Rupert Murdoch is looking like the cat that ate the canary with his successful takeover of Dow Jones & Co. and its flagship newspaper, The Wall Street Journal. Media conglomerates like Murdoch’s News Corp. are among the most powerful corporations on the planet. His papers beat the drums for war while distracting with gossip and glitz.
Yet people are finding innovative ways to fight back, to demand independent, community-based media. One such effort that you can join is the movement to create new, full-power, noncommercial FM radio stations in the U.S.
This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity. The Federal Communications Commission will open a one-week window, Oct. 12-19, during which nonprofit community groups in the U.S. can file applications.
Think for a moment what a powerful, noncommercial radio station could do in your community. As the late George Gerbner, dean of the Annenberg School for Communication, said, we need a media not run by “corporations that have nothing to tell and everything to sell, that are raising our children today.”
Community radio is the antidote to that small circle of pundits featured on all the networks, who know so little about so much, explaining the world to us and getting it so wrong. On community radio, you can hear your neighbors, you can hear people from your community: the silenced majority, silenced by the corporate media.
Pacifica Radio, the network where I got my start, is the oldest public broadcasting network in the United States, founded in 1949 by conscientious objectors like Lew Hill. He created the concept of “listener-sponsored” radio-the radical concept that quality programming could be put out over the air that would be so different and so valuable to the audience that the listeners would give money to keep it going, and they have, all over the country. After Pacifica station KPFT went on the air in Houston in 1970, its transmitter was blown up, twice; it is the only U.S. radio station to have suffered such crimes. The transmitter was destroyed by the Ku Klux Klan. Why? Because the station allowed people to speak for themselves, and that challenges stereotypes and caricatures, which fuel hate groups like the KKK.
Pacifica Radio is now part of a national coalition, RadioForPeople.org, that is helping groups file for their own radio licenses. You can check out the availability of a license by entering your ZIP code at the website getradio.org.
Independent community radio provided critical coverage of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. While Cumulus Media was banning the Dixie Chicks for daring to speak out against war, Clear Channel radio stations were sponsoring prowar rallies around the country. Roxanne (Walker) Cordonier, the South Carolina Broadcasters Association’s 2002 radio personality of the year, was fired by Clear Channel-owned station WMYI-FM in Greenville, S.C. “I was fired for being antiwar,” she told me. “I was told to shut up. People who retained their employment had the presence of mind to keep quiet.” She sued, and Clear Channel settled with her just before trial (for a sum said to be about a year’s salary). Four years later, she is back on the air, now buying airtime on a locally owned station. “People forget,” she says, “these are the public airwaves, and the public is not getting access to them.”
From coast to coast, from Alaska to Hawaii to Florida to Maine, people are organizing to reclaim a small portion of the public airwaves. The October FCC application window for full-power, noncommercial FM licenses is an opportunity to make a meaningful, long-term contribution to your local media landscape-to help give a voice to the voiceless, to carry on the fine tradition of Pacifica Radio, to create a beacon for truth under which people can discuss the most important issues of the day: war and peace, life and death. Check out getradio.org. Start your own community radio station, and wipe that smile off Rupert Murdoch’s face.
Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 500 stations in North America.
© 2007 Amy Goodman; distributed by King Features Syndicate
Since there is no effectivly organized resistance to the fascist take-over of the USA, it appears the Internet is living on borrowed time, until a global media empire emerges to trap all of humanity in its electronic fascism.
A massive popular demand for impeachment of Bush & Cheney is the only legal way to stop it, but that is “off the table” so, when the next terrorist attack happens and Bush & Cheney automatically become dictators, all resistance will be crushed. Is there any other realistic scenario?
To start one we need non-corporate money. That’s hard to find, ask PBS. If the airwaves are public, why should we have to pay for their use? We don’t get a say about our half our tax dollars going to the Military Industrial machine, so we won’t get a say on that one either. Not as long as corporate pols decide things. Direct democracy NOW!
