Episodes
Over the course of four seasons, the Peabody-nominated podcast “Scene on Radio,” a production of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, has earned a reputation for tackling head-on difficult topics around race, gender,
Portrayals of radio in popular culture provide an interesting glimpse at radio’s role in society. At Radio Survivor, we’ve long been fascinated by radio depictions on both the small and large screen; so it is a treat to dive into this topic with Hemran...
In 2019 we celebrated International Women’s Day by recording a fascinating interview about women’s radio history with University of Louisville Professor of History Christine Ehrick. Author of Radio and the Gendered Soundscape: Women and Broadcasting in...
Some consider the late 1960s through the mid-1990s to be a “golden age” of college radio. History professor Katherine Rye Jewell, from Fitchburg State University, notes that the period begins with college stations taking to the FM dial,
A common theme on Radio Survivor is that claims of being first should be viewed skeptically. From purported first college radio station to first internet simulcast, we’ve learned that there’s always another challenger to the prize. This time around,
Did you know that a lot of folks in Europe listen to radio on their televisions? Neither did we, until we talked with James Cridland, editor of the daily Podnews email newsletter and radio futurologist. He explains that outside of North America much of...
WBCN in Boston, MA is one of the storied freeform FM stations in American commercial radio history. We’re talking about it because there’s a recent documentary film, entitled “WBCN and the American Revolution,” that dives into its history,
Ken Freedman is the General Manager and the Program Director of WFMU, a free form community radio station in Jersey City, New Jersey that prides itself on it’s live, in studio sound from every one of it’s DJ’s. So this particular crisis,
Raven Radio, KCAW-FM, serves Sitka and the remote communities of Southeast Alaska with public radio content, local news and volunteer-produced programming. Like “shelter in place” elsewhere in the lower 48,
The University of Virgina’s WTJU now only permits one person in their studios at one time and has five remote locations ready to take over live broadcasting. That’s a couple of ways that community and college stations are coping with the COVID-19 pande...
Community and college radio stations are unique in broadcasting because in addition to being important community services, many are also a community crossroads, hosting dozens or hundreds of people in their studios and spaces in any given week.
FCC policy has left media ownership diversity at “obnoxiously low levels,” especially considering that more minority and women ownership is one of the desired objectives. That’s what Prof. Chris Terry from the University of Minnesota tells us on this w...
Jennifer, Eric and Paul have some college radio news to review, but first they pull back the curtain to survey the state of affairs in Radio Survivorland. They note some recent attention from The A.V. Club and Podnews along with a nice uptick in podcas...
In New Zealand a dozen partially government-funded radio stations are charged with providing access to under-represented groups and communities. Wellington Access Radio, situated in New Zealand’s capital city,
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 bo...
Scholar Jocelyn Robinson says about one-third of Historically Black Colleges and Universities have radio stations. Her mission is to survey them and help preserve their histories and recorded legacies through the HBCU Radio Station Archival Survey Proj...
Eric Nuzum started NPR’s podcasting efforts in 2005 where he worked for over a decade and helped produce hit shows like “TED Radio Hour” and “Invisibila” – he left NPR for Audible, where he led Amazons efforts in the realm of short form audio and podca...
On this week’s episode we learn about a brand new project at the Library of Congress that is focused entirely on archiving podcasts. Ted Westervelt, Manager of the Podcast Preservation Project at Library of Congress,
The PIRATE Act, recently passed by Congress, is intended to stem the tide of unlicensed radio broadcasting by providing the Federal Communications Commission with new tools. Chief amongst them are new maximum fines, and a shortcut to issuing them.
Last week we declared that the 2010s were a banner decade for community radio. As Jennifer notes, though college radio had a tough start to the last decade, with the loss of prominent stations like KUSF, KTRU and WRVU,
We begin part one of our review of the last decade in radio with the observation that it saw the greatest expansion of community radio in history. Though the second US LPFM licensing window that happened in 2013 is a significant driver,
Here at the close of 2019 and the beginning of 2020 we’re celebrating the 31st anniversary of the end of one of the most fascinating periods in radio broadcast history, when pirate radio ruled the Irish airwaves.
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 ...
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.
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.
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 recei...
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 Commu...
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 ...
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,
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 a...