Airwaves & Liberty

By unanimous vote, Nicole Sawaya was named yesterday as the Pacifica Foundation’s new Executive Director during the Pacifica National Board meeting in Berkeley. Nicole has signed a five-year contract that will give Pacifica long-needed continuity in leadership.

Sawaya is the former General Manager of KPFA (1998-1999). She was fired by then-Executive Director Lynn Chadwick amidst Pacifica’s well-known internal struggle. Called “the most popular boss the station has had in at least three decades” (ZMag), Sawaya’s firing was protested by both the KPFA staff and the listener-activist group “Take Back KPFA”. Her October 1999 interview with a reporter from the Berkeley Voice is posted here.

Prior to her work at KPFA, Sawaya was the General Manager at community radio station (and Pacifica Affiliate) KZYX in Philo, CA. Post-Pacifica, she was the General Manager at Bay Area public radio station KALW, where she was named was named the 2005 Journalist of the Year by the Northern California chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists for her contributions to the diversity and availability of news programming in the Bay Area.

Nicole Sawaya will begin her tenure as Executive Director on a part-time basis in mid-November, beginning full-time on December 3. In the meantime, Oakland-based attorney Dan Siegel will serve as interim Executive Director. Siegel has been Pacifica’s corporate counsel for more than a year and will be stepping down from that role during his brief tenure as iED.

A half-hour program available for download from Pacifica.org (or Audioport.org for Pacifica stations) on Wednesday, October 3rd.

An exploration of the contemporary Latino narrative in film, literature, and comics. The program joins the people expanding and challenging the issues affecting Latino representation in popular culture and discusses Latino artists and groups seizing the narrative to challenge stereotypes, tell their own stories and build their own distribution channels.

INTERVIEWED GUESTS:
- Stephanie St. Sanchez, founder of Senorita Cinema, a Latina International Film Festival
- Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Having their Say Literary Arts Collaborative at kPFT, Houston
- Lalo Alcaraz, creator of “La Cucaracha,” nationally syndicated comic strip. The Houston Chronicle recently dropped “La Cucaracha” under much controversy; the LA Times recently cancelled and then reinstated their subscription to the strip.
- Dr. Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez, Professor at UT-Austin, author of “Mexican Americans and World War II”

CREDITS:
Producers & hosts: Mo Roberts and Don Deeley, KPFT

TIME& SCHEDULE:
The show will run 29 minutes. It will be available for download from Audioport.org by Wednesday, October 3rd.

TARGET BROADCAST DATE: This special is somewhat “evergreen”, but will be most timely during “Hispanic Heritage Month”, which continues until October 15th.

For information, contact:
Nathan Moore, Network Programming Coordinator, nathan(at)pacifica.org

By Clea Simon, Globe Correspondent | September 27, 2007
From the Boston Globe

How does someone start a radio station? And why would anyone want to? These are the questions that community activist Grace Ross and radio journalists David Goodman and John Grebe have been asking themselves since last spring.

Next month along with other colleagues as members of the Grassroots Community Radio Initiative, they’ll be filing papers with the Federal Communications Commission. This is the first step of a lengthy application process, but only the latest development in what has become an ongoing project.

The idea, says Goodman, started at his current radio gig. Since 1995, Goodman has hosted “Radio With a View,” Sundays from 10 a.m. to noon on MIT community station WMBR-FM (88.1). Ross, who ran for governor as the Green Party/Rainbow candidate in 2006, provides commentaries for his show.

“It was last March,” Goodman recalls. “I was recording her commentary, and she said, ‘Why don’t we start a station?’ At first my reaction was, ‘What, are you crazy?’ And then I heard about the FCC filing window for this October and the agency’s desire to broaden the reach of noncommercial radio, and we started to go from there.”

