Episodes

In addition to co-hosting the show, Eric Klein edits most episodes, and is a professional freelance audio editor. He put some of his philosophies of editing radio and podcasts in writing for last year’s Grassroots Radio Conference, and for a recent post at Radio Survivor. On this episode Eric elaborates on his advice to “know your values,” and “do no harm.” Then Paul puts Jennifer on the spot on order to do a little market research for Radio Survivor, asking her why she doesn’t listen to more p...

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.” Radio Survivor is a listener-supported podcast. We dedicate hours of time and effort for each weekly episode. Help us sustain and grow ...

What can a careful study of sound teach us about our listening? Listening to the media we choose as well as listening to the place where we live and the people who’s voices we encounter? Prof. Jennifer Stoever thinks about these questions, a lot. And so do a growing number of scholars working in a field called Sound Studies. That’s the topic of the “Sounding Out” blog and podcast, which Prof. Stoever co-founded. She’s an associate professor of English at the University of Binghamton, and she’s ...

There are more unlicensed pirate radio stations in New York City than licensed stations. The borough of Brooklyn is a particular hotspot. Producer and journalist David Goren has been researching and recording these stations so that their ephemeral nature isn’t lost to history. To help preserve this legacy and make it accessible to a wider audience he has constructing an interactive map of Brooklyn pirates. David joins us on this episode along with Prof. John Anderson of Brooklyn College, who ha...

Zach Poff put a radio station inside a pond. Poff is a media artist, educator and maker-of-things, and he explains that project and talks about making art with radio technology and listening to sound art. This is a re-broadcast of our episode from April, 2018. Show Notes Zach Poff’s Pond Station is broadcasting live during the day-light hours from just below the surface of a pond. Soundcamp is a network of listening points at sunrise on International Dawn Chorus Day, 24 hours of live broadcas...

As 2018 draws to a close the FCC is poised to throw another death blow at radio, proposing to allow complete ownership monopolies in hundreds of radio markets. At the same time the Commission has to defend its decimation of network neutrality in court, even after the DC Court of Appeals ruled the earlier open internet rules are utterly constitutional (twice). And while Sinclair lost its bid to steamroll what’s left of TV ownership caps and acquire Tribune’s stations, another company is getting r...

At the end of 2018 all indicators are that radio is thriving. From community radio to podcasting, internet radio to college radio, we’re seeing new stations, new listeners and new ideas. It’s all more evidence that we’re in the post-‘radio is dead’ era. All four Radio Survivors join together to dig deeply into the year that was: Jennifer Waits, Matthew Lasar, Eric Klein and Paul Riismandel. They survey the renewed interest in exploring radio history and fresh efforts to preserve radio archives,...

Paul shares a few more details of his trip to Brazil, and then he and Eric listen to a bandscan of the FM dial recorded on a Sunday night in São Paulo, the country’s largest city. Christian radio? Check. Bad 80s pop music? Yep. One takeaway is that commercial radio everywhere kinda sucks, in general. But there are also some more interesting sounds to be heard, too. Show Notes: Some of the stations heard include: Gazeta FM 88.1 Novo Brasil FM KISS FM Cultura FM Eldorado FM Mix 106.3 The post...

Álvaro Burns is a community radio broadcaster in São Bernardo do Campo, Brazil, where he hosts a local sports show on Rádio Paraty FM and he produces the podcast “A Hora do Cafezinho.” Álvaro is a long-time friend of the show, and Paul recently traveled to Brazil and was able to meet up with him at Radio Paraty for an interview. Álvaro recounts his journey as a college broadcasting student who became disenchanted by commercial radio, but fell in love with community radio. He discusses the place...

The Free Music Archive is shutting down. A website attached to the listener-sponsored radio station WFMU, the FMA expanded the role community radio played in the online space. It was a library of a huge and always growing amount of free mp3’s that spanned every genre of music. Cheyenne Hohman is our guest. Radio Survivor is a listener-supported podcast. You can support us two ways: Make a monthly contribution through our Patreon campaign. Make a one-time or recurring donation with any major cr...

Perhaps you are like me and you have wished that you could go back in time and spin a radio dial and just listen to and browse the full radio spectrum from another time and place. Our guest on the show, Radio Anthropologist Thomas Witherspoon, is building a website for just such a thing. It’s called the Radio Spectrum Archive and it is not magic, it uses a piece of technology called a software defined radio that makes recording a full spectrum of Shortwave, AM and even FM radio (if you have the ...

Do you remember audioblogging? Prof. Andrew Bottomley does, and he’s here to tell some alternative histories of podcasting. From “Geek of the Week” to Odeo, he illuminates many more bygone shows and platforms from the 1990s and early 2000s that gave rise to what we’ve now settled on calling “podcasts,” for better or worse. Bottomley is assistant professor of Communication and Media at SUNY Oneonta. Radio Survivor is a listener-supported podcast. You can support us two ways: Make a monthly con...