We lost progressive radio in NE Ohio earlier this year. The radio station that I thought was brave went to an all-sports format (as if NE Ohio needed another all-sports radio station.) I like talk radio but now when I drive to and from work the choices are right wing (four channels offer R-Limbaugh from noon to 3 pm; none offers progressive or liberal radio), and/or redneck (where women are referred to as bitches, and worse), or black radio that I tend to enjoy until the unkind comments about white people start. (By the way, I am PINK. The only white man I ever knew was an albino man from Vancouver but this is off topic.) Satellite radio is not in my budget.
Thank you Amy Goodman - for this and a lot more I haven’t thanked you for.
Peace.
Juliann,
That’s happening across the USA. Where I live, C-Span was moved to channels 97 and 98, the farthest edge of Cable TV. The problem is corporate fascists have occupied the White House and are successfully overthrowing America’s democratic institutions, including free radio, and the only legal way to stop them is by impeachment. If we cannot agree on that, then our confusion dooms us to extinction.
Thanks & praise to Amy Goodman, a true beacon of light in an otherwise dismal media landscape. The media where I live,in Oklahoma, is truly bleak. Just think what a
difference just 1 community radio station could mean here
in the so called “heartland”. A lot of people here think that independent media is propaganda, that they get the real story from MSM such as CNN and that truly horrible rag, The Daily Oklahoman.
most cities dont qualify, because of obsolete FCC frequency spacing regs: the dial is full. These are being challenged by bills now in congress promoting low power fm (lpfm) radio. Support them, and they will serve as a template for wider full power availability.
Info: http://www.prometheusradio.org/
” ezeflyer August 8th, 2007 12:40 pm
To start one we need non-corporate money. That’s hard to find, ask PBS. If the airwaves are public, why should we have to pay for their use? …”
BECAUSE the organization providing you with the broadcasting service must pay for technlogy and staff, maybe? Getting a radio station of your own and broadcasting over it is one thing, but who’s going to provide the technological infrastructure that is required? If not the person with the radio station, then a provider, and the latter must pay for the tech. and the staff needed to do the related administration. That costs money.
I’m mostly guessing, but tech. is certainly involved, and all tech. and the administration of it costs money.
Hence, what Amy Goodman’s talking about sounds very good to me. Whether or not people will be able to make this movement a LIVE, living, and sustained one is another matter or question; and the answer will hopefully be a strong ‘YES’, and pervasively, nation-wide so.
BUMP THIS TO THE MAIN HEADLINE!!!
If you want a true antiwar voice and the truth, listen to Pacifica, Democracy Now and Amy Goodman, NOT Air America Radio, especially Randi Rhodes and the rest of the DNC operatives posing as hosts. Rhodes won’t tell her listeners that Bush wouldn’t have been able to commit the Iraq crime without Dem’s help. She won’t tell you that Clinton destroyed the middle class with NAFTA, GATT and welfare ‘reform’. That he also bombed Iraq for 8 years and other SIX countries.
No prob, Sean!
entelechy August 8th, 2007 1:01 pm wrote:
“That’s happening across the USA. Where I live, C-Span was moved to channels 97 and 98, the farthest edge of Cable TV. The problem is corporate fascists have occupied the White House and are successfully overthrowing America’s democratic institutions, including free radio, and the only legal way to stop them is by impeachment. If we cannot agree on that, then our confusion dooms us to extinction.”
While I would like to see this whole administration impeached, they are the product of our corporate system of government. Getting rid of them would not fix the problem. They have many layers of “operatives” to do their bidding. And there will always be as long as the new american dream is to get rich. I think the people who buy into our corporate system are not as interested in what is good for America as a nation as they are in their own enrichment and worship of money.
One side effect is that my local paper, the Times-Herald Record of Middletown, NY was also purchased since that paper had the same parent company. New meaning to the words lousy and biased.
macchendra, I agree….MOVE THIS ARTICLE TO THE MAIN HEADLINE!
Check out the sponsors of PBS News Hour and tell me you are confident that you are hearing ALL the truth. As much as I enjoy the program,especially the repartee between Jim, Mark and David,I get the feeling they are pulling their punches a lot of the time. Nevertheless,their does appear to be a balance not seen in many other areas (including left wing areas).
