Radio Survivor Podcast

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. […] The post Podcast #170.5 – Bonus: São Paulo FM Bandscan appeared first on Rad...

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 […] The post Podcast #170 – Community Radio in Brazil appeared first on Radio S...

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 […] The post Podcast #169 – The Free Music Archive is Dead,...

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 […] The post Podcast #168 – A Time Machine for All the Radio plus Shortwave appeared fir...

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 […] The post Podcast #1...

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 […] The post Podcast #166 &#8...

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 […] The post Podcast...

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 […] The post Podcast #164 – College Radio and the Culture Wars appeare...

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 […] T...

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 […] The post Podcast #162 – The Future of...

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 […] The post Podcast #161 – Happy College Radio Day 2018...

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 […] The post Podcast #160 – Marking a Quart...

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 […] The post Podcast #159 – Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes, in College Ra...

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 post Podcast #158...

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 […] The post Podcast #157 –...

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 […] The post Podcast #156 – Can We...

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 […] The post Podcast #155 – Con...

There are undiscovered musical treasures potentially fading away in closets, basements and storage units around the world. Seattle radio station KEXP teamed up with local universities and media organizations to help save a little of this cultural history with the Pop-Up Music Memory Digitization Lab. For one day members of the public were invited to […] The post Podcast #154 – One Tape...

Two interviews that cover the state of low power radio in the United States. Stations that are on the air without a license – also known as Pirate Radio – and the low power stations that have FCC permission to broadcast due in part to the hard work of the former pirates. This episode is […] The post Podcast #153 Licensed and Unlicensed Low Power Radio appeared first on Radio Surv...

The Eclipse Show on community radio station KGNU in Boulder CO is celebrating 40 years on the air, making it quite possibly the longest running hip hop radio show in the world. Radio Survivor has been examining the role that community and college radio has played in the development of hip hop culture, especially in […] The post Podcast #152 – The Longest Running Hip-Hop Radio Show in T...

Radios in the trees, a transmitter in the pond, and a weather-driven synth. These are just some of what you’ll find on The Wave Farm, a 29-acre property in New York’s Hudson Valley dedicated to radio and transmission arts. It’s anchored by community radio station WGXC, accompanied by a cornucopia of additional tiny terrestrial and […] The post Podcast #151 – The Wave...

What killed smooth jazz radio? Why aren’t there any commercial classical stations any longer? And, why do radio stations have a “format” to begin with? Matthew Lasar joins us to explore these questions about the fundamental organizing principle of most music radio. Matthew is a co-founder of Radio Survivor and the author of three important […] The post Podcast #150 –...

How do I start podcasting? That’s one of the questions we field most frequently. So we answer it, in this second installment of our “Frequently Asked Questions” series. But first we do some follow-up about phone phreaker ‘Captain Crunch’ Draper (#147) and the nearly 1,000 challenges filed against applications for FM translator repeater stations (#144). […] The p...

Did you know that upwards of 350 radio stations were established at summer camps across the United States? Dan Braverman, President of Radio Systems, Inc., joins us to share the history of summer camp radio, including his own experience setting up a camp radio station when he was just nine years old. Still involved with […] The post Podcast #148 – Solving the Mystery of Summer Camp Rad...

On this week’s episode we venture to prison and to a very unusual high school radio station. Members of the artist collective Provisional Island (Heidi Ratanavanich, Eileen Shumate, and Michael McCanne) speak with us about their prison-radio-themed exhibit, An Electric Kite, which is on view at the historic site/museum Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia through […] The post Pod...