Episodes

Matthew Lasar starts off this episode by declaring that this was the year that his undergraduate students stopped listening to broadcast AM/FM radio. Then he admits, he’s nearly stopped, too. Find out why in this lively rundown of what was significant to radio in 2019. On the other hand, our resident college radio expert Jennifer Waits reports that she’s listening to more terrestrial radio than ever, even as she notes that college broadcasters are making more podcasts, often focused on increasi...

All nine judges on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals recently denied the FCC’s request for a rehearing on its many-times rejected media ownership rules. Prof. Christopher Terry calls this the Commission’s “Legacy of Failure.” But it begs the question, what does success look like? Prof. Terry, who teaches media law at the University of Minnesota, joins us to discuss what another broadcast world might look like. Going back to fundamentals, he explains that media ownership rules are expected to s...

The Federal Communications Commission is all about radio at the end of 2019, and we catch you up on what you need to know. We all have questions about the possibility of AM stations going all-digital, including the FCC. The regulatory body released the things it wants to know about how digital stations would work, and how it would impact listeners, especially those in rural communities. Also, the Commission is reconsidering restrictions on duplication programming between AM and FM stations, and...

November 30 was the 20th anniversary of the “Battle of Seattle” protests against the World Trade Organization ministerial meetings in that Pacific Northwest city. The broad array of groups and 80,000 people who assembled understood they would not receive a fair hearing in the mainstream press, so they built their own internet-based platform to instantly publish accounts from the street in words, sound, pictures and video. They called it Indymedia, sparking a citizen-journalism movement that quic...

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...

When Jim Bolt was in college at Sacramento State University in 1989 college radio was exerting unprecedented cultural influence in the U.S. But this campus no longer had a radio station. Though he had heard stories of an earlier student-run AM station – KERS – he couldn’t get to the bottom of why it no longer existed. In the same period the university transferred its FM license over to Capitol Public Radio. Convinced that the school and the Sacramento community deserved real college radio, he a...

In April 2020 the FCC will open up the next auction for FM radio licenses. This is the next, and only currently scheduled opportunity to build a new radio station in the U.S. Jennifer, Eric and Paul discuss this news, along with celebrating the 60th birthday of KFJC-FM at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, CA. We reflect on how KFJC and other college stations were trailblazers in programming and service, functioning a lot like public radio in the years before National Public Radio was created....

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 a...

Amanda Dawn Christie is an artist enamored with radios and radio waves. The Assistant Professor, Studio Arts at Concordia University (Montreal, Canada) joins us on the show to discuss her most recent transmission art project, Ghosts in the Airglow, in which she created work at the HAARP facility in Alaska. Christie also shares with us the backstory of how she starting working with radio and radio waves, describing her fascination with radio towers and shortwave and recounting her numerous radio...

Our guest is Brian DeShazor, an independent radio researcher and founder of the Queer Radio Research Project. Formerly the Director of the Pacifica Radio Archives, DeShazor has taken a special interest in uncovering and highlighting the LGBTQ voices that have aired on community radio in decades past. On the episode, we discuss the history of queer radio programming as well as DeShazor’s work to bring some of the hidden LGBTQ stories to light. This episode originally aired on April 2, 2019 as e...

Today our online networks are largely owned and operated by corporations that spy on us for profit, but 20 years ago leftist activists built a very different kind of online network. It was called Indymedia. It was one of the first online spaces where people could self publish photos and text as well as audio and video. The network was designed for people to report their own news. Each local Indymedia website was linked to and run out of a physical space (Independent Media Center) where people ga...

Net neutrality received a very mixed ruling from the DC Circuit Court of Appeals last week. The Court largely upheld the significantly looser rules passed by the FCC in 2017 under the leadership of Republican Chairman Ajit Pai. But at the same time the Court said the Commission overstepped its bounds in attempting to forbid state and local governments from passing their own open internet rules. Prof. Christoper Terry from the University of Minnesota is back again this week to help us understand...

The FCC lost in court for the fourth time on September 23, in what’s become a really bad habit in the case known as Prometheus Radio Project v. FCC. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals keeps sending the Commission back to do homework to justify with evidence the changes it wants to make in loosening media ownership rules. And the Commission just keeps failing. Prof. Christopher Terry of the University of Minnesota returns to tell us why the FCC failed again this time. He notes that the FCC has b...

