radio
-
Bruce Elving, professor of FM radio
I just learned from Dan Kelly that Bruce Elving passed away last month. Details are thin, but here’s a short list of links: Scott Fybush’s Northeast Radio Watch Augut 8 issue A facebook “public figure” page Bruce’s own Facebook page An obituary in Media Confidential Notice in the Worldwide TV-DX Association site Bruce and I were frequent… Continue reading
-
Real reading
Garrison Keillor on books: I happen to love the sensual experience of walking into a bookstore and examining the wares, picking up books, smelling them, admiring the covers, reading the first page or two. In 15 minutes, I can always find at least five books that really deeply interest me. I can’t do that online.… Continue reading
-
Revisiting Austin radio
One of the things I’ve always liked about SXSW is listening to Austin radio while I’m in town. I remember discovering KGSR on my first visit in 2006, and there are always new surprises. Here’s what I blogged back then: Great radio lives at KGSR/107.1 in Austin. Entertainment Weekly called it “an only-in-Austin blend of… Continue reading
-
What station(s) does KDFC pave in the South Bay?
So now KDFC is on 90.3 and 88.9, while KUSF is off the air. (Though it does have a Live365 stream.) Radio Valencia, a pirate radiating out of the Mission district on 87.9, has expressed sympathy with KUSF’s exiled volunteers, and has provided some airtime as well. The University of San Francisco, which sold the… Continue reading
-
KDFC wounded, KUSF killed (almost)
This week the Bay Area loses two of its radio landmarks. On 102.1fm, KDFC, which has been broadcasting classical music since 1946, will be replaced by a simulcast of KUFX (“K-FOX”), a classic rock station in San Jose. And on 90.3 fm, KUSF, which has been one of the most active and community-involved free-form college… Continue reading
-
Public radio still rocks
Lately, thanks to the inexcusably inept firing of Juan Williams by NPR brass, and the acceptance of a $1.8 million grant from George Soros, NPR has tarred its credentials as a genuinely fair and balanced news organization. Which it mostly still is, by the way, no matter how much the right tries to trash it.… Continue reading
-
Obama’s About page, in a podcast
If you can park your politics (whatever it might be) long enough to listen with an open mind to a one-hour podcast, please dig Reading Obama’s Mind: Pragmatism and Its Perils, an interview by Chris Lydon of James T. Kloppenberg, chair of the Department of History at Harvard, author of “A Nation Arguing with Its… Continue reading
-
Why Howard Stern’s next act is Internet radio
Howard Stern‘s contract with Sirius XM is up at the end of the year, and it was good to hear on the show this week that the full retirement option is off the table. That was one of five options Howard said he was considering. Says the Stern site (on a wrapup of Thursday’s show), Howard… Continue reading
-
Sad news
The strangest thing about Dan Schorr dying is that he isn’t here to explain it on NPR. I always liked Schorr’s take on things, even when I didn’t agree with him. When was his last commentary? Haven’t found that yet. Didn’t seem like long ago. He was 93. We should all live so long, and… Continue reading
-
A happy beginning to the new WQXR story
Last July I explained Why WQXR is better off as a public radio station. One hundred and twelve comments followed, the last posted in January of this year. Far as I know, that’s a record for this blog. Background: when WQXR, which had been New York City’s landmark classical music station since the Roosevelt Hoover… Continue reading
-
March Madness and Radio’s Future
March Madness for me this year was a double treat. First, my team, the Duke Blue Devils, won the championship. (Though my heart went out to Butler, which came within inches of winning at the buzzer on a half-court shot.) Second, I got to follow the Devils, and North Carolina Basketball in general, on WDNC.… Continue reading
-
Radio gets personal
The great Larry Josephson — to me the best radio host ever (he was real and honest and funny and groundbreaking and smart long before Howard Stern was the same, and I am a serious Howard fan too) — once explained his radio philosophy to me in two words: It’s personal. From the beginning we… Continue reading
-
A modest revenue proposal to the BBC
I love BBC domestic programming (such as Radio 4, which I have to dig to find on the BBC website if I’m coming in from a non-UK IP address, as I am now), and would like to pay as much for it as any UK citizen does through taxes. Let’s say we come up with… Continue reading
-
The Past and Future of Radio
It’s so odd to look at the list of radio station ratings for Raleigh-Durham. When I left in ’85 I was out of radio, but still deeply into it, and I could tell you something about every signal you could pick up there. Now I know squat. So many of the stations have changed owners,… Continue reading
-
Looking up for noncommercial radio
For most of radio’s history, at least in the U.S., ratings “books” ignored noncommercial stations. Commercial radio shares never added up to 100%. Usually the total was around 87%, give or take. In the market where I spent the most years caring about this stuff — Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill, back in the late ’70s and early… Continue reading
-
What’s right with Wikipedia?
“I make my living off the Evening News Just give me something: something I can use People love it when you lose They love dirty laundry. — Don Henley, “Dirty Laundry” Look up “Wikipedia loses” (with the quotes) and you get 20,800 results. Look up “Wikipedia has lost” and you get 56,900. (Or at least… Continue reading
-
WGBH and public radio’s future
@robpatrob (Robert Paterson) asks (responding to this tweet and this post) “Why would GBH line up against BUR? Why have a war between 2 Pub stations in same city?” (In this tweet and this one, Dan Kennedy asks pretty much the same thing.) The short answer is, Because it wouldn’t be a war. Boston is… Continue reading
Art, Berkman, Business, Future, Ideas, infrastructure, Journalism, Live Web, music, News, Past, problems, radio“Robert Paterson”, AM, Berkman Center, BUR, Cambridge, channel 2, Chris Lydon, Dan Kennedy, FM, GBH, iphone, ipods, Morning Edition, music, Open Source, PRX, public radio, radio, The Takeaway, traffic, uhf, WBUR, WGBH -
WGBH/WCRB go the way of WNYC/WQXR
The longest thread in the history of this blog belongs to Why WQXR is better off as a public radio station, which I posted on July 26, and still has comments this month. The post followed a complex deal by which the New York Times divested its legacy classical music station, WQXR — and by… Continue reading
-
Cluetrainings
Had a great time mixing it up with the BlogTalkRadio folks a couple nights ago, talking Cluetrain after 10 years. Here’s the show. Big thanks to Allan Hoving for lining up and co-hosting it with Janet Fouts and Jim Love. Janet tweeted it live. Afterwards Jim put up a very interesting follow-up post, in the… Continue reading