The FCC “window” is a one-week period, Oct. 12-19, during which it will accept applications for new noncommercial FM stations. In order to apply, potential station owners have to fulfill certain requirements, such as finding a site for a transmitter and a frequency that won’t overlap with existing stations. In addition, only nonprofit organizations (not individuals) are allowed to apply.

And so the initiative members began reaching out to some of the organizations they’ve worked with, or reported on, over the years. The Peace Abbey, a multifaith retreat center in Sherborn, responded and even offered the use of a barn as a possible future home for the station.

Such a station, says Peace Abbey founder and director Lewis M. Randa, fits in with its mission. “A radio station at the Peace Abbey would offer people in the Metro-West area a place on the dial that is committed to highlighting and celebrating local issues that too often are overlooked by mainstream media,” Randa says in an e-mail.

The next step, says Goodman, is finding a “viable frequency.” To do that, the group has hired an engineering firm, Medfield’s Broadcasting Signal Lab, which may have located a blank space on the dial, possibly in Leominster. (The group doesn’t know what frequency would work yet.)

If all goes well, the team hopes to have a station on air in two to five years. The programming will probably be a mix of local shows and alternative news sources, like those carried on the Pacifica network. “We really need a voice for people in Massachusetts that hasn’t been there before,” says Ross. Adds Goodman, “We want to break down the barriers.”

One possible problem exists: According to FCC rules, the station’s transmitter must be within 25 miles of its city of license. If the blank frequency is too far from Sherborn, the group may have to find another nonprofit organization to be its sponsor.
Ross isn’t worried. “If the geography doesn’t work out, we do have other options,” she says. More pressing, says Goodman, is the need for money to pay the necessary lawyers and, ultimately, construct a station.

That’s why tonight the group is hosting a screening of the documentary “War Made Easy” at the Community Church of Boston, in Copley Square at 7. (For details, go to peaceabbeyradio.org.)

The impetus, says Ross, is air time. Programs like Goodman’s or like Grebe’s “Sounds of Dissent,” which airs Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Boston College community station WZBC-FM (90.3), broadcast only a few hours each week. A full-time station, says Ross, would help the community groups the initiative sees as its major constituency. She gives as an example the Boston-based MA’MOMs, which brings together mothers of murdered children and those whose children are incarcerated for violent crimes.

“We might do a live show from one of their meetings,” says Goodman.

“And we could get in touch with other groups,” says Ross. “We could have a reply show: ‘This is what it looks like in New Bedford.’ And it becomes a dialogue.”

(Berkeley, CA) On Monday, Mitch Jeserich takes over as the Executive Producer of KPFA’s Morning Show. Jeserich is an accomplished radio journalist, producer and anchor, who until recently was the News Editor for Wakeup Call, the morning show of Pacifica station WBAI in New York. He’s also the co-founder of the New York City-based Community News Production Institute, a project of People’s Production House, which trains members from historically marginalized communities to make their own media news stories.

“Mitch combines a multitude of talents – as a tenacious and gifted producer, national politics reporter, and mentor”, says KPFA’s interim Program Director Sasha Lilley. “We are very pleased to welcome him back to our airwaves.”

Mitch spent three years as the Washington DC Editor of Free Speech Radio News, heard throughout the Pacifica Radio Network, where he covered the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court. Originally from California, Mitch covered the state legislature in Sacramento for KPFA. Before becoming a journalist, Mitch worked as a community organizer in both the disability and immigrant rights communities.

“I’m very excited to be coming home where my career began,” says Jeserich. “KPFA has always been instrumental in the culture and activism that is so alive in the Bay Area and I’m thankful to have this opportunity to be a part of that again.”

The Morning Show is the most listened to local program on KPFA airwaves. Its daily two-hour mix of news, current affairs, analysis, and cultural programming can be heard from 7am to 9am on 94.1FM in the Bay Area and 88.1 FM on KFCF in Fresno. Jeserich takes over from interim Executive Producer Laura Prives, who will return to her position as the Morning Show’s Associate Producer.