Hello all: Ron Paul is a scam, he is an elitist, libertarian far-right wing. Even though he is “anti neocons” and “anti war” his political program is not good for USA. In studying history, current events, economics I have come to the conclusion that the only rational medicine and solution for a nation’s problem is Socialist Economic System, not libertarianism. Socialism puts wealth created by a nation in workers, while libertarianism is capitalism taken to the extreme, libertarianism is oligarchic ruling indeed. Only socialism can democratize the USA
Kucinich Helps the AFL-CIO Prove a Point
1 hour, 3 minutes ago
The Nation — When the AFL-CIO organized a presidential debate at Chicago’s Soldier Field, leaders of the labor federation quietly went out of their way to make sure that Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich would be on the stage.
While some debate organizers have talked about excluding so-called “lesser” candidates — those like Kucinich with low poll numbers and small bank accounts — from the debates, the AFL-CIO wanted progressive populist from Cleveland front and center Tuesday night. Why? Because leaders of the labor organization recognize the importance of candidates who stand on principle rather than merely engage in political calculations.
They also recognize that Kucinich’s determination to express his principles — which happen to parallel those of labor activists on worker rights, health and safety concerns and, above all, trade policy — would put frontrunners Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards on the spot.
The senators from New York and Illinois and the former senator from North Carolina have shaky records on a host of issues that of high priorities for union members. Clinton close ties to Wall Street and have led her to support much of the free-trade agenda favored by multinational corporations — a fact highlighted by Edwards when he referenced a recent feature in a financial magazine on Clinton’s appeal to big business by saying, “You will never see a picture of me on the front of Fortune magazine saying I am the candidate that big corporate America is betting on.”
Edwards may be “the angry populist” now. But he has not always been on labor side. Edwards — who supported North Carolina’s anti-union “Right-to-Work” law when he ran for the Senate in 1998 — broke with the AFL-CIO to cast several key votes in favor of the Bill Clinton administration’s free-trade agenda when he served in the Senate.
Kucinich, a longtime union member who has maintained a 100 percent AFL-CIO ranking during his years in Congress, broke with Clinton to side with labor on those critical votes. In fact, he’s often been more aggressive than union leaders when it comes to challenging trade pacts that are stacked against workers, communities and the environment in the U.S. and abroad.
On Tuesday night, Kucinich wowed the crowd of 15,000 union activists in Chicago when he promised to use a little-known provision in the North American Free Trade Agreement to pull the U.S. out of the deal.
“In my first week in office, I will notify Mexico and Canada that the United States is withdrawing from NAFTA,” declared Kucinich. “I will notify the WTO, that the United States is withdrawing from the WTO.”
As the applause rose from a rumble to a thunderous roar, Kucinich shouted, “How about it America? Do you want out of NAFTA? Do you want out of the WTO? Listen to the workers of America, let them hear from you!”
It was the most rousing moment of the night, perhaps of all the Democratic debates up to this point.
Kucinich did exactly what the AFL-CIO’s leadership had hoped he would. He showed the most cautious frontrunners — all of whom continue to back NAFTA, albeit with apologies and calls for reform — just how much enthusiasm there is for a radical shift from the misguided trade policies of Bill Clinton and George Bush. That’s a lesson that 2004 Democratic nominee John Kerry never really got, to the detriment of his bid for blue-collar votes that year.
None of this is meant to suggest that Kucinich will win any official endorsements from the individual unions of the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations, which as of this week are formally freed by the federation to start picking their favorite contenders. Labor organizations tends to go with perceived winners rather than allies who are trailing.
But on Tuesday night, Kucinich won the hearty applause of one of the largest crowds ever to listen to a presidential debate. And he earned high marks from analysts like Hotline’s Chuck Todd, who says the AFL-CIO forum was: “Easily (Kucinich’s) best debate.”
He also proved the vital importance of including non-frontrunners in presidential debates that, without candidates like Democrat Kucinich and Republican Ron Paul, would be a lot shorter on ideas and a lot longer on empty political positioning.
