Category Archives: FM

BBC mothballs idea of forced move to digital broadcasting

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(Source: The Telegraph via Mike Hansgen)

BBC to keep broadcasting on FM

For years fans of wireless radios have campaigned to stop the apparently inevitable march of progress as Britain prepares to switch off its crackling analogue signal and become totally digital.

But now, the BBC will announce that it has shelved plans to force listeners to replace their analogue radios with DAB sets.

In a move that will also be welcomed by the two million motorists with analogue car radios, the corporation will admit for the first time that FM broadcasts must continue to keep audiences on side as music streaming and podcasts threaten its traditional strongholds.[…]

Click here to read this article on The Telegraph (content behind paywall).

 

At $20 billion in debt, iHeartMedia files for bankruptcy

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(Source: NPR)

The “substantial doubt” that iHeartMedia’s corporate leaders expressed around the company’s likelihood of surviving another year, mentioned in its quarterly financial report last November, has been put to rest.

iHeartMedia, the country’s largest radio broadcaster with around 850 stations and a leading outdoor advertising company, is filing for bankruptcy after spending years trying to manage its $20 billion in outstanding indebtedness. (For some context, per that November statement, iHeartMedia was obligated to pay $1.8 billion in interest over that coming year.)

The company writes in a press release that it has reached “an agreement in principle with holders of more than $10 billion of its outstanding debt and its financial sponsors” that will essentially cut its debt in half, and that it has filed motions with the court to be allowed to operate normally through the restructuring. The bankruptcy follows, by two months, the bankruptcy of the country’s second-largest radio company, Cumulus, which offloaded $1 billion in debt.[…]

Read the full story at NPR.

Radio Survivor: Exploring and Preserving the Brooklyn Pirate Radio Scene

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Check out this brilliant episode of the Radio Survivor podcast which features our Shortwaveologist friend, David Goren along with John Anderson of Brooklyn College:

(Source: Radio Survivor)

There are more unlicensed pirate radio stations in New York City than licensed stations. The borough of Brooklyn is a particular hotspot. Producer and journalist David Goren has been researching and recording these stations so that their ephemeral nature isn’t lost to history. To help preserve this legacy and make it accessible to a wider audience he’s constructing an interactive map of Brooklyn pirates, due to be released later this year.

David joins us on this episode along with Prof. John Anderson of Brooklyn College, who has been tracking and researching unlicensed radio for two decades. We discuss the unique qualities of Brooklyn pirates, and how they fulfill the needs of communities that are underserved by other media, why it’s important to preserve their legacies, and why the expansion of low-power FM failed to provide sufficient opportunities in cities like New York.

https://soundcloud.com/radio-survivor/133-preserving-brooklyn-pirate-radio

Click here to listen on SoundCloud.

Also, check out the Brooklyn Pirate Radio Sound Map funding page!

78 Megahertz: Australian astronomers detect signal from the dawn of the universe

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(Image: NASA – Hubble Space Telescope)

(Source: ABC Science via William Lee)

Astronomers detect signal from the dawn of the universe, using simple antenna in WA outback

They have picked up a radio signature produced just 180 million years after the Big Bang using a simple antenna in the West Australian outback.

The ground breaking discovery, reported today in the journal Nature, sheds light on a period of time known as the “cosmic dawn”, when radiation from the first stars started to alter the primordial gas soup surrounding them.

[…]The signal they’ve been looking for is a miniscule fraction — between 0.1 and 0.01 per cent — of the radio noise from the sky.

“It’s like trying to hear a whisper from the other side of a roaring football stadium,” Professor Bowman said.

The signal is also within the lower range of FM radio, so finding a place on Earth that is free of human radio interference was essential.

That’s why Professor Bowman and colleagues decided to base their experiment at CSIRO’s Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory, 300 kilometres north-east of Geraldton.

“Going to Western Australia and working at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory was an absolutely critical first step for us,” he said.

There they built a small table-sized radio spectrometer with a radio receiver attached to two metal panels that act as an antenna. Akin to a set-up from the 60s or 70s, the EDGES instrument is much simpler in design than bigger array telescopes around the world.[…]

Click here to read the full article at ABC Science.

The importance of community radio in Guatemala

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(Source: Aljazeera via Mike Hansgen)

Despite the legal challenges, Indigenous communities use radio to ‘keep their language and culture alive’.

Sumpango, Guatemala – Sitting in a courtyard, wearing an indigenous huipil dress, Amanda Chiquito glows as she talks about the challenges and successes of working with the community radio station in Sumpango Sacatepequez, Guatemala.

“There is no media that represents our community,” the 25-year-old says.

“There wasn’t a media outlet that could inform us and keep our culture and language alive,” she tells Al Jazeera.

Chiquito is a reporter and radio host at Ixchel Radio, the only community station in Sumpango Sacatepequez, a small town 42km from Guatemala’s capital.

More than 95 percent of the town’s 50,000 inhabitants are indigenous, living in remote areas, where access to information and technology is limited.[…]

Click here to read the full article at Aljazeera.

FCC cracking down on Colorado pirates

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Way High Radio’s studio.

(Source: Westword via Mike Hansgen)

Will the FCC Sink Pirate Radio in Colorado?

Word spread quickly about the mysterious unmarked black SUV parked at a highway exit just outside the town of Ward on January 24. In the self-sufficient mountain community perched at 9,500 feet, strangers always attract attention. But the strangers in the SUV weren’t just a curiosity; they were enforcement agents with the Federal Communications Commission, and they presented a real threat to a beloved community resource.

Since 1997, Ward had played host to an unlicensed FM radio station called Way High Radio. Colloquially known as “pirate” stations, radio operations such as Way High Radio are expressly forbidden by the FCC, which regulates America’s airwaves. That the station had been able to illegally broadcast from 90.5 FM for so many years was largely thanks to the isolation of the mountain town, roughly an hour-and-a-half drive from the FCC’s enforcement office in Denver.

When DJ Willy (not his real name) heard about the federal agents parked near town, he got a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. This was a moment he’d been dreading for a long time. But he’d also studied up on FCC enforcement, and knew the agents would want to catch someone actually inside the radio station’s studio, a small trailer located next to Ward’s town hall with an antenna on top and a wooden sign that proclaimed “Office of Human Rights.”[…]

Continue reading the full article at Westword.

Click here to view Way High Radio’s website.

iHeart “Prepares for Bankruptcy”

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(Source: Bloomberg via Dave Zantow)

IHeart Prepares for Bankruptcy as Soon as This Weekend

Embattled IHeartMedia Inc. is circulating documents for a bankruptcy filing that could come as soon as this weekend for the biggest U.S. radio broadcaster.

Advisers to some of iHeart’s senior creditors have been shown bankruptcy papers that would be used on the first day of court proceedings, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Despite a year of negotiations on a restructuring plan, a formal support agreement still isn’t in place with the most-senior lenders, and the creditors aren’t in restricted talks with the company, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private negotiations. Creditors typically agree to restrict some of their activities in exchange for non-public information when talks heat up.

A bankruptcy filing is all but certain, with iHeart and creditors each swapping proposals in recent weeks for a consensual restructuring. But pressure is mounting on iHeart after it missed a Feb. 1 interest payment, with a 30-day grace period about to run out. On top of that, the broadcaster on Thursday skipped payments on two more sets of bonds. If the company files without a pre-negotiated restructuring plan in place, the bankruptcy could turn into a free-fall, with some of the biggest and most contentious specialists in distressed companies potentially tussling for years over about $20 billion of debt.[…]

Continue reading at Bloomberg…