Gloria Tristani speaks in Minneapolis

Here’s a video of comments from former FCC Commissioner Gloria Tristani at the Alliance for Community Media Conference in Minneapolis in July.   Gloria spoke on spectrum policy, issues before the FCC, and the recent controversy on Ken Burns’ documentary in Latino communities across the U-S:

Hannah Sassaman at ACM National Conference

After a summer-long hiatus, it’s the return of Scratch Pad!

To get things started off, here’s video of Hannah Sassaman from the Prometheus Radio Project at the Alliance for Community Media national conference in Minneapolis this summer. She’s introduced by Denis Moynahan from Democracy Now!

J-Lab New Voices Grant

SPNN got some nice news this past week about grant support for a news project we’re developing from the New Voices project of J-Lab. What’s even nicer is other community media and media justice groups (Reclaim the Media, Access SF, Cambridge Community TV) got awards for new projects.

The press release on the awards is here.

Citizen Media meets Citizen Media

Here’s a mention of community radio station KAXE in Grand Rapids MN working with some of the people involved with citizen empowerment on the web in Minnesota. I don’t know Griff Wigley that well, but he’s sort of a friend of a friend and has been involved with MN e-Democracy. Nice to see, especially because KAXE has such a great tradition of giving citizens a voice in their community.

Community Radio Conferences

Turn about is fair play…Several good radio conferences taking place….

WWOZ is a great station, preserving and honoring the culture at the heart of a great community….They will be hosting the National Federation of Community Broadcasters Conference in New Orleans, April 11-14.

Another community radio gathering is taking place in Madison, WI in July (hmmm…looks like Madison is some kind of hotbed).   WORT is hosting the 11th Grassroots Radio Conference, July 27-30.    I’ll be at ACM National so I’ll miss out on the Madison action.

Maybe someone could coordinate something so we can all get together, say in 2008, 2009 or 2010?

Et tu, Liz?

If you ever needed a justification for community control of content in radio, here it is:

As a remedy for the corrupt oligopoly practice known as “payola,” four broadcast conglomerates are giving away 8400 “free” half-hours on their radio stations to independent musicians and record labels.

Notice that the practice of pay-for-play won’t be stopped.  Radio stations will only now have to report their monetary reimbursements from industry.

Further 8400 “free” half-hours is equivalent to a little less than a year’s programming on one community radio station.    Why can’t the big four set up an independent endowment to ensure community control of the airwaves instead?

Payola explains some of the molding of audience behavior in the music industry.   There are lots of places to track the fight and get involved.  I guess I can now use it as a rationalization for the popularity of JLo and Jessica Simpson.  But my heart sinks at the news of Liz Phair being mentioned in the same breath as part of this corruption investigation.    Was my interest in Exile in Guyville just bought and sold by some industry hack?  Et tu, Liz?

Enter Zip Code Here

If you haven’t done this yet, go here and enter your zip code, then tell your friends, have them tell their friends…It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity.

The effect a community radio station has on the development pattern of a town or a city is immense. We can talk about all the direct effects, but the indirect impact is incredible, for community education, strengthening the non-profit sector, building multi-cultural understanding, and improving the cultural life in your area.

Now is the time for groups to organize and prepare to file applications with the FCC in markets all over the country for a full-power license. And if it’s not in your community, tell somebody else.

Resonance: The best radio station in the world?

Like Flavor Flav, I typically don’t believe the hype.

But when I read that ResonanceFM, the community radio station run since 2002 by the London Musician’s Collective was calling itself “the best radio station in the world,” I stopped and thought about it.

I think I agree.

Resonance is one of about 100 community radio stations that have sprung up in the UK under the experimentation of the national telecom authority. The country has a storied tradition of state broadcasting (what were they called again?), and developed private commercial broadcast entities in the last 40 years. But the idea of community control of content at a radio station, responsive to local needs, didn’t really exist before the liberalization of licenses in the last decade. (For an overview of getting a community radio license in the UK- and I know you’ve been thinking about it in your spare time - go here.)

I stumbled upon ResonanceFm in 2003, right after they started terrestial and internet casts. Their micro transmitter covers part of central and south London, and they’ve always had some type of web component (now extended to podcasts and blogs for the communities they are encouraging).

I knew it was a community radio station when I saw the pdf of their program grid (that uber-quilt community radio calendar), but the thing I’ve admired listening to it the last three years has been its willingness to experiment, its diversity of content, and its ability to embrace intellectual content and art.

Community radio in the U-S I’ve come across almost always have a populist strain. But like much populist culture in the U-S, it also carries a distrust of intellectualism (you make the argument if that’s healthy or unhealthy). It’s the mirror image of the distrust Western intellectuals of all stripes have of modern culture (I gave up reading Adorno when he told me jazz was a fascist art form…He must have listened to too much Paul Whiteman.)

Have a listen for yourself and tell me what you think.

Welcome to the Notebook

The idea here is to try to gather different strands of community media practice, examine some, recommend others, and hopefully be of some use to people who are building the fabric of our sector.

I don’t claim to be an expert. I’m just lucky to have worked in an area I love, community radio and television, for the last 15+ years. I’ve learned that I don’t know things, and I’ve learned a lot about listening. And I’ve learned to be skeptical of pronouncements.

One of the first lessons I learned was about authenticy of voice. I’d been trained in broadcasting and journalism, but my friend Michele Flannery taught me to value the real creativity that resides with every person who dares to make media. She didn’t talk about it in quite those terms, and I think we could have been talking about SubPop releases or the radio program put together by a local architect who simply loved the Kinks. Encouraging the universal creativity of everyone seems like a utopian dream, but it lies at the heart of most of the best community media practices I’ve run into.

Another way to slice it is as a desire to humanize the culture we receive, and turn it into the culture we make. And I think that may translate to commercial, non-commercial, print, video, audio, hyperlocal or transnational practices. Let’s see.