The Holy Grail: getting Internet radio into your car (Part I)
Everybody knows that the trick to getting Internet radio past the early adopter crowd and into the ears of Ma and Pa Kettle means getting into it into cars. Commercial broadcasting seems ready for...
View ArticleRadio, Apparently, Is Not Part of Chicago's Media Future. But It Should Be.
This past Saturday I attended the Chicago Media Future Conference, which was an unofficial follow-up to the Chicago Journalism Town Hall held in February. Both events intended to address the current...
View ArticleCelebrating Radio's Past and Future
It was a pretty momentous occasion a few weeks back when San Francisco commercial radio station KCBS celebrated 100 years of broadcasting. Well, sort of. As Ben Fong-Torres pointed out in his Radio...
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Garrett Wollman's Radio Tower Quest
WLS Radio Tower Photo Copyright 2004, Garrett Wollman from The Archives@ BostonRadio.org. Fandom is an amazing thing and thanks to the Internet it’s easier and easier to find like-minded obsessives...
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Hey Pandora: I'd pay even more than 99 cents for DJs
Everybody’s breathing a sigh of relief now that Sound Exchange has released its new and more affordable performance royalty rates for webcasting. And the biggest exhale is blowing in the direction of...
View ArticleRemembering Save KPFA Day
Ten years ago this Friday, one of the most remarkable events in the annals of United States broadcasting took place. Looking back on it now, I can hardly believe that it happened, even though I was...
View ArticleIs Future Perfect Radio the Future of Radio?
I spend a lot of time exploring Internet radio stations. And while most of it is for fun, I’m definitely on a Diogenes/Morpheus-looking-for-Neo sort of mission. I’m searching for Internet radio that...
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Corporate radio's future: dim or dimmer?
Cautious optimism abounds for the economic outlook, with the Federal Reserve predicting that the Great Recession is “leveling out.” Financial markets are improving, the Fed says. Household spending is...
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Digital radio revenues up; terrestrial way down
If you are looking for the bright spot in radio’s future, it’s streaming from a digital platform. The Radio Advertising Bureau’s report for this year’s second fiscal quarter makes this abundantly...
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Apple's cutting edge tech? Radio!
Today’s highly anticipated 9/9/09 Apple product announcement brought the return of the Messiah (Steve Jobs) but not the band bigger than Jesus. Alas, the much hoped-for debut of the Beatles in the...
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Broadcasters: use FM subcarriers for smart grids
An interesting filing from the National Association of Broadcasters in response to the Federal Communications Commissions’ call for feedback on ways that broadband can help smart grids. The NAB says...
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Losing the Magic of Radio?
Some of my Childhood 45s I spend a lot of time thinking about how changes in technology are affecting radio. I worry that the “kids” (college radio DJs as well as everyday folks) are getting lazier...
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Wrapping up the decade in radio and looking forward to the decade ahead
Wrapping up our decade in review. As I said in my introduction to our subjective and opinionated review of radio in the 2000s, I still think it was darn near impossible to predict how the medium of...
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What is a Radio Survivor? Paul’s P.O.V.
Paul (a/k/a mediageek) behind the micSo, I guess now it’s my turn. What is Radio Survivor (the blog)? It’s all about the idea that radio is a hardy, useful, practical and proven medium with a lot of...
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Howard Stern Considers Leaving Sirius for Idol, Mancow Out to Pasture in...
There was once a time when a rare breed of radio DJ could scare up controversy and big ratings–not to mention FCC indecency fines–using just his voice, a few on-air cronies and whole lot of bravado,...
View ArticleRough notes: What does the FCC's National Broadband Plan mean for radio?
Next Tuesday the Federal Communications Commission will reveal the entirety of its National Broadband Plan, over a year in the making. Required by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which...
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Did Brecht want radio or the Internet?
Bertolt Brecht (source: wikipedia commons) I am rereading portions of German composer Bertold Brecht’s famous 1932 essay “The radio as an apparatus of communications,” and I am confused. Is he really...
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Radio Still Relevant, Although not Necessarily for Music Discovery according...
Yesterday Edison Research and Arbitron (ARB) released the latest findings from their ongoing series of studies about the convergence of radio and technology. The Infinite Dial 2010: Digital Platforms...
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FCC Workshop To Explore Noncommercial Media in the Digital Era
Continuing its series of workshops–which are more informal than hearings–on a variety of important topics, the FCC will hold one on the topic of “Public and Other Noncommercial Media in the Digital...
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WFMU on the “catch 22” of Internet streaming
John Bergmayer of Public Knowledge has a great interview with Ken Freedman, station manager of WFMU-FM in Jersey City, New Jersey. WFMU is a trailblazing radio station which was in the forefront of...
View ArticleCould white space devices boost streaming community radio?
The Federal Communications Commission has put the finishing touches on its rules for “white space” broadband devices—that is, gadgets that can send and receive high speed Internet across unused TV...