———————————————————————
John Nichols’ new book is THE GENIUS OF IMPEACHMENT: The Founders’ Cure for Royalism. Rolling Stone’s Tim Dickinson hails it as a “nervy, acerbic, passionately argued history-cum-polemic [that] combines a rich examination of the parliamentary roots and past use of the ‘heroic medicine’ that is impeachment with a call for Democratic leaders to ‘reclaim and reuse the most vital tool handed to us by the founders for the defense of our most basic liberties.’”
Like this article? Try 4 issues of The Nation at home (and online) FREE.
Copyright © 2007 The Nation
Hey u all: Watch out: Alex Jones, Ron Paul and their far-right chauvinist supporters hate the US left, they claim that the US left are “leftgatekeepers” funded and supported by the Illuminati Order. Watch out and let’s deffend and strenghten the US-Left which is too weak at the moment !!
ACQUISITION OF THE WALL STREET JOURNAL BY MURDOCH
We can now expect the influence of FOX news to be extended to the WSJ, who unlike FOX has generally maintained reliability (excluding their editorial page). This would be of little concern if so many were not influenced by such biased & deceptive reporting, guided by right wing extremists & special interests.
By poisoning our press, this native Australian has inflicted damage on our system, which will only be compounded unless this acquisition is halted. If not we can chalk up victory for the Bush team & their right wing supporters–and a defeat for journalism & our republic.
Depressing amount of posting spam (material unrelated to the article) here. Anyway though, from getradio.org:
“….Preparing a competitive application for a license will require the professional assistance of a radio engineer and a telecommunications lawyer. Does your organization have room in your budget or the capacity to fundraise $5,000 to $7,000 to support this process? Are you prepared to incur these expenses even if you are not granted the license?
Yes
No
Don’t Know
If you are granted a license, does your organization have room in your budget or the capacity to fundraise the $20,000 to $500,000 it would take to build and staff a station of this nature?
Yes
No
Don’t Know….”
It’s still about the money. I’d love to see a Pacifica affiliate aired where I live (Fairmont, WV). But I do not have the money and for that matter I’m going to be too busy trying to just survive these next few years even if it didn’t cost all this money.
August, 7 - 11:05 AM
Dominican official prefers Venezuela as partner in oil refinery
Article source: http://www.dominicantoday.com/app/article.aspx?id=24994
Presidents Hugo Chavez, Leonel Fernandez.
SANTO DOMINGO.- A new twist has taken place in the scandal of the alleged alterations of fuel import manifests by the company Shell, as an influential official called on the Dominican Government to acquire that firm’s shares in the refinery Refidomsa, and forge a partnership with an oil-producing nation under the condition of building a new facility.
Cabinet level minister Miguel Mejìa, who has close relationship with Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, mentioned among those countries, Mexico, Brazil or the United States, in addition to Venezuela.
He said the Petrocaribe summit will take place this weekend in Caracas, which Venezuela’s ambassador Francisco Belisario Landis confirmed.
Mejia, also questioned the international credentials of the transnational firm Trafigura, one of the firms taking part in the negotiations to acquire Shell’s shares. He showed documents where Trafigura was supposedly involved recently in a bribery scandal which led to the resignation of Colin Campbell, a senior Jamaica government official.
According to those documents the Holland-based company also confronted problems in the Ivory Coast, Africa, where a toxic spill from its plants killed 10 people, intoxicated 20,000 and affected thousands more.
When I mentioned the Dow/WSJ takeover to two 20 something young adults, they looked at me like I was talking foreign policy.
They may not know why this situation is important to them, but start to take away their Internet for whatever trumped up reasons and you will hear them howl with indignation.
Test…
Karl_Marx: Your 8:37pm post was great, and conveyed a lot about the candidates and the unions for which they seek support from. Of all the Democrats running, Kucinich stands out like a bright star on a crystal clear night. Not only on labor issues, but on other domestic and international problems as well. But the labor leaders will pick one of the “corporate front-runners” rather than the candidate who will best serve working people.