The FCC has proposed to de-fund community media through an arcane rule that determines how contributions from cable companies to public-access, educational and government (PEG) stations are counted. Because it’s arcane, the effort is flying under the radar. But we have two community media advocates to help explain what’s at stake. Martin Jones is the CEO of MetroEast Community Media in Gresham, Oregon, just one of hundreds of PEG stations that would be affected. Sabrina Roach serves on the boar...

Live from the College Broadcasters, Inc. Convention in Seattle we take on college radio’s place in the contemporary media landscape. After deciding not to sell its radio station 13 years ago, the University of Evansville administration said, “we are once again examining the relevancy of the medium and exploring opportunities to enhance our curriculum through providing additional experience in 21st century communications methods.” That leads us to question: is radio actual a “21st century communi...

When Tipper Gore and the PMRC called rock and rap stars to testify in front of Congress about explicit lyrics, did this affect college radio? How could it not? Prof. Kate Jewell is examining the relationship between college stations and the culture wars as part of a new book project. Jewell is Associate Professor of History at Fitchburg State University and a Fellow at the University Connecticut Humanities Institute. She joins the show to talk about how college broadcasts triggered conservative...

Radio Survivor co-founder Matthew Lasar declares we’re in the post-“Radio Is Dead” era, during a time when audio media has survived and thrived, whether you listen over the broadcast airwaves, podcast, satellite or internet stream. Jennifer Waits and Paul Riismandel join Matthew live in San Francisco for a discussion about radio’s recent evolution, including the satellite-internet radio hybrid being born out of the Sirius/XM acquisition of Pandora, and a review of this year’s Grassroots Radio C...

What will community radio sound like in 2023? Will the death of net neutrality make radio even important? Will analog FM radio even exist anymore? Two active and insightful community media activists joins us to tackle these questions and more, live from 2018 Grassroots Radio Conference held in the Native American Student & Community Center at Portland State University, in Portland, Oregon. Vanessa Maria Graber is the station manager for WPPM-LP at public access TV station PhillyCam in Philadelp...

College Radio Day is October 5, and on this episode we reflect on the value of this special brand of radio, and Jennifer shares her tour of Vassar College’s station, WVKR. Radio Survivor is a listener-supported podcast. You can support us two ways: Make a monthly contribution through our Patreon campaign. Make a one-time or recurring donation with any major credit card via PayPal. Show Notes: College Radio Day College Radio Day coverage on Radio Survivor CLASS D FM licenses The Radio Reader ...

Internet radio is older than you think. In fact, it’s at least a quarter-century old… and maybe even a little older. That’s the history Dom Robinson uncovered, and he joins to tell the story. He’s the co-founder of online video company id3as and a contributing editor to Streaming Media, and he reveals how he discovered what likely qualifies as the very first internet radio broadcast, which happened entirely by accident. Dom then discusses the technology that brought internet radio to the masses...

Programming changes draw attention at one college station, while another might be close to the auction block, and a new San Francisco LPFM steps in to the spiritual space left behind by a beloved departed station. Team that with some big changes in the podcasting industry, and we’ve got a full episode. After hearing from many listeners, Jennifer checks in with UNLV station KUNV. It’s a station we’ve been keeping up with since a takeover was averted back in 2015. The station recently had some st...

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...

California is on the cusp of restoring net neutrality. The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Katharine Trendacosta explains how this will happens, and what the implications are for the rest of the nation. Then Jennifer, Eric and Paul run down our slate of live podcast recordings coming up at this year’s Grassroots Radio Conference in Portland, OR and the College Broadcasters Inc. conference in Seattle. They also review the FCC’s new podcast, “More Than Seven Dirty Words,” discuss the merits of c...

In the U.S. the copyright situation for music and sound recordings made before 1972 is a mess of different and conflicting state laws. That’s because there is no overarching federal law. The unintended consequence is that archivists, librarians and artists are often afraid to duplicate, distribute or repurpose very old recordings that – if they were books or movies – otherwise would be in the public domain, free of copyright. That’s because they don’t want to inadvertently violate a state copyri...

This week Paul reflects on insights gained at this year’s Podcast Movement conference, focusing on the opportunity for more people to be served by community podcasting. Jennifer reports back from Radio Day by the Bay, which included a live radio drama performance that connects up to the present-day explosion in scripted fictional podcasts. And then we deconstruct the Princeton Review’s 2019 “Best College Radio Stations” list. Radio Survivor is a listener-supported podcast. You can support us tw...