[Reader-list] Threat on distributed radio on the net

[Monica Narula]

Conversations: The Promise of Radio Paradise: An Open-Source 
Challenge to Commercial Radio
Posted on Tuesday, January 15, 2002 by Doc Searls	  
Open-source radio pioneer Bill Goldsmith (of Radio Paradise and KPIG) 
joins Doc and other regulars on tonight's The Linux Show at 9 PM EST.

Remember when "commercial broadcasting" didn't ridicule the archaic 
concept that broadcast bands were a public space where stations and 
their owners operated by the grace of public trust?

That idea started falling out the window somewhere in the Nixon 
administration. By the Reagan administration it was hanging by its 
toes. The Clinton administration gave it the heave-ho by deregulating 
station ownership to the extent that one company, Clear Channel 
Communications, owns large hunks of the radio dial in nearly all the 
major markets, including 5 FMs in New York, 5 FMs and 2 AMs in San 
Francisco, and 5FMs and 3 AMs in Los Angeles, to name a few. In Santa 
Barbara, the small city where I live, Clear Channel owns 4 FMs and 3 
AMs. The total number of local stations isn't much more than that.

As Brad Kava of the San Jose Mercury News points out in his current 
column, the company's influence extends much farther:


To comply with the legal limit of eight stations in any market, the 
company sold off three signals in the San Francisco market: KXJO-FM 
to Spanish Broadcasting, and KCNL-FM and KFJO-FM to Chase Radio 
Properties, both minority-owned broadcasters. But Clear Channel 
continues to program the stations. For a sale to be legal, the new 
owner must program at least 85 percent of the station's content, 
according to federal regulations. Clear Channel is simulcasting all 
of KSJO's content on KFJO and KXJO.

No wonder the commercial radio dial is wall-to-wall generica. Nobody 
protests, for two big reasons: 1) If the last administration didn't 
care much, the current one cares even less. This administration 
clearly loves Big Business, as its toothless proposed settlement with 
Microsoft amply demonstrates, and Clear Channel is bent on becoming 
the Microsoft of radio. 2) Clear Channel controls much of the local 
cross-promotional entertainment advertising flow as well. Here's Brad 
again:


Clear Channel is also the country's largest promoter of concerts and 
theater events. Locally, it owns Shoreline Amphitheater and books the 
biggest shows into San Jose's and Oakland's arenas and Saratoga's 
Mountain Winery. It advertises these events heavily on its 
competitors and works deals with those stations so they can sponsor 
events at its facilities.

The competitors can't afford to risk losing those ad dollars.

Not that anybody is up for a fight with the company that Eric 
Boehlert calls Radio's Big Bully and a Tough Company on Salon.com. 
Nor is anybody raising a stink about the role played by the record 
companies in all of this, which Eric wrote about in his article, "Pay 
for Play": "Listeners may not realize it, but radio today is largely 
bought by the record companies. Most rock and Top 40 stations get 
paid to play the songs they spin by the companies that manufacture 
the records."

Back when I was a kid, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, "payola" 
made front-page headlines when it was learned that disc jockeys took 
money and favors for playing certain songs. In those days radio 
mattered. So did the concept of public trust. Today it's a rare jock 
that gets to choose his or her own music. That's essentially a 
corporate decision.

It gets worse, but we've explored the darkness far enough. Rather, 
let's look at the alternatives.

On the Demand side, there's music sharing, which Napster pioneered 
and for which it got destