fundraising campaign is in full swing in order to generate the resources to build the larger station. In its new home, KEXP will occupy 28,000 square feet of space in the Seattle Center, with a 4,500 square foot lobby/gathering space. The lease on KEXP’s current location on Dexter expires at the end of 2015.

Screaming Trees LP from KCMU days in KEXP record library. Photo: J. Waits

Although KEXP began life as college radio station KCMU on the University of Washington campus, it’s now an independently-owned public radio station. KCMU launched as a college radio station in 1972 and by 2001 its call letters were changed to KEXP to reflect a partnership with the Experience Music Project. The non-profit Friends of KEXP (which had been running the station in recent years) consummated its purchase of the station’s license from University of Washington on September 30, 2014, just a few weeks before my visit. There are still some DJs and staff members from the KCMU days at KEXP and I also love that KCMU’s history is acknowledged in the vintage KCMU record reviews (Review Revue) posted on the station’s blog.

Leo Blais-crafted sign in office at KEXP. Photo: J. Waits

When I arrived at KEXP, a 5-year station volunteer, Ken, met up with me for my scheduled tour. We breezed past the lobby and some station offices (where I spotted one of those Leo Blais signs as well as a Steve Keene painting!) before heading into the music library for a chat. He talked to me about the station’s focus on “music discovery” and devotion to “championing new artists and local artists.”

Steve Keene painting at KEXP. Photo: J. Waits

As a volunteer, Ken wears a lot of hats. He works at the front desk, does in-studio “hospitality” for visiting artists, and assists a couple of KEXP on-air DJs. He pulls music in advance of their programs, maintains the real-time playlist of songs, and refiles materials after their shows. He started out at the station as a volunteer during the fundraiser and stuck around because he “loved the staff.”

Volunteer Ken in KEXP music library. Photo: J. Waits

As we talked in the music library, I asked Ken about what was airing over KEXP during our visit. I knew that the station was doing remote broadcasts from the CMJ Music Marathon in New York that day and was also told that a band was playing in the Seattle studio. Ken explained that the in-studio in Seattle was being recorded for future airplay, but that later in the day (right after my visit) a second band (King Tuff) would be doing a live on-air performance.

View of KEXP live music space. Photo: J. Waits

KEXP hosts and broadcasts a dizzying number of live performances every year. It’s not unusual for the station to host several musicians in one day. Its website provides a chronicle of recent performances as well as a listing of upcoming in-studios. Ken told me that there are around 550 live in-studios every year. In KEXP’s current space there isn’t room for people to watch these performances live, as audience members would have to cram into the sound booth. However, the sets are recorded and video is posted on YouTube. KEXP is just beginning to experiment with live video streaming, doing its first live video stream of a Pixies set in February, 2014.

Skull on wall in KEXP lobby. Photo: J. Waits

In addition to live performances, KEXP has a regular schedule of DJ-curated shows. According to Ken, there are live DJs on the air at the station 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. He told me that DJs have the freedom to play what they want, but that they also have music from heavy, medium and light rotation that they are expected to play. He estimated that there were around 45,000 CDs in the music library, with around 9,600 pieces of vinyl.

One of the offices at KEXP. Photo: J. Waits

Although music is a huge part of what KEXP is known for, the station also operates like any other business. When I visited, staffers seemed to be quite busy and were quietly at work in offices and cubicles or were having meetings in some of the station’s common areas. Ken explained the wide array of departments at KEXP, including business support, IT, donor services, production, traffic, development, and communications. As a larger non-commercial radio station with paid staff and plans for a multi-million dollar new facility, it’s important that KEXP keeps the fundraising dollars coming in, so it’s not surprising that people were hard at work on non-music activities.

Glimpsing into KEXP studio. Photo: J. Waits

While I caught glimpses of some familiar radio station sights, including fun pop culture artifacts, couches, vinyl records, a lava lamp, posters, and other ephemera; I sadly wasn’t able to see the KEXP on-air studio. The door was closed and I was told that it wasn’t possible to go in, so I didn’t actually see anyone “doing radio” during my visit.

Hallway and desk outside KEXP studio. Photo: J. Waits

Thanks so much to Ken for touring me around KEXP on a particularly hectic day for him at the station! This post marks my 70th radio station field trip and is the first in a series of articles about my fall 2014 Seattle radio station tours. You can see my most recent field trips on Radio Survivor and view all of my station field trips chronicled on Spinning Indie.

