Corporate Interests out to KILL Analog FM

Hey, Nanderson- Does WIBA still exist? They used to do some pretty wild sets of music 20 to 30 years ago- everything from Ella to Talking Heads. I went to UW-W and had the tuner pegged to that station just about full time. If you are a REAL old-timer, you'll remember the station being called "RFM" for Radio Free Madison. Very cool.

I've lived in San Antonio since then, home of one of Clear Channel's principals, Red McCombs. So you know that there is basically a radio wasteland here, with the exception of PBS and a couple of the college stations and even those are spotty, at best. (Hey, what'd you expect from a town that finally convinced the populace to vote for flouridating the water just last year?) Austin has a handful of great stations with KGSR leading the way, but we're just out of reach.

Regards
Jim

Totally agree the FCC is complete f*&!@%g joke. It's like the fox guarding the henhouse, and the Bush administration, predictably enough, is encouraging more of the same, proposing to further relax ownership limitations of broadcasters, to the detriment of scarce public resources. NPR is getting worse, too. My hometown of Washington, DC, the seat of the government that's allowing this 'malling' of our airwaves, no longer has any independent college stations on the air - they can no longer compete for the licenses. I think our only hope is an eventual complete conversion to a digital system that allows for hundreds of stations all across the country to be received in any area, otherwise the diversity of content is just about gone forever. In fact, once that happens, maybe truly local programming can retake the FM band.

Jimbo,
WIBA does still exist but is nothing even close to what it use to be. Just another clone. Very sad, The Isthmus (a very successful free paper, http://www.thedailypage.com/ ) has done a stories on WIBA and what it use to be. Many contributers include stories from the old DJs who are just sickened by it all.

Regarding Digital, according to a top person I talked to at Fanfare (the FM Tuner company), digital is not really the issue at all. It is about taking complete control over what can be broadcast. It seems IBOC wants to control every detail of FM medium, total domination (something that can not be completely done while FM remains analog). Seriously, it is beginning to look like the days of the SS Troups and Orwells 1984. I for one, will not take this lying down. And by Clear Channel's failure in Madison, despite pouring millions into advertising and sponsorship of some local events, we can whip the Mindless Vanilla Programming !

If you think Bush and Ashcroft move fast and unilaterally read this about IBOC's Digital Audio Broadcasting:

http://members.cox.net/fmdxweb/iboc.html

and

http://www.rwonline.com/reference-room/iboc/index.shtml

Remember in the 1920s and 30s when the government collaborated with General Motors in dismantling our mass transit system, literally at night pulling up rails.

"If you control what you know you control what can be."

Some more related interesting articles, while I take a break from work:

http://www.fair.org/counterspin/mcchesney-transcript.html

http://www.fair.org/media-beat/010322.html