To: EZEFLYER, ENTELECHY, JULIANN, ZONGMAN, and anyone else interested. Read my comment on the JOHN PILGER article about KPFA.ORG, and check out the station for yourselves. I send them money every year and if you do listen to some of their informative programming, please donate to the station. All the info is on the main page.
RBRISBANE_1984: I agree and disagree with your statement. KPFA 94.1 fm out of Berkely, California, their affiliate station, 88.1 FM, in Fresno, Ca., and KPFK 91.7 in Los Angeles, is listener sponsered and supported and commercial free. Those stations owned by Pacifica Radio, are not lackys for the Democrats like some of the talk show hosts on Air America. Where I live in California, I can listen to KPFA, and to me, it is the best radio station in the USA if not the planet! Hyperbole is not my game. Before Air America was created, and unless you lived near one of the few Pacifica radio stations, it was eitherthe junk on NPR or the zillion right-wing reactionary stations broadcasting Rush, Bill, Sean, Mike, and the hate-mongering Christian Taliban. At least with Randi and the other hosts on AA, they take on the Bush Republican Crime Family. Before Air America, and the exception of some smaller progressive radio stations, there was no opposition at all in any major way.
I’ve been upset for 16 years since Clinton signed NAFTA, GATT, the welfare reform bill, continued the attacks in Iraq and the sanctions, bombing Yugoslavia, and passing the Telecommunications Act. I know how you feel!
There is nothing wrong with being partisan. If Labor had any spine or guts there would be pro-labor radio stations across the country. But the Pie Cards do not really want change as they continue to practice Gompers - style unionism, which means being in bed with the corporations. Another commentator above, or several of you, are spot on when you ask “Where can one raise the money?” How many non-profits can we support, non-profits themselves being mostly middle class and liberal in orientation? The Left has money, but it is in the trade-union coffers. Let some of these damn Pie Cards give up their high salaries and bring their incomes closer to the rank and file who they supposedly represent, and that would free up some money for radio stations
and we might achieve a true democracy in this country rather than the abbatoir we have in Washington D.C.
Amy Goodman is one of my hero’’s. Her tireless work has been a true inspiration to the peace and justice movement for many years. I am fortunate enough to hear her show Democracy Now on an independent community radio station and I am awed at the growth of this station who take no money from corporate sponsors, and no money from the national public radio folks. Not only do they exist solely by contributions o f the local community, they are growing. Imagine such a thing in central Florida of all places.
i thought rush limbaugh was america’s voice of honesty.
Hello peacemaker: Thanx for your support.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8545585184878490822&q=michael+tsarion
if u can please download this 3 hour documentary called 2012: The future of mankind its a great work by Michael tsarion an Irish sociologist talking about why neocons are in power, he was voted in by people like hitler and why people are so enslaved, who rules the world, he talks about the ‘big daddy’ way of thinking of people, etc.
I checked out getradio.org. They say the easiest way to start is to find if a frequency is available in your area and if you input your zipcode you will find out “right away”. So I input my zip and did not find out right away. They just asked me more questions. So I contacted them by phone and the message was that 0110 was not available.
We have a station in sarasota http://www.wslr.org/html/livebroadcast/live.htm amd Wmnf in Tampa.
Nobody including Amy is talkin about organizing the opposition.
Revolution is the Dream that Folk Singers are supposed to keep alive.
A system needs a right wing and a left wing to fly.
we can not ever change the system until we unite the opposition.
Dennis will end up supporting Hillary.
Time to face the future…Hillary is goin to be Prez.
Now once we face the facts we can begin to organize but right now all we do is say this party or that candidate or that system is the only one.
This is the startus Quo and is why we are goin in all directions at once and goin nowhere.
Just thought we needed some tough Love Folks.
Jim
“….Preparing a competitive application for a license will require the professional assistance of a radio engineer and a telecommunications lawyer. Does your organization have room in your budget or the capacity to fundraise $5,000 to $7,000 to support this process? Are you prepared to incur these expenses even if you are not granted the license?
