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Broadcasting and Cable reports that the FCC has voted to eliminate "the almost eight-decade old requirement that broadcasters, radio and TV, maintain a main studio in or near their community of license." The National Association of Broadcasters expressed support for the change, saying the rule "has outlived its usefulness in an era of mobile news gathering and multiple content delivery platforms."
FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn opposed the move, saying it signified "embracing a world in which automated national programming is the new normal." Other critics saw the vote as easing the way for a Sinclair–Tribune merger.
Further reading: statement of Ajit Pai (PDF)
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Either I'm dead or my watch has stopped.
-- Groucho Marx's last words
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Uncle_Al on Thursday October 26 2017, @06:58PM (7 children)
"Local Studio" means someone playing stuff generated by some guy in his home studio pretending to be local, if that.
Support non-commercial non-networked radio
At least you know there is a human behind the mike.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 26 2017, @07:21PM
Times have changed since "Weird Al" Yankovic starred in UHF. Aspiring stars desperate for breakout fame with sleeper hits like Stanley Spadowski's Clubhouse don't have to settle for TV or radio. They have YouTube now.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 26 2017, @10:47PM (5 children)
some guy in his home studio pretending to be local
From 10PM till 6AM, KKJZ (K-Jazz) used to play hour-long recordings that had been recently made by Bob Parlocha (the best DJ I've heard outside of Classical stations).
Bob died in March 2015.
That syndicated thing continued till about a month after his death, doing repeats from his many years of stuff.
At that point, I'm guessing, the contract expired.
Bob told you the name of the tune, who wrote it, the album where you could find the tune[1], the label, and the name of every player on the session.
If there was somebody on the album who was laying out for that tune, he'd likely get mentioned too.
Bob would often say who arranged the tune (if that was different from the composer) and, being a working musician, he would often have a little trivia to add about 1 or more of the musicians on the track.
We're talking here about a real pro from the best days of radio.
(The Boston NPR station that syndicated his program also had webpages with his playlists, which had the information--aside from the list of players).
He'd never pretend to be anything other than a syndicated hired hand.
I -REALLY- miss that guy.
[1] ...which was sometimes different than the out-of-print album he was actually playing.
.
KKJZ (formerly KLON) is licensed to California State University, Long Beach.
A bit after Bob died, KKJZ got new management and that bunch moved the studio to the west side of Los Angeles.
Not so long ago, the station went fully automated 8PM to 8AM.
Songs aren't announced; it's like an iPod on Shuffle.[2]
That's still OK--if you have a web connection and can pull up their what's-playing-now page. [jazzandblues.org]
[2] It reminds me of the WKRP episode where the fully-automated operation (~1980) offered Venus Flytrap a highly-paid do-nothing position because the all-White station wanted their racial diversity numbers to look better.
.
Another thing that really irritated me about KKJZ's ham-fisted management is that my old bookmark for their what's-playing-now page suddenly became a 403.
I was trying to access kkjz.org and they had simply unceremoniously dropped that, apparently not wanting to pay $8 for another year's domain registry AND not putting up a redirect saying WE'RE CHANGING THINGS--UPDATE YOUR BOOKMARKS either during the last month before the change.
.
Oooo. At this point I have to mention a guy on the station who does things right.
Gordon Goodwin, leader of The Big Phat Band and The Little Phat Band has a show called Phat Tracks that airs (and streams) noon - 2PM Pacific Time on Saturdays (and repeats 11PM - 1AM Fridays).
He pre-records the show but does an excellent job of that.
All of his tunes show up in the station's online playlist. [archive.li]
This is in stark contrast to other folks (Johnny Magnus, Jerry Sharell, John Pizzarelli) who will just slop together an hour-long MP3 that barely registers in the playlist.
Note also that Gordo doesn't stick strictly to Jazz tunes.
He's there to help you appreciate how music is crafted and he'll play anything with "phatness".
.
Oh, and Helen Borgers, who had worked for the station for decades, and Brad Williams, another long-time employee, were unceremoniously canned in the process of "upgrading" the station.
One day, they just weren't there any more.
Shortly after that, Helen had the bad luck of having a heart attack with no insurance.
.
In September, my Smooth Jazz station in south Orange County became just a repeater for a mostly-bad[3] station in the San Fernando Valley
[3] Even more like an iPod on Shuffle than KKJZ.
...though Harry Shearer's "Le Show" has gained a broadcast outlet in The OC once again.
"Public" radio looks more and more like ad-riddled let's-maximize-profits-and-minimize-workers commercial radio with every passing month.
The only thing that's left with any backbone (no ads; mostly volunteer presenters) is the Pacifica Radio network.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Uncle_Al on Friday October 27 2017, @12:03AM (1 child)
"The only thing that's left with any backbone (no ads; mostly volunteer presenters) is the Pacifica Radio network."
WFMU
KFJC (currently in their weird style of fundraising mode)
also available on the web
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 27 2017, @12:30AM
WFMU
Yeah. I've got one of their webpages bookmarked.
A Bill of Rights for Today's Busy Citizen [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [wfmu.org]
That's also the station that syndicated Bob Parlocha.
I erroneously pegged them as a Boston station.
They broadcast to NY/NJ.
KFJC
Good to hear about them as well.
Surprised that I haven't stumbled across them previously.
{Raising a glass to both}
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 27 2017, @03:10AM (2 children)
> KKJZ (formerly KLON) is licensed to California State University, Long Beach.
When the university bought KLON, it shut down its student-run 10-watt, monaural FM station, KSUL [ksul.org]. KLON took over KSUL's studio. Check out the MP3 [ksul.org] with snippets of some KSUL programming.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 27 2017, @03:50AM (1 child)
Hmmm. I don't recall ever before seeing audio sampled at 112kbit.
The intro contains an interesting mix of genres.
It made me think of The Darkling Eclectica [kuci.org] out of KUCI from the University of California, Irvine.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 28 2017, @03:17PM
It was before my time, but I understand that KSUL was what's known as free-form radio: the DJs could play what they pleased. Another page [socalradiowaves.com] tells its story (which I had paraphrased).