From the September 23, 2007 New York Times:

By SHAUN ASSAEL
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa

LATE last year John Draper, a 41-year-old computer programmer, awoke in his house here with a stomach-churning problem. A Paris outfit he had hired to help run his Internet radio station, Atlantic Sound Factory, was in trouble. The server it used to connect him to roughly 1,500 listeners daily was perilously overloaded. If it became unstable — reducing the quality of his stream or, worse, shutting down entirely — he’d be in trouble.

This was not just a matter of simple pride. Mr. Draper’s gift for mixing Cat Stevens with Collective Soul, not to mention Keane with Kansas, had won his two-year-old station a spot in Apple’s iTunes radio library. To keep that coveted piece of Internet real estate, he had to keep asfradio.com running at all times. So he lurched out of bed, threw on his slippers and rushed to his basement computer to check on the strength of his Paris signal.

It was holding. But just barely.

About 55 million Americans listen to Internet radio every week (compared with the 279 million who listen to terrestrial radio), a jump of 26 percent in the past year, according to Bridge Ratings, a survey firm in Glendale, Calif. Many of them tune in at work, where they don’t get regular radio reception. Yahoo and AOL are the titans of this world, with portals that feature videos, music news and millions of song choices. There is also a layer of NPR and college radio, as well as commercial stations and satellite radio. But beyond that lies a quirkier landscape, populated by a diverse subculture of aspiring moguls, music geeks and people like Mr. Draper, who considers himself a hobbyist.

Together they are spurring a new golden age in radio. For those who remember the heyday of the D.J. as a cultural curator, it’s a return to a past where the airwaves were filled with personalities who mattered as much as the tunes they were spinning.

But there is a shadow looming over this renaissance. Although Internet radio is a relatively new form — listeners have started tuning in to it in significant numbers only within the last five years — the looming inevitability of a time when almost all radio will emanate from the Internet has created a sense of both panic and opportunity in the music business. On one hand, virtually anyone can start broadcasting songs online; on the other, if regulations are set up early enough, these new broadcasters present a much-needed revenue stream.

Under a deal that has been in effect since 2003 Webcasters with annual revenues of less than $1.25 million pay 10 percent of their revenues or 7 percent of expenses to satisfy copyright laws. Larger radio portals like the ones operated by Yahoo and AOL have to pay per song.

But in March the Copyright Royalty Board, a federal panel, issued a ruling allowing SoundExchange, the industry arm that collects royalties for 90 percent of all songwriters, to charge all Webcasters on a per-song basis and raise the cost of playing a song from $.0008 to $.0019 by 2010. For Mr. Draper this meant that his royalty payments would go from $120 a month to $6,500.

Thanks to a huge fan-driven protest, and the intervention of a handful of influential lawmakers in the House and Senate, SoundExchange backed down. On Aug. 21 it offered to extend much of the current rate structure until 2010, and on Tuesday it announced that about two dozen small Webcasters had agreed to this deal. Others, like Mr. Draper, are holding out, hoping for a long-term solution that will ensure that their hobby will always be affordable.

“There is more drama in this hobby than I ever imagined,” Mr. Draper said.

The whole idea for Atlantic Sound Factory came to Mr. Draper in February 2005. As he recalled, he was sitting in bed with the woman he lives with and announced, “I wonder what it would be like to own a radio station.” After a few days of research it became obvious that buying a terrestrial outlet was ridiculously expensive. But the Web was different. He imported his 200 CDs into his iTunes folder, loaded some inexpensive software to help keep it running for hours and connected it to his home DSL line. Then he went live.

Read the rest at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/23/arts/music/23assa.html?_r=1&ref=arts&oref=slogin.

From Yahoo News. Follow-up discussion from the Grassroots Radio listserv below the story.

WASHINGTON - The Federal Communications Commission is proposing a $4,000 fine against Comcast Corp. for airing a pitch for a sleep aid without telling viewers that the spot was financed by the maker of the product.