View ArticlePlease lend Radio Survivor a hand
Thank you, dear reader, for spending a little of your online attention with us. We Radio Survivors really appreciate it. When Matthew and I first talked about creating this site nearly eighteen months...
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Radio’s Fall – Part Two: NPR’s ‘Liberal’ Identity Crisis
Editor’s Note: Radioactive Gavin has collected more than 300 articles on radio and digital music over the past 3 months for Common Frequency. This is the second in a series of seven posts he is...
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In case of Rapture, Family Radio will be unmanned
You’ve seen the bumper stickers, and today at least it’s true for Family Radio. Their website has been unreachable all day, likely due to being overloaded with traffic. So that’s also made it...
View ArticleSeptember 11 and the radio revolution
NPR’s Ombudsman has a new post promising “massive 9/11 anniversary coverage” this weekend. It mentions a listener who has protested the network’s use of the phrase “terror attacks.” “Terror did not...
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Podcasting, satellite, internet and broadcast: it’s all RADIO to us
We, your humble Radio Survivors, are unabashed fans of broadcast radio. That much should be clear to anyone who peruses our site. But we hope that readers also see that we don’t limit ourselves to the...
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They can take the radio out of Clear Channel (but that won’t take Clear...
Friday the 900 lb. gorilla of commercial radio announced that it is changing its name to Clear Channel Media and Entertainment, striking the word “radio” from its name. Even though the company still...
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FCC Chairman tells NAB that “business is better,” but your public files are...
The National Association of Broadcasters annual show and convention just started in Las Vegas, bringing together nearly every sector of the broadcast industry to show off new products, discuss trends...
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Is Twitter a radio station?
Perhaps inspired by its new report indicating that almost one in five Americans have listened to Internet radio in their cars, the Edison research group has a new revelation: Twitter is a form of...
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Rough notes: towards the end of Pacifica Radio (and the start of something new)
As the troubles facing Pacifica radio persist without apparent end, I sometimes wonder whether the five station listener supported radio network should voluntarily dismantle itself—that is, transfer...
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Will the end of driving mean the end of radio?
US Pirg has released a new report on commuting patterns that has to be worrying some radio people: we are driving less. “The Driving Boom is over,” proclaims US Pirg Senior Analyst Phineas Baxandall....
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Wasting energy? “Erratic” radio gives you wrong frequency on purpose
[www.johan.redstrom.se]I am reading Evgeny Morozov’s diverting book To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism. The conclusion mentions a variety of machines that act...
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Festival of ideas looks outside radio for strategy and inspiration
Radio strategy consultant Mark Ramsey is hosting a one-day “ideas festival” for radio called Hivio in San Diego today. While I wish I could have flown out to sunny Southern California to attend in...
View ArticleBloomberg upgrades radio to cockroach status
Cockroaches have been around for about 280 million years, a longevity record that has inspired Bloomberg to compare radio to the species. “Radio has survived everything,” this Bloomberg news video...
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If music curation isn’t the answer, what’s the question?
The RAIN newsletter has an interesting opinion post up by Mike Spinelli, formerly at SoundExchange, now in law school studying music licensing. Spinelli’s post is titled “The ‘me’ generation: why...
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How community radio can adapt to digital disruption
This is part one of a series identifying ways community radio stations can adapt and ultimately embrace digital disruption as a tool to empower communities through media. A lot of the pushback I get...
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Radio Survivor’s 2014 Year in Review
Happy 2015! As we start the year, it’s a good time to reflect on the biggest radio stories of 2014 and also to make our predictions for 2015. Over the past few weeks we’ve shared our thoughts on the...
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Thinking through Radio History: An Interview with John Durham Peters – Pt. 1
Once again, we are very excited to present an interview with a leading media historian for Radio Survivor’s Academic Series. John Durham Peters is a media and cultural historian and social theorist...
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How Pandora helps its South Dakota FM station build audience
As I promised in my last post about [soon to be] fully Pandora owned radio station KXMZ-FM in Rapid City, South Dakota, I’d try to get more details from KXMZ deejay Mike Swafford about how “Hits...
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Can WFMU’s Audience Engine Shake Up Non-Profit Journalism?
Related: Matthew Lasar takes a look under the hood of Audience Engine. Does America’s maverick freeform music station have what it takes to shake up non-profit journalism? It’s no secret...
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Radio and bicycles: can they help each other?
We are always writing about North Carolina State University campus station WKNC-FM around here, and now they’ve gone and done something fun and creative again. This time it’s the WKNC “Radio Ride,”...
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Community broadcasting in 2035: the let’s-get-real version
[esa.int]Radioinfo of Sydney, Australia has some coverage of that country’s Community Broadcasting conference (#CBAAconf). Looks like an interesting event, and one of the panels considered what...
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Podcast #96 – Are Smart Speakers Smart for Community Radio?
Amazon Echo. Google Home. And soon, Apple’s HomePod. Smart speakers are quickly taking up residence in homes. Taking voice commands to deliver news, weather, music and more, they play a very...
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Podcast #200 – How We Survived a Decade of Independent Publishing
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...
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