Or you could just get plans to build a high quality radio from Stephen Dunifers web site,build the whole studio for less than a thousand, listen to the fm band and find an unused spot and go pirate style:
http://www.freeradio.org/
Why are we asking permission to broadcast from our corporate controlled government? Neither the government nor the corporations need any more of our money and we don’t need their permission IMO.
from getradio.org:
“It will take as many as five years to receive the permit and build the station.”
Five years is too late. This seems like an intentional ploy to divert well-intentioned people into wasting their time while the fascist takeover marches onward.
Amy Goodman: Why don’t you ask the tough Questions about 9/11- remember that infamous Aug 6th memo, “Bin Laden Determined to attack in the United States” - why did Both Bush and Condi say their first thought was, “What a terrible accident?” After this memo, why weren’t the fighter jets on high alert and ready to intercept? Why did Rumsfeld say, “Those were domestic airplanes, which makes it a law enforcement issue” WTF ?!!! And of course, if Silverstein decided to “pull” WTC 7, how did they wire the building so quickly? WHO told Rudy G. that the towers were about to collapse, and why didn’t he tell the firefighters?
Why doesn’t Amy dare to ask these questions?
86bushnow, I know it’s off-topic, but I believe that Ms. Goodman is in the progressive camp that prefers to accept– or at least not dispute– the Official Version of the events of 9/11 as ratified by NOVA and Popular Mechanics.
As you may be aware, the events of 9/11 were so traumatic that even many non-establishment progressives sought the path of least resistance by avoiding rigorous inquiry into an abundance of loose ends and peculiar coincidences surrounding that day. They wield Occam’s Razor like a switchblade to ward off unsettling doubt and sinister complexity. Instead, they prefer to scathingly denounce straw-person “conspiracy-thinkers” as patently absurd and misguided, and are apparently horrified and appalled that tinfoil-hatters are bringing down The Cause by branding progressives wacko by association.
I admire and appreciate Ms. Goodman in most respects, but I think it’s unfortunate that her response to your query would simply be, “Shut up about that!”
Amy I am sure is aware of these questions about 9/11.
Questions are not evidence of guilt.
The Fire Dept. had a helicopter looking right into the huge hole in the tower and told that some beams are getting red hot and starting to bend and that it looked like the building was gonna go.
When structural steel reaches only 1000 degrees F .
it begins to fail.
The best way to get sympathy for a documented war criminal like Bush is to accuse him of even more spectacular crimes that cannot be proven.
Every time progressives start to come together, the 9/11 truth questions which are a face for accusations, become the center of disunity and defeat.
most of the current questions are answered at http://www.debunking911.com/
Jim
More spam. So it goes.
Amy Goodman has spent endless amounts of time talking about conspiratorial actions of the US CIA, etc which have killed hundreds of thousands (well millions really) of people. You consider the 3,000 killed in New York more important probably because you’re a nationalist at heart.
For non-nationalists, the deaths in East Timor, Haiti, etc matter just as much, are just as uncovered by the MSM and are far easier to prove.
Back to this actual article, the problem is that either you’ve got the organization and money and there’s no bandwidth, or there is bandwidth but you live in a sparsely populated area with no organization/money. But I hope someone is able to make use of this.
Why will Dennis Kucinich need to support Hillary..when HE is the nominee of the Democratic party?…I dont get it…
Karl_Marx, I have to take issue with your Ron Paul bashing and your Socialist agenda. It is my opinion that Ron Paul, of any of the candidates, Dem or Rep, would be the only person with the guts to actually end the war and attempt to end all foreign occupation. It is highly unlikely that he (or Kucinich for that matter) will be elected so we won’t ever see if that would happen. Whoever is elected, from the current shameful pool of leading candidates, is going to continue to play by the rules of the elitist corporate socialist welfare military agenda.
Libertarians, the truly principled ones, however you may despise their laissez-faire approach, would NEVER have gotten us into the mess we are in now.