The post My Visit to Public Radio Station KEXP in Seattle appeared first on Radio Survivor.

There were three notable entrants into the podcasting world in the last week. As I’ve written before, I don’t feel compelled to cover every new podcast or network that comes on the scene. In part this is because of the sheer volume of new shows, but also because I like to keep a focus on the big picture for podcasting, and not get trapped on the “here are all the news shows this week” treadmill. Thus, it should be obvious that I think these three debuts are worthy of coverage.

Play.It from CBS Radio

First, CBS Radio launched its Play.It podcast network on January 7, after my Podcast Survivor feature had already gone to press, so to speak. I covered Play.It in a separate post, noting that while the debut received underwhelming publicity, it is nevertheless an unexpected investment in podcasting by a major radio broadcaster that includes some original born-digital content in addition to on-demand versions of terrestrial shows.

Upvoted Tells the Stories Behind Reddit Stories

The social networking site Reddit released the first episode of its new podcast, Upvoted. According to a blog post by Reddit co-founder and host Alexis Ohanian, the purpose of the show is to dig deeper into some of the stories that appear on the site.

For those unfamiliar with Reddit, the site is not unlike the original incarnation of Digg, where users submit stories, links and other content, which is then discussed and can be “upvoted,” promoting it to the top of the queue. The site has hundreds of subreddits which are dedicated to specific topics, and some stories can be upvoted all the way to the front page of the site.

I find the launch of Upvoted significant because of Reddit’s place and influence in the culture, and because it appears to be the first entry in a new wave of podcasts from digital publishers cut from a different cast than a Slate or ESPN. Buzzfeed and FiveThirtyEight also have recently hired on experienced audio producers, so it’s likely we’ll see new podcasts from them, too.

Upvoted is also a little more ambitious, eschewing the typical discussion-based format so common in podcastcasting. Ohanian says explicitly that he intends the show to be “Part This American Life and part ESPN 30 for 30.”

After listening to the first episode this influence is unmistakable, though the show falls short of that admittedly high standard. It follows the story of a redditor who started using the site while on house arrest on a drug charge and ended up finding a supportive community before being sentenced to jail, which also sustained him while he was incarcerated.

It’s an interesting story with a few nice twists that certainly deserves to be told. But the approach on this episode is overwrought. Missing is the light hand which This American Life uses to treat most of its subjects. In contrast, Ohanian, as host, plumbs hard for significance and meaning, amidst overdramatic music that detracts rather than supports the narrative. The last five minutes make the show sound more like an informercial for Reddit than anything else.

At thirty-four minutes the episode also feels too long for just this one story. If this were a This American Life segment it would merit something closer to twelve minutes. The Upvoted crew would benefit from a close listen to ReplyAll which mines similar territory–telling the story behind the story–without weighing things down with manufactured profundity, all while keeping episodes under 20 minutes.

Putting aside these criticisms, it’s a good idea for a podcast and I’m sure many listeners will enjoy this first effort from Reddit. To be fair, it suffers from expectations that are half due to the fact that it comes from a site as big as reddit, and half due to Ohanian’s stated ambitions. Another new podcast from a different producer would probably have the luxury of working out the kinks over several episodes before attracting so much attention. So, I do look forward to hearing how Upvoted develops after a dozen episodes or so.

Invisibilia and a New Way at NPR

NPR broke new ground with the launch of the new show, Invisibilia. The show had the most affiliates ever signed up to carry the first episode last Friday. It also was released simultaneously online and for stations, which deviates from common practice where many terrestrial-first public radio shows aren’t available as podcasts for a day or more after they first air on radio. The approach is a sign that public radio is working actively to find a workable middle-ground that acknowledges the importance of the digital audience, without also devaluing the affiliate stations.

Originally conceived as a podcast, the show is also one of the first national programs from NPR that didn’t go through a drawn-out preproduction process. As Current reports in a December profile of the show,

"According to (NPR VP of Programming Eric) Nuzum, the old model involved developing a concept, piloting it in secret, marketing it as an amazing new show, investing millions of dollars and hoping to build an audience.