The fine was in response to a complaint by the Center for Media and Democracy, a media watchdog group, which said it marks the first time a company has been sanctioned for airing a “video news release,” a type of programming it dubs “fake news.”

A video news release is a sponsored public relations video that mimics actual news reports. Such programs are common in broadcasting and are usually offered to news shows for free.

The fine, while small, is significant for another reason: It is being assessed against a cable company. Comcast Corp. says cable programming is not covered under the statute cited by the FCC.

The company released a statement saying it was “perplexed” by the action and that even if it were subject to FCC jurisdiction, the segment still shouldn’t have been subject to sanction.

According to the FCC filing, on Sept. 21, 2006, CN8, a Comcast-affiliated network, aired portions of a video news release on
behalf of “Nelson’s Rescue Sleep,” a natural sleep-aid product, without saying who paid for the spot.

The network was not paid to air the video, but the FCC claims it still should have identified it as being sponsored by the company.

The fine is known as a “notice of apparent liability for forfeiture” and is likely to be appealed by Comcast.

The Center for Media and Democracy said it hopes the FCC “will soon address the nearly 140 other undisclosed VNR broadcasts” that the group documented in two reports it has released on the subject.

- - - - - - - - -

MichaelP asks the Grassroots Radio Coalition listserv: “Where does the FCC find the authority to issue a “notice of apparent liability for forfeiture” on a non-broadcasting co.?“

Diane Farsetta, Senior Researcher at the Center for Media and Democracy, responds:

“Comcast isn’t happy about it, and its appeal will probably question whether such fines can be applied to cable channels. But the FCC does have authority over cable stations, as well as broadcast stations. The agency has less authority over cable, and there are plenty of gray areas. So, the FCC’s fine was precedent-setting in two ways — one, that anyone was fined for airing a VNR without disclosure; and two, that the FCC claimed authority to fine cable licensees on the issue.

“In its notice of the fine, the FCC said its rules clearly state that ‘when a cable-television-system operator engages in origination cablecasting, it must identify the sponsor of a material whenever that operator accepts money, service or other valuable consideration’ to air that material. While Comcast / CN8 didn’t receive payment, the FCC also says that VNRs must be identified when there is ‘identification in a broadcast of any person, product, service, trademark or brand name beyond an identification which is reasonably related to the use of such service or property on the broadcast.’

“So, overly promotional VNRs always need to be disclosed. The question then becomes who decides what’s overly promotional?”

Originally published in Current
By Jeremy Egner

The National Black Programming Consortium, which has primarily funded and trained filmmakers of color since it launched in 1979, will become a direct distributor of their work with the launch this month of a new online showcase, blackpublicmedia.org.

The new portal, separate from NBPC’s organizational site, nbpc.tv, will show off repurposed and original video projects, some available free and others for sale, says Christian Ugbode, technology and new media coordinator.

“Usually we’re just guys who fund documentaries that go on public television, but now we’ll be able to broadcast ourselves,” says Ugbode, who is overseeing the project.

“We’re trying to create an aggregate space where content specific to the black experience can be found online.”

The new site isn’t meant to replace the broadcast partnerships with P.O.V., Independent Lens and other strands that air consortium-funded docs. Rather, it will be an outlet for projects that emerge from its professional development workshops and similar ventures, such as young filmmaker programs at historically black universities, Ugbode says. This winter, the new online showcase may feature a variety of takes on the Mississippi blues and its origins that will come out of NBPC’s New Media Institute, a six-week combo of online and in-person (in Jackson, Miss.) training.

NBPC, one of five ethnic consortia long funded by CPB, began contemplating a content site after last fall’s new-media seminar at Boston’s WGBH.

The heart of the new site will be a video player, Ugbode says. Tech staffers are still finalizing their player plans.

Content will also be made available to other pubcasting video outlets, such as the Open Media Network, Ugbode says. “Our video could rest in plenty of other places,” he says.