Socialism wants regulation of everything. The so called left wants to regulate what I eat, smoke, drink; wants to make me wear seat belts, wear bike helmets, and pay lots of taxes so they can regulate regulate and regulate! It wants to put the general welfare into the hands of a few who “know what’s good for us”. Bakunins prediction, that Marxism would merely replace one tyranny for another, has proven itself over and over; need I point them out? As soon as we let our guard down and put our trust in those in authority who will take care of us, we become complacent sheep and end up following our leaders to the slaughter.
So back to Amy Goodman and Pacifica Radio, I support them wholeheartedly, financially and otherwise. They are not encumbered with corporate or government funding so they are free to report what they deem important, if not imperative.
So called public radio (gov’t funded partially, as well as corporate funded) is now watered down and out of touch with the real issues. Listening to NPR is dangerous while driving, it will put you to sleep.
Even if the license is non-commercial, you need to have the station organized like a business. If the licenses are full power as Amy says, it will cost in the nieghborhood of a half million dollars to build the technical facility. It makes no sense to scrimp on the electronics or do half ass engineering as it will just cost more money in the long run. Now the fun will begin.
It is going to take another half million to rent space, hire and pay a few competent people to keep the station going for the first year…
Now you have to raise enough money so you can run the station bare bones 24/7 and that will cost around 5ok a month or 600k a year.
Now about the “neighbors and volunteers” you’ll hear on the radio are they willing to give up their nights and weekends to do radio? A good two hour show takes around 6-8 hours at the minimum, to plan produce and execute…how many of the local eager beavers know that? Or do they think they are so damned brilliant they can walk into a studio open the mic and start talking? Probably!
I have been in broadcasting for 30 years and know what I’m talking about…it’s expensive, it’s not easy and just because you’ve used one all your life doesn’t mean you know shit about radio. The line with people who know what is wrong with something is always a mile long…you’ll need to find somebody who can figure out what is right!
By the way suck up your ego because it is very rare that what you think is the right thing to put on the air is seldom what most people want to listen to!
Find a (or some) wealthy progressive who can afford to lose 5-6 million on the project and get the funds and do it right and have enough cash to keep it alive until it takes hold in the community otherwise you’re just blowing smoke up your ass and everyone else’s too!
Pacifica is always scrambling for money and the programming is uneven at best. They are always fighting about something on the inside and it always seems to spill over on the street and into the community…the situation in LA right now is a perfect example. Ask yourself,what sane liberal or progressive business would ever commit to underwriting a cat fight?
I built and ran the only money making Air America station in the country…I know it can be done, but it is not like an old Mickey Rooney movie…”hey, let’s put a show on in my Grandpa’s barn!”
Jager
O.k. this wasn’t community radio but folks called in!
Phil Donahue running across the set of his show mike in hand so we could be brought a message from a mom that wasn’t a movie star! a message that we may of all needed to hear. Granted we sat through a few adds but as a child in Beverly, West Virginia these moments did give me hope (the woman’s message not the adds). Then Mr. Rogers came on and I learned a message without adds, though we might of liked to teach his puppet world to sing a little better at times.
The town cryer on the radio and all those folks who called in totally off the subject with nothing to sell! fantastic.
I wonder what an hour on democracy now with even Phil Donahue running around with a mike getting the input from others about gitmo, palestine, prison, healthcare…would be like or even better folks just being able to talk. LIVE.
What do you think script writers?
O.k. back to community radio.
O.k. this wasn’t community radio but folks called in!Phil Donahue running across the set of his show mike in hand so we could be brought a message from a mom that wasn’t a movie star! a message that we may of all needed to hear. Granted we sat through a few adds but as a child in Beverly, West Virginia these moments did give me hope (the woman’s message not the adds). Then Mr. Rogers came on and I learned a message without adds, though we might of liked to teach his puppet world to sing a little better at times.
The town cryer on the radio and all those folks who called in totally off the subject with nothing to sell! fantastic.
I wonder what an hour on democracy now with even Phil Donahue running around with a mike getting the input from others about gitmo, palestine, prison, healthcare…would be like or even better folks just being able to talk. LIVE.
What do you think script writers?
O.k. back to community radio.
Margaret Bryant-Gainer West Virginia Peace