Episodes

On this most unusual of Thanksgiving weeks, we are honored to speak with Alice Brock, the woman who provided much inspiration for Arlo Guthrie’s inadvertent Thanksgiving Day radio staple, “Alice’s Restaurant.” Brock shares with us not only some insight into the 18-minute anti-war epic; but also stories about her life and holiday traditions. For 2020, Brock was inspired to create a special introductory message for radio stations to play in advance of “Alice’s Restaurant,” and she explains why she...

Carl Malamud is credited with having one of the very first streaming internet talk radio shows, “Geek of the Week,” beginning in 1993. And because it was available for download, too, it’s considered a proto-podcast. Carl joins us this week to dig into this early history of internet radio, recounting how his efforts quickly snowballed from hosting a weekly interview show with internet trailblazers to conducting live broadcasts of the National Press Club luncheons and Congressional hearings. Pro...

Eric, Jennifer and Paul reconvene to catch up on all that is news to us in the worlds of radio and sound. The FCC just unanimously approved all-digital operation on the AM band, while commercial radio – born on the AM band – celebrates its centennial. But keep in mind that broadcast radio is older than that first commodified broadcast. We also reflect on the very first virtual Grassroots Radio Conference and the history of radio dealing with earlier epidemics. Show Notes: FCC’s All-Digital AM...

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 deficien...

The Federal Communications Commission has announced that it will open two filing windows for non-commercial FM radio licenses. First up will be an opportunity to apply for a full-power non-commercial / educational (NCE) license, followed by a low-power FM opportunity. Even though the application window dates have not yet been announced, now is the time to get prepared. Broadcast attorney Frank Montero guests to help us understand the process of applying for an FM broadcast license. He’s a partn...

Over the course of four seasons, the Peabody-nominated podcast “Scene on Radio,” a production of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, has earned a reputation for tackling head-on difficult topics around race, gender, justice and equity. But it didn’t start out that way. It started life as a documentary anthology that host and producer John Biewen calls a “hodge podge.” Then, for the second season John decided to take on race in America by exploring the history and meaning of w...

This week, the Radio Survivor crew did its first live broadcast from a virtual conference held over Zoom. As part of the 2020 Grassroots Radio Conference, we presented a live radio show during the event, which aired over host station ARTxFM’s (WXOX-LP) FM signal in Louisville, Kentucky as well as over the internet. The topic of our discussion is community radio and protests. ARTxFM host and producer Tia Marie and Xray.fm Talk Content Coordinator Miranda Selinger are our guests. The conversation...

Flirt FM at the National University of Ireland at Galway was one of the first “community of interest” stations to go on the air in that nation. Effectively, this means it was a trailblazing college and community station, hitting the air not long after the state broadcast monopoly began to erode in 1988. Andrew Ó Baoill founded Flirt FM as an undergraduate student at what was then known as University College Galway. Working together with student government and university officials, they secured ...

Over the past few months, there’s been a flurry of media attention focused on the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM). Some reports describe it as a “little-known” agency and, in fact, it may seem mysterious to many in the United States, since it oversees international broadcasting programs all over the world, including Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. USAGM has been in the news following the appointment of new CEO Michael Pack, subsequent personnel changes, and e...

Joe Boyd is best known as a record producer (he worked with Pink Floyd and Nick Drake just to name two artists) and he is the author of the book “White Bicycles, Making Music in the 1960’s.” In 2015 he launched a podcast. Joe Boyd’s A-Z which ran for 52 episodes (that’s one episode for every letter of the alphabet – twice over). Before all this, in 1961 he had a Jazz show on WBAI and KPFK he started at age 19. Show Notes: Joe Boyd’s A-Z : The Podcast White Bicycles – Making Music in the 1960’s...

With wildfires raging up and down the west coast of the United States amid the coronavirus pandemic, many radio stations are facing different types of challenges than a year ago. Vacaville Christian Schools’ radio station KVCB-LP (aka VCS Radio) is in a community that was hit hard by a wild fire in August 2020. When a nearby commercial radio station was knocked off the air, middle school/high school station KVCB-LP stepped up to provide emergency broadcasting. Conservatory Education Director Ra...

Eric Nuzum started NPR’s podcasting efforts in 2005. He worked at NPR for over a decade and helped produce hit shows like “TED Radio Hour” and “Invisibila.” He left NPR for Audible, where he led Amazons efforts in short form audio and podcasts until 2018. Eric Nuzum is the author of the book “Make Noise: A Creator’s Guide to Podcasting and Great Audio Storytelling.” On Radio Survivor today we talk to Eric Nuzum about how he began his career in radio at a college station; his advice for communi...