The new model is more like this: Make quality content and then ‘throw it against the wall and see what sticks(.)’"

I have to admit that I haven’t yet listened to the first episode of Invisbilia, which is dedicated to our darkest thoughts. I was listening to Upvoted, instead.

More Podcast Medicine for Serial Withdrawl

Finally, we have a few additional podcast recommendations for those suffering from Serial withdrawl. They come from reader (and podcaster) Heather Ordover who recently submitted a comment to our “Podcast Recommendations for Serial Addicts” post.

Heather suggests:

• ChopBard from In-Your-Ear-Shakespeare – Ehren Ziegler hosts this long-running podcast which is very much a “Cure For Boring Shakespeare”. He takes listeners through all the obscure language and buried dirty jokes, making the watching of Shakespeare to be an easy and joyful experience.

• Forgotten Classics – another long-running podcast where host Julie Davis reads long-lost books that were all the rage in their day but have been forgotten by modern readers. They’re a lovely public domain audiobook option (free and somewhat obscure) and Julie has gotten permission from some modern authors to read their books on her podcast.

  CraftLit: an Audiobook with Benefits Podcast for Busy People – Similar to Chop Bard, CraftLit takes modern listener/readers through the context we no longer have for some of history’s great literature – making sure we can all get the jokes IN the book as well as modern jokes based ON the book (This is Heather’s podcast -ed.).

Thanks for the recommendations, Heather. Happy listening everyone!

The post Podcasting News: Reddit Launches Upvote, NPR Breaks New Ground appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Catch Alice’s Restaurant on the 2023 radio dial. See our latest listening guide.

Once again it’s time for my annual run-down of some of the radio stations playing the Arlo Guthrie epic “Alice’s Restaurant” as part of an annual Thanksgiving Day tradition. There’s no exhaustive list of stations that plan to air the song, so I suggest you do your own research to see if your hometown station might be playing it as well.

In the next few months, you may also get the chance to hear the song live in concert, as tickets are already on sale for Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant 50th Tour.” Those of you in the New York area can also catch Arlo Guthrie live at Carnegie Hall this Saturday (November 29th) for his annual Thanksgiving Concert with the Guthrie Family.

Community radio station KBOO is also doing a screening of the film Alice’s Restaurant as a station fundraiser tomorrow night (Wednesday, November 26, 2014) at 7pm at the Clinton Street Theater in Portland, Oregon.

Of course, you can listen to Alice’s Restaurant any time you like online, or even enjoy an illustrated version on YouTube, but if you are old school and want to hear it live on the radio, here are some options:

KFOG (104.5/97.7 FM in San Francisco) will play Alice’s Restaurant at noon Pacific time on Thanksgiving (Thursday, November 27).

WDCV 88.3 FM (Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA) will play Alice’s Restaurant every even hour on the hour (2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12) on Thanksgiving Day.

KISM 92.9 FM (Bellingham, Washington): Is playing Alice’s Restaurant at 6am, 9am, noon, 3pm, and 6pm Pacific time on Thanksgiving Day.

92 KQRS (Minneapolis, Minnesota): Will play Alice’s Restaurant at 11am and 6pm on Thanksgiving Day.

iRadioPhilly: Will play Alice’s Restaurant at noon and 6pm Eastern time on the classic rock Ziggy station on Thanksgiving Day.

WFUV 90.7 FM (Fordham University station in Bronx, NY): Will play Alice’s Restaurant on Thanksgiving day at noon Eastern time.

WFIT 89.5FM (Melbourne, Florida): On Thanksgiving Day from 10am to 1pm Eastern time, the Florida radio station will play a “new updated version of the song.” According to WFIT, “Arlo will tell us what the Guthrie’s ‘really do’ on Thanksgiving.”

Q104.3: The New York classic rock radio station will play it at noon on Thanksgiving.

WPLR 99.1 FM (Milford, CT): Will play Alice’s Restaurant at 6am, 12noon and 6pm on Thanksgiving.

93.7 FM the Bus (State College, PA) will be playing it several times on Thanksgiving, but it doesn’t specify the exact times.

If you know of more stations planning to air the song this year, please add them in the comments. Also, take a look at my Alice’s Restaurant posts from 2013, 2012, and 2010 to see some of the stations that have played it in the past and to learn more about the tradition.

The post Thanksgiving 2014 Brings Another Chance to Hear Alice’s Restaurant on the Radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

PRX’s Radiotopia ended its Kickstarter last Friday at $620,412, which is 148% more than its initial goal of $250,000. The money will help fund four new podcasts–three hosted by women–along with financing a development fund for more new shows.

On Tuesday Apple reported that the Serial podcast from This American Life has become the fastest-downloaded podcast in history, having reached eight million downloads over just eight episodes. Reportage around the show often holds it up as an example or leader of a renaissance in podcasting, while the idea that podcasting has somehow been stagnant or receding prior to Serial rankles many in the podcasting community.

I understand why the “renaissance” theme bothers veteran producers, but as I wrote a couple weeks ago, I tend to see the fresh attention paid to Serial and podcasting in general as a rising tide that raises all boats. At the same time, this phenomenon merits examination.

This burst of attention is a prime example of a common tendency of the press: coverage begets coverage. But the picture is a little more complex than that. Serial, it turns out, is the perfect show at the right time to thrust podcasting into the narrow purview of overworked journalists, from the nation’s elite dailies to every pop culture blog.

First, we cannot disregard the fact that Serial is the first new podcast from the organization behind one of the most longstanding and popular podcasts, This American Life. That lineage alone guaranteed the show a warm initial reception from reporters, a sizable percentage of whom are public radio listeners.

Second, Serial is a true exercise in journalism, which is still a rare commodity in pure-play, born-digital podcasts. There’s plenty of news commentary programs, and numerous radio news programs distributed as podcasts, but very few that are expressly journalistic. Furthermore, Serial is long-form, investigative journalism–something that many (if not most) journalists wish they could be doing, but don’t have the freedom and resources to accomplish.

Third, the show is expertly produced. It sounds like an extended multi-part episode of TAL. It has drama, mystery and suspense like a good television miniseries. It’s like the public radio series that every educated, Generation X writer, journalist or blogger wishes were on the radio, but won’t be. It also stands out from the stereotypical image of podcasting as a few guys jabbering around a mic or c-list celebrities trying to resuscitate their careers.

Fourth, because Serial is produced by journalists, these are people that are known to other journalists. Compared to your average podcaster–even a popular one–Serial host/producer Sarah Koenig and the TAL team are known quantities to journalists, especially those working for big name papers or sites. Not only are they known, in many cases they run in the same professional and social circles. This isn’t a cabal or a conspiracy–it’s a profession. Just like insurance agents in New Jersey know colleagues in South Dakota, journalists at the Times know peers at the Tribune and NPR.

This fourth factor is the otherwise ineffable one that makes the difference between a show that is good, interesting and somewhat noteworthy, and one that represents the podcasting renaissance. The first three factors are enough to get any podcast on journalists’ radar, potentially sparking a story or two. This final factor is what gets the show onto seemingly every journalists’ radar.

Now, I don’t mean this analysis to sound cynical. I don’t begrudge the attention Serial is getting, nor do I begrudge the journalists and commentators just now waking up to podcasting. Trend stories are some of the bread and butter of journalism, whether we (or the journalists themselves) like it or not. If the trend weren’t Serial and podcasting, it would be something else. So why not have podcasts be the flavor of the week?

But, really, this is how stories spread. Journalists and editors read the news, just like the rest of us. When they see a reporter or publication they respect or admire covering a story they naturally think, “maybe we should look into this.” The show’s pedigree doesn’t hurt either. So then they do listen–which may be the first podcast they’ve listened to in a long time–and realize it’s damn good. Just because it’s a trend doesn’t mean it’s empty and without basis.

Of course this kind of press coverage drives listeners to check out the show, racking up record downloads. But, again, I stress that the show had to be good to sustain the attention and hype–and it is.

I wonder if Serial had been released one or two years ago if it would experience this kind of success. The show debuted as overall attention to podcasting was on the upswing this year. Maybe there was enough of a critical mass in 2013, but I seriously doubt a 2012 or 2011 debut would have brought the same rush.