Radio waves don’t obey borders, and stations have been taking advantage of this fact since the dawn of the medium – often despite the rules of government regulators where the signals go. Dr. Kevin Curran of Arizona State University has been studying border radio stations extensively, making it the subject of his doctoral dissertation. Everyone has a ton of radio nerd fun as he takes us back to the 1920s, when Canadian and U.S. regulators struck a treaty to split up the AM dial and limit maximum...

More than 600 community radio recordings from 1965 – 1986 are archived at the University of Maryland. These tapes were shared through a program exchange operated by the National Federation of Community broadcasters. The breadth of programming contained in these programs is remarkable, and underscores the still-active mission of the NFCB to support and promote the participation of women and people of color at all levels of non-commercial broadcasting. Laura Schnitker is the curator of the Broadc...

RadiOpio Program Director Laura Civitello has the enviable job of running a youth radio station on the Hawaiian Island of Maui. From an upstairs perch at the beach side Pa’ ia Youth and Cultural Center, Civitello manages KOPO-LP, whose on-air hosts range in age from 9 to 19 years old. On this week’s show, Civitello tells the story of how RadiOpio came to be and talks about the unique role that this LPFM station is playing for young people in the town of Pa’ia. Show Notes RadiOpio website Pa’ia...

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.” Today’s episode is a rebroadcast of one of our favorites from this year. It originally aired 1/15/2019 as episode #178 Radio Survivor is...

Jennifer is back from travels, that included Hawaiian community radio, to join Eric and Paul. First up, a question: is “pathfinder” a good replacement for the word “pioneer,” the latter of which has an unfortunate colonial heritage? Listener Pat Flanagan suggested it to us after we asked for input a couple of episodes, so we provisionally adopt it here to talk about people who are finding new paths for our favorite audio media. Jennifer updates us about a new pathfinding low-power FM station ba...

Nathan Moore is the General Manager of WTJU at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia. Hear how and why he has lead the way to build a podcasting studio for the community to use, as well as a student run LPFM college radio station and a concert series and a summer camp. Show Notes: “Unsettled” WTJU’s one minute stories on immigrants teej.fm, WTJU’s podcasting network WXTJ www.wtju.net Radio Station Visit #129: WTJU Freeform Music, House Shows, and Art: Touring College Radio St...

With mergers, acquisitions and millions of dollars changing hands, podcasts continue to be in the news. But just when it seems like well-funded networks are edging out the indies, Paul and Eric are here to assure community and college broadcasters and independent podcasters that there is growing opportunity for them, too. Show Notes: Paul on The Wolf Den Podcast The Verge: iHeartMedia will start airing its own podcasts on over 200 of its radio stations every Sunday That NY Times articles that ...

Hello, Eric Klein here. This week’s episode of the radio show features wall to wall music selected by Matthew Lasar to demonstrate his passion for the radio format he would like to hear more of in the world, Hybrid Highbrow. All that music would be against the rules in a podcast, so this web-only version of the show this week features a little bit of me talking about Matthew’s ideas; I talk about a few of the recent episodes of the program you might have missed; and then a quick update on the co...

This week we explore the role of radio as a tool for resistance with two of the eight organizers of the “Resistance Radio ‘The People’s Airwaves'” exhibit in Brooklyn, New York. Interference Archive volunteers Celia Easton Koehler and Elena Levi join us on the podcast to discuss the scope of the exhibit, which investigates a cross-section of themes, including black liberation, radio and prisons, squatting radio, war and revolution radio, and more. The physical exhibit (on view until September ...

The FCC is one step closer to a rule change that threatens to de-fund community media and technology, by undermining a long-established principle that cable and internet companies owe rent to municipalities for use of the public right-of-way. Sabrina Roach, board member of the Alliance for Community Media Foundation, joins to help us understand what’s at stake. The future of public access, educational and government TV channels and community technology centers hangs in the balance. Support Rad...

The FCC just proposed a series of changes to help make it easier for low-power FM stations to move their transmitters and to fill in weak signal areas. We review this proposal along with a suggestion from the Commission to whittle away at protections for the few dozen remaining analog low-power TV channel 6 stations, often called “Franken FMs” or “Back Door FMs” who’s audio can be heard at the far left end of the FM dial. Jennifer reports back from the National Federation of Community Broadcast...