I decided this town would be a good fit for a small town radio station, much like the one portrayed on the TV series Northern Exposure.\u00a0 Later my friend Daoine O’ became a DJ at the station near her small town.\u00a0 I got to see the studio and even trekked up a mountain side to the transmitter.\u00a0 I was inspired.<\/p>\n
So I set out writing my congress critters, pleading with them to pass the bill that had been lingering for years in their committees.\u00a0 The bill was to reverse a law that stopped new LPFM stations from being authorized (long story, short).\u00a0 It took years for the bill to finally get passed in 2011 and signed by President Obama.\u00a0 Now the FCC is busy trying to make sense of the bill and adjust their rules accordingly.<\/p>\n
Unbeknownst to me,\u00a0 probably in 2010, a couple of people from town simply put together a studio, put up a pirate transmitter someplace and voila<\/em>, they’re on the air and streaming.\u00a0 They’ve had in-studio guests and broadcast live from various venues in town.\u00a0 It has a local vibe to it.\u00a0\u00a0 I admire them and the simplistic route they took to start a station without all of the bureaucracy and regulations of the government.\u00a0 They are not interfering with any other radio signals.\u00a0 They are polite pirates.<\/p>\n Is it a community radio station?\u00a0 Not quite.\u00a0 Members of the community interested in doing a radio show, can’t.\u00a0 Also, it’s only live on the weekends.\u00a0 As far as I can tell, weekdays are just pre-programmed with a playlist of music.\u00a0 I’ve tried contacting them, but haven’t received any replies.<\/p>\n At the beginning of the year, my friend Jacob asked for my help in setting up a podcasting studio in his home.\u00a0\u00a0 We picked out equipment, set it up, tested it, and now I’m the recording engineer for the bi-weekly podcast Radio Golden<\/a>.\u00a0 This was my introduction to podcasting in general and through him I was introduced to other podcasts to listen to.\u00a0 One of my favorites so far is Radiolab<\/a>.<\/p>\n Last summer I started streaming my own weekly radio program called Road Trip.\u00a0 It’s not a podcast yet, you have to listen to it live<\/a> on Friday evenings. To stream this program requires no bureaucracy or government approval.<\/p>\n I wrote a letter to the local newspaper calling for people interested in starting a radio station to contact me.\u00a0 The response was lukewarm.\u00a0 I received about four replies, most of them wanting to have their own radio show.\u00a0 But no one seems very enthusiastic about trying to work through the bureaucracy of actually making the station a reality.<\/p>\n There is a lot that has to be done:<\/p>\n If the FCC application is approved, there is even a longer list of stuff that needs to be done, more applications, fund raising to pay for equipment, etc.\u00a0 If only four people responded to my call for volunteers, what’s fundraising going to be like?<\/p>\n I’m not the kind of person who likes bureaucracy.\u00a0 (I can’t even spell it.)\u00a0\u00a0 I see the simplicity of using the internet as a means of audio transmission and I wonder if it’s the future.\u00a0 I ask myself, why do I want to jump through a bunch of hoops and pay a bunch of fees just to satisfy some romantic notion I have of radio?\u00a0 While I have some friends who are supportive of my radio station idea, I don’t know enough locals who are enthused enough to really bond over the idea, to keep the momentum going while getting through the bureaucracy.\u00a0\u00a0 It needs to be a team effort and there is no team.<\/p>\n If I scrap the traditional radio idea, I will also scrap the community radio idea.\u00a0\u00a0 If I go with the internet transmission method, then I’m going to join up with my music geeking friends and create a station that is not tied to location.\u00a0 For all the fees I would have paid with submitting various government applications, I can buy each of them mics and mixers.\u00a0 That would be just as fun as my old romantic notion of radio.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Back in 2008… I decided this town would be a good fit for a small town radio station, much like the one portrayed on the TV series Northern Exposure.\u00a0 Later my friend Daoine O’ became a DJ at the station … Continue reading Podcasting<\/h2>\n
Is anybody out there?<\/h2>\n
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Lying awake at night<\/h2>\n
The alternative<\/h2>\n