Nothing happens in a vacuum. TAL itself went independent earlier this year, separating from Public Radio International, paving the way for spinning off new series. One might argue that TAL’s very success as a podcast–free from the shackles of broadcast stations and program directors–enabled its liberation in the first place. On top of that, in the last year we’ve had high profile podcast efforts from PRX, American Public Media and WNYC, along with breakout independent shows like Welcome to Night Vale.

The time was ripe for Serial.

The post Why Serial Represents the Podcasting “Renaissance” appeared first on Radio Survivor.

NPR Headquarters. Photo: J. Waits

While visiting the Washington, D.C. area in April, I took the opportunity to visit NPR‘s new headquarters. Although NPR isn’t technically a radio station, I made an exception for this series, since it is in the business of producing public radio programming.

 

NPR Headquarters. Photo: J. Waits

On April 9, 2014, I joined up with a crowd of NPR fans on a public tour of the gigantic 330,000 square foot facility that houses around 800 employees. Completed just a year before my visit, the building is a modern marvel, crafted out of a 1920s warehouse once used by the local phone company.

FCC sign outside NPR. Photo: J. Waits

Before entering the building, I was amused by a large FCC sign to the right of the entrance. Ironic, since NPR doesn’t really have to answer to the Federal Communications Commission (its member stations have to abide by FCC rules), the sign actually referred to a Fire Command Center.

NPR lobby. Photo: J. Waits

In advance of my tour, I hung out for a bit in the lobby, watching scrolling headlines and video screens above me and scanning through an illustrated timeline that stretched along one wall. I was glad to see that public radio’s origins on university campuses was highlighted in the display and was also interested in various NPR factoids throughout.

Exhibit in NPR Lobby. Photo: J. Waits

National Public Radio was incorporated in 1970 and began with 90 member stations. According to our tour guide, NPR has 975 member stations all over the country today and an annual budget of $175 million, 40% of which comes from member stations and fees.

Universities get the nod in NPR’s radio history display. Photo: J. Waits

After congregating in the lobby, our guide led us through various parts of the building. We were told that we could only take pictures in certain locations, so I unfortunately don’t have too many images to share. Apparently many of the NPR staff felt self-conscious about being on display for tour groups, which I can understand. To see the full expanse of the building, take a look at this article in Interior Design and also see the slideshow in this Washington Post story.

Studio One at NPR. Photo: J. Waits

Our first stop on the tour was Studio One, a large 2400 square foot multipurpose room that can accommodate live events and performances. There’s hidden bleacher seating for around 250 people, which can be rolled out from the wall. This was one of the few rooms where I was allowed to take photos.

Wall in Studio One at NPR. Photo: J. Waits

Next, we traveled up the elevator to an upper floor, where we peeked out the windows to look at the numerous large satellite dishes on the roof for the public radio satellite system as well as for other entities such as FEMA. There’s also a green roof atop the NPR building as well as two beehives (which have their own Twitter feed called @NPRbees, even though they weren’t yet producing honey at the time of my visit).

NPR Member Station Map in NPR lobby. Photo: J. Waits

Our next stop was the newsroom. We peered over a balcony in order to look down on staffers going about their day in the “open concept” newsroom. Our tour guide told us that librarians are embedded in each area of the room, providing support to the reporters and producers. It was surprisingly quiet and not at all what I would expect from a bustling news organization. In addition to the news team, NPR digital and social media teams are also located on the lower floor.

LED sign in NPR lobby. Photo: J. Waits

We were told that staff are onsite 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. To support the round-the-clock operation, there are sleeping areas, an on-site health facility, and a workout area.

Headphones in an NPR broadcast studio. Photo: J. Waits

A huge display of screens with information about audio levels, etc. hovers over the newsroom. Dubbed the MOPS board (Master of Operation Program Support), it’s full of important information for the folks running the shows. Lots of other screens, some airing television news, are are also hanging throughout the space.

Clock in one of the NPR Broadcast Studios. Photo: J. Waits

Nearby are green rooms and recording studios and I also saw familiar looking whiteboards with programming information written on them.

Control room looking into a broadcast studio at NPR. Photo: J. Waits

I was allowed to take photos again after our guide took us into a spare broadcast studio. It was comprised of two large rooms separated by a big glass window. One room functions as a control room and is typically the domain of the producers, engineers and tech folks, whereas the other room is the studio where hosts and guests would be seated with microphones. I noticed one of the biggest radio station clocks that I’ve ever seen in this room and was told by the tour guide that “everything is time conscious” at NPR.