Longer-term plans are for blackpublicmedia.org to sell DVDs and downloads of consortium-funded projects.

Among the first offerings will be Afropop, a film series (not affiliated with the pubradio show) that surveys contemporary life and culture in Africa. The first titles explore, among other subjects, rap music in Capetown, South Africa, (Hip Hop Revolution) and Nigeria’s filmmaking industry (Welcome to Nollywood), the third largest behind Hollywood and India’s Bollywood. The consortium is still working out distribution deals with other filmmakers, Ugbode says.

Hello all,

Just a quick reminder that you can access a whole bunch of grassroots journalism training materials that I’ve drafted and/or collected at this site. Just click here and you can check out all the training docs in writing for radio, interviewing, field recording, digital editing, and so on. There’s even links to Audacity and tutorials on its use, should you be in need of free editing software.

Also, the Pacifica Programming policy is permanently posted at this page. Read it, love it.

For Immediate Release
September 20, 2007

CPB Awards Grants to 89 Public Radio Stations for Digital Transition

(Washington, DC)-The Corporation for Public Broadcasting today announced $6.7 million in grants to 89 public radio stations to assist in the conversion from analog to digital broadcasting. This digital technology will allow these stations to significantly enhance the quality and scope of services to their communities, as well as providing outstanding sound.

“These grants will enable stations to better serve their communities, which depend on them as a trusted source of news and information,” said CPB President and CEO Pat Harrison.

Grant recipients include Pacifica stations KPFK-FM (Los Angeles), WPFW-FM (Washington, DC), WBAI-FM (New York City). Also, congratulations to Pacifica affiliate stations that received grants this year, including KDUR (Durango, CO), WSQX (Binghamton, NY), KRCS (Bellevue, WA).

The following message has been posted by the Outreach Committee of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC). If you have any questions, please click on the link or e-mail address below.

— ARSC RESEARCH GRANTS PROGRAM —
Deadline for receipt of applications: February 29, 2008

The ARSC Research Grants Program supports scholarship and publication in the fields of sound recording research and audio preservation. (This program is separate from the ARSC Preservation Grants Program, which encourages and supports the preservation of historically significant sound recordings of Western Art Music.) Project categories eligible for consideration include:

discography, bibliography, historical studies of the sound recording industry and its products, and any other subject likely to increase the public’s understanding and appreciation of the lasting importance of recorded sound. ARSC encourages applications from ind individuals whose research forms part of an academic program at the master’s or doctoral level.

ARSC members and non-members alike are eligible for grants in amounts up to $1000. Grant funds can be used to underwrite clerical, editorial, and travel expenses. Funds may not be used to purchase capital equipment or recordings, to reimburse applicants for work already performed, or to support projects that form part of a paid job. Grant recipients must submit documentation of their expenses, and all grant funds must be disbursed within eighteen months of the grant award.

Grant recipients are required to submit brief descriptions of their projects for publication in the ARSC Journal, and are encouraged to submit articles about their projects, for possible publication in the Journal.

Research Grant Applications shall include:
– a summary of the project (one page maximum), with samples of the work, if possible;
– a budget c overing the entire project, highlighting the expenses the ARSC

Grant will cover (one page maximum);
– a curriculum vitae; and
– an indication of the prospects for publication or other public dissemination of the project results.

Grant awards will be announced at the annual business meeting of ARSC, after having been approved at the spring meeting of the ARSC Board of Directors.

Send applications to: Richard Warren Jr., ARSC Grants Committee Chair, Historical Sound Recordings, Yale University Library, P.O. Box 208240, New Haven, CT 06520-8240, USA. Applications for the next grant cycle must be received by February 29, 2008.

For more information, visit:
http://www.arsc-audio.org/researchgrants.html

Questions about the Research Grants Program should be directed to Mr. Warren at richard.warren@yale.edu