The post Podcast #137 – Zach Poff Built a Radio Station Inside a Pond appeared first on Radio Survivor.

The state and status of our media and communications freedom hangs in the balance. That’s why we ask Prof. Christopher Terry to help us make sense of it all. He’s professor of media law at the University of Minnesota, and he’ll explain what it all means, and what we can do about the Commission’s plan to let even the four major TV networks merge into mega-networks.

The post Podcast #172 – The FCC at the End of 2018, with Prof. Christopher Terry appeared first on Radio Survivor.

They survey the renewed interest in exploring radio history and fresh efforts to preserve radio archives, and assess Radio Survivor’s progress in the last 12 months. Plus, we have some positive news about the Free Music Archive.

Stay tuned next week for a look back at the FCC’s 2018 with Prof. Christopher Terry, from the University of Minnesota.

The post Podcast #171 – It’s the End of 2018 and Radio Is Thriving appeared first on Radio Survivor.

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.

Some of the stations heard include:

The post Podcast #170.5 – Bonus: São Paulo FM Bandscan appeared first on Radio Survivor.

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 and role of community radio in the Brazilian media and political environments, especially in light of the country’s recent election of the far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro to be the next president in 2019.

Listen to our follow-up bonus episode, #170.5, to hear a bandscan of the São Paulo FM dial.

The post Podcast #170 – Community Radio in Brazil appeared first on Radio Survivor.

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 computing power to handle the load) a very real possibility. Thomas Witherspoon is also the primary contributor to The Shortwave Listening Post (www.swling.com) so we are going to learn a few things about the wonder that is shortwave radio on planet earth.

The post Podcast #168 – A Time Machine for All the Radio plus Shortwave appeared first on Radio Survivor.

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.

The post Podcast #167 – Alternative Histories of Podcasting appeared first on Radio Survivor.

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 board for the Alliance for Community Media Foundation, the charitable arm of the group that represents and organizes PEG stations across the U.S. They tell us how proposed changes to the “franchise fee” structure would deprive PEG stations, as well as internet access at libraries and schools, from direct funding. If passed, this would decimate both community media and digital equity in most communities that have it. They also explain what steps we can take to oppose this change.

The post Podcast #166 – The FCC’s Effort To Decimate Community Media appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Here to answer that question, and many more are two students deeply involved in college radio, and the president of CBI, John Morris, who is also the general manager of WSWI at the University of Southern Indiana, just across town from the University of Evansville. Avery Martin is production director a KSCU at Colorado State University and a student board member of CBI, and Aimee Myers, senior music director for KUSF.org at the University of San Francisco.

In this wide-ranging discussion we learn how college stations have put local service at the forefront by creating the position of ‘local director,’ and the on-the-ground tactics stations are employing to be in their local communities, not just broadcasting to them.

The post Podcast #165 – College Radio Is Truly Local Radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.