A broadcast studio at NPR. Photo: J. Waits

The control room had a large board and monitors right behind the window, with a second row full of additional seating with monitors and equipment in the back of the room (see photo below). I was amazed by all of the extra computer monitors in the control room, as it was hard to imagine why so many would be needed to control one broadcast out of this room. My guess is that the room is designed to fulfill multiple functions, including ones yet to be imagined.

One of the control rooms at NPR. Photo: J. Waits

After leaving the studio, we walked by a darkened Network Operations Center and glanced in through the window. There was an egg chair, which I was told was a sound isolation chair used for listening to content. Engineers staff this room 24 hours a day, ensuring that NPR content is uploading properly. A sign in the room read, “Beware of the Attack Crab,” alluding to the acronym for NPR’s computerized real time automation broadcasting system. A stuffed animal crab was perched atop the egg chair.

Cough button in a broadcast studio at NPR. Photo: J. Waits

We also took a quick look into the server room, which is on display to visitors through a glass window near the bank of 2nd floor elevators. A classic Nipper dog sculpture wearing an NPR T-shirt peered out at us.

Gift Shop at NPR. Photo: J. Waits

As the tour ended, we were led past a hallway full of awards on display and then taken past the NPR gift shop (yes, there were coffee mugs, along with some hipster baby T-shirts with a cassette tape motif). At this point I asked the tour guide if I could possibly see more.

CDs at NPR Music. Photo: J. Waits

I told her that I was a writer and that I’d tried unsuccessfully to get a private tour. I also mentioned that I was hoping to see a specific item that I knew was at Bob Boilen’s desk in the NPR Music department. I’m sure she thought I was a crazed fan, but she made a phone call anyway.

Turntable and Records at Bob Boilen’s desk at NPR. Photo: J. Waits

It’s become a quest for me to find handmade radio station signs crafted by an musician named Leo. I’ve seen these 3-D paper mache call letter signs at college and community radio stations all over the country and spotted a few in an article about NPR. Located at Bob Boilen‘s desk (also the home to NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert series), the signs at NPR are special in that there are four of them instead of the usual one with station call letters. They spell out his name, fellow host Robin Hilton’s name, “All Songs Considered,” in addition to the letters NPR.

Bob Boilen at his desk at NPR. Photo: J. Waits

After getting approval from upstairs (presumably, in fact, I was told that NPR executives have their offices on the upper floors of the building), we went to Bob Boilen’s desk. It was fun to be in the music/editorial zone at NPR. Nearby shelves were full of books about music and Boilen’s desk was packed with pop culture gems, books, CDs, a transistor radio, a turntable, and vinyl records.

Steve Keene painting behind Bob Boilen’s desk at NPR. Photo: J. Waits

His personal bookcases contained a fun array of objects, including toys, books, records, and some Steve Keene paintings (a radio station staple – I saw one at WQHS this year too). This area forms the backdrop for the Tiny Desk concert series, so these items are probably familiar to fans of the video series.

“Leo” signs atop bookcases at NPR. Photo: J. Waits

Thankfully I spotted the hoped-for Leo Blais signs atop his shelves, emblazoned with “NPR,” “Bob Boilen,” “Robin Hilton” and “All Songs Considered.” After snapping some photos and leaving a KFJC sticker on the shelf (with Boilen’s blessing), I was on my way. Months after my visit I was pleased to see the sticker in the background of some live performances at NPR.

Can you spot the KFJC sticker? Photo: J. Waits

Thanks so much to my guide Cathy for the tour of NPR and big thanks to Bob Boilen for allowing me to see his lair so that I could add a few more Leo signs to my virtual scavenger hunt.

More fun artifacts at Bob Boilen’s desk at NPR. Photo: J. Waits

My Spring 2014 station tours are nearly completed! I have one more college radio station visit in Maryland to write up in addition to a high school station in Illinois. Following that, I’ll post my fall 2014 Seattle and San Francisco station visits. You can see a complete list of all of my Spinning Indie Radio Station Field Trips here.

This post originally appeared on my blog Spinning Indie.

The post My Tour of NPR Headquarters appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Alex Blumberg’s podcasting company Gimlet Media just crowd-funded $200,00 in less than two days. Only the company didn’t use Kickstarter, Indiegogo or another familiar platform. Instead Gimlet invited qualified investors to become actual equity stakeholders under a provision of the 2012 JOBS Act. Gimlet ran this campaign using the help of a new platform called Alphaworks.

You can learn much more about that law, and the restrictions Gimlet had to abide by–such as that qualified investors have to make at least $200,000 a year or have $1,000,000 in assets–on this week’s episode of his podcast, StartUp. It’s that episode, released Sunday, in which Blumberg announced the opening for investors. He then had to update the show a little more than a day later to let listeners know that the goal had been reached, and no new investors could be taken on.

That $200,000 of listener investment comes on top of $1.48 million of venture capital the company had already raised, as also documented on StartUp.

Gimlet’s success comes as PRX’s Radiotopia is nearing the end of its Kickstarter this week, having more than doubled its original $250,000 goal. PRX has now set “level up” goals which add new milestones for donations above the goal. As of midnight Tuesday Radiotopia is just under $25,000 shy of its next level up goal of $600,000. If that benchmark is hit then Radiotopia will create a pilot development fund to find new producers and hosts, with a focus on “subjects not well covered in traditional public media.”

Radiotopia’s backers, of course, are making donations akin to public radio contribution, for the sake of supporting current and new podcasts. Gimlet’s backers are getting an actual piece of the company, though that opportunity to participate was much more constrained.

Radiotopia’s Kickstarter take is in the range of a pledge drive or two at a large-market public radio station. By comparison, that kind of makes Radiotopia like a big, nationwide public station, but where a significantly larger percentage of the funding can be plowed into program development and production, rather than the cost of maintaining a large broadcast operation.

In one respect this is Radiotopia’s fourth Kickstarter, since one of its anchor podcasts, 99% Invisible, had already successfully Kickstarted three seasons of the show. It’s likely that Radiotopia is building on 99% Invisible’s success, but definitely expanding beyond it, too.

I will be curious to see if Radiotopia continues to rely upon Kickstarter as a fundraising platform. One nice aspect is that it provides much of the necessary infrastructure in a relatively plug-and-play fashion. In contrast, your typical public radio station needs an in-house development team, along with the web, phone and banking infrastructure to accept and process thousands of donations in a very short amount of time. Like a public station, Radiotopia will still have to run its own fulfillment of premium gifts, but that’s a relatively smaller effort.

One downside to Kickstarter is that it takes a 5% cut off the top. Another is that it’s unclear how many campaigns an organization can run before fatigue sets in. Contributing to a campaign to launch a new project or a major new phase is exciting; excitement may diminish as things move into sustain operating rather than building them.

But that’s just conjecture on my part. It may be that Kickstarter turns out to be a fruitful method for both launching and sustaining podcast and other public media style projects and networks. Annual, semi-annual or seasonal Kickstarters are not so different from pledge drives, and those continue to work, by and large.

It will also be interesting to see if Gimlet runs additional rounds of small investor funding. The idea of having equity in the podcast network that you love and support poses a fascinating new model not just for podcasting, but for small, independent media ventures in general. This is especially true if the rules that the SEC has to write for the JOBS Act ever come about, since this would lower the income and asset standards, permitting many more people to become podcast investors.

Of course, every investment is a risk. But, then, so is contributing to a Kickstarter. If a listener invests a small amount in a company like Gimlet principally to make sure the podcasts get made, then maybe any proceeds are just a bonus. At the same time, a for-profit company can’t only raise money by selling equity; it must have other, more substantial sources of real revenue.

While Kickstarters, venture funding and JOBS Act-style small investor funding all look to be promising ways to launch and support podcasts, I do have to note that both Gimlet and Radiotopia solicit advertisers. For Gimlet, that’s part of the revenue model. Also, you hear advertising on most public radio podcasts too, even if you don’t hear the same ones, or hear them presented in the same way, on the air. So it does also appear that the ad supported model isn’t going anywhere, even if it is supplemented or enhanced by other methods.

My main hope is that many more new podcaster will be able to take advantage of these and other new funding strategies to further diversify and enrich the podcasting world.

We cover podcasting news and analysis every Wednesday with our Podcast Survivor feature.