Jennifer, Eric and Paul get the gang back together to remember community radio innovator Lorenzo Milam, who passed away on July 19. We reflect on how he helped to propagate a community access model of broadcasting that departed somewhat from the model of the first Pacifica stations, and was reflective of the counter-cultural currents of the 1960s and 70s. Jennifer shares highlights of her correspondence with Lorenzo about his days in college radio at Haverford, where Jennifer also broadcast. Th...

Border radio is one of our favorite topics at Radio Survivor and on this week’s episode we dig into the history of radio broadcasting on the northern border of Mexico. Scholar Sonia Robles shares the stories of some of the lesser-known, small broadcasters whose histories are often overshadowed by the wild tales of higher power border blaster stations. Robles is the author of Mexican Waves: Radio Broadcasting along Mexico’s Northern Border, 1930-1950 and Assistant Professor of History at Universi...

On August 27, 2020, nomadic online radio station Radioee.net is presenting a live, translingual 24-hour broadcast, Wireless, featuring 24 radio stations from all over the world. Taking place on the 100th anniversary of the first radio broadcast in Argentina and the first mass public entertainment broadcast in the world; Wireless launches at midnight Buenos Aires time on August 27, 2020. This date is significant, as it recognizes the inaugural Argentinian broadcast from Teatro Coliseo in Buenos A...

The FCC is testing its luck with the Supreme Court, after years of failure in attempting to revise media ownership regulations using justifications that pass Constitutional scrutiny. Prof. Christopher Terry from the University of Minnesota joins us to explain what the Commission argues, and what its odds are. However, a more immediate concern is that the Trump administration is pushing against Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. This is the piece of law that protects websites of all ...

On July 14, 1995 the file extension .MP3 was chosen and set in place for an audio format that would go on to change music. Artist, scholar and curator John Kannenberg marks the 25th anniversary of this event with an online exhibit, “MP3 @ 25: The Anniversary Exhibition” at his Museum of Portable Sound. John joins this episode to explain why it’s important to observe this anniversary, and to recount some of the milestones in MP3’s history. From the somewhat apocryphal story of Suzanne Vega’s “To...

Poet Kenneth Goldsmith created UbuWeb in 1996 as an online repository for obscure avant-garde art that, by virtue of having little commercial potential, was hard to find. Audio was an early component of the archive, owing to Kenneth’s interest in sound poetry, an even more obscure art form. Since then he’s served as the chief, and only, curator and proprietor of UbuWeb, which has become an invaluable resource for anyone with an interest in underground and unpopular culture. Kenneth chronicled h...

Carl Malamud is credited with having one of the very first streaming internet talk radio shows, “Geek of the Week,” beginning in 1993. And because it was available for download, too, it’s considered a proto-podcast. Carl joins us this week to dig into this early history of internet radio, recounting how his efforts quickly snowballed from hosting a weekly interview show with internet trailblazers to conducting live broadcasts of the National Press Club luncheons and Congressional hearings. Pro...

On this week’s show, we take a trip back to the early 20th century to learn about the recording industry’s intertwined relationship with radio and music culture. Our guest is Kyle Barnett, Associate Professor of Media Studies in the Department of Communication at Bellarmine University. Barnett’s forthcoming book, Record Cultures: The Transformation of the U.S. Recording Industry, looks at the early history of the recording industry in the United States. On the episode, Barnett shares tidbits fr...

Internet radio was born more than 25 years ago, yet, according to Edison Research, only in the last month has the medium garnered just 10% of all broadcast listening time in the US. We might lay at least some blame on the commercial radio industry, which didn’t embrace it until well into the 2000s, long after the college, community and public radio trailblazers. Prof. Andrew Bottomley returns to the show to help us understand the reasons behind mainstream broadcasters’s delayed acceptance, and ...

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 materia...

Our guest on Radio Survivor is producing The Global Queer Read-In: A Virtual Pride Event; a 12 hour long webcast to celebrate LGBTQ literature. Brian DeShazor is the brand new CEO of Overnight Productions, which produces the radio show This Way Out. This Way Out has been on the air for 31 years, a weekly radio program, heard on about 200 community stations around the world. Brian DeShazor was last heard on Radio Survivor back on ep #187 when we talked about his incredible project to preserve and...

One of the biggest celebrities in Los Angeles in the early part of the 20th century was Aimee Semple McPherson. She inspired scandalous headlines and fictional depictions, including the character Sister Molly on the current Showtime series, Penny Dreadful: City of Angels. Yet the story that is less frequently told is McPherson’s embrace of radio. She built her own powerful station, KFSG, in Los Angeles in the 1920s, which operated from the grand Angelus Temple, where her Foursquare Church was he...