mediageek

Author: Paul

  • Last Friday’s Radioshow Live from NCMR in St. Louis

    As you may know, this past weekend I was in St. Louis at the 2nd National Conference on Media Reform. I’ve got a lot of audio and thoughts, and will post much of it here in the coming days (and at the BeTheMediaBlog, which has lots of other people’s thoughts, too). Drew and I called…

  • Court Chief Controversy for Profit – Saga Casts Its Lot With Racism

    We’ve got a “new” radio station in Champaign-Urbana. New, in that the old Oldies 92 has flipped format to be called “The Chief.” The change mostly means the addition of the 80s to the oldies line up. Oh, and the firing of all airstaff and more automation. I really haven’t listened much, and have only…

  • First Half Day of the Media Reform Conference

    The Conference starts officially today, but last night there was check-in and the Academic Brain Trust. Unfortunately, we got stuck in traffic in Metro East and then my car died right when we got to the hotel — which is the best place for it to die. It’s just a battery problem, so we’re not…

  • Opening Night: Hersh, Klein, Goodman and Sanders

    Tonight was the opening night for the short Media Consolidation conference here at the U of I, with Seymour Hersh giving the keynote. Drew wrote a nice, concise summary of Hersh’s talk at BeTheMediaBlog, and Andrew has already posted the audio. Rep. Bernie sanders gave a rousing speech, unafraid to utter words like “working class”…

  • Creating Alternative Media: Examples from Urbana-Champaign

    I’ll be participating in a little session during the lunch break at the Wednesday Media Consolidation conference along with some of my comrades in independent media from the ‘hood. It happens at 12:30 PM in the Krannert Center Lobby, between the session featuring Phil Donahue, John Nichols and Naomi Klein and the one featuring Len…

  • Be The Media Blog Revving Up

    With just a few days to go before the big Media Reform conference the Be the Media Blog is starting to see some action. This blog is a continuation of a project begun at the first Media Reform conference back in 2003. It’s a venue for grassroots and independent media makers to comment, report and…

  • Gearing Up for the Media Reform Orgy

    This week there is a one-day pre-conference of sorts to the National Conference for Media Reform: Can Freedom of the Press Survive Media Consolidation? Several big-name speakers will be here, like Seymour Hersh–giving the Tuesday evening keynote–and Danny Goldberg, the new president of Air America. Also in attendance will be several left media luminaries who…

  • Appeals Court Smacks Down Broadcast Flag

    Rather unexpectedly, today the DC Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the FCC’s Broadcast Flag, which would have required all digital TV receivers to implement copyright protections invokeable by content producers and broadcasters. In a unanimous decision, the three judge panel simply said the FCC has no authority issue such a regulation: The broadcast flag…

  • On the Next Mediageek Radioshow: Shawn Ewald of the A-Infos Radio Project

    I just finished an interview about an hour ago with Shawn Ewald, the programmer and one of the volunteers behind the A-Infos Radio Project, which has been archiving and serving up radically independent radio content for an amazing nine years. Shawn just opened up the source code for the software behind the Project, which I…

  • Cassette Geek

    The always informative WFMU’s Beware of the Blog led me to Project C-90, a Russian on-line museum of blank audiocassettes. FMU’s Kenzo says: I didn’t THINK this would get me so excited, until I stumbled onto images like the one at the right, sending me back to forgotten early childhood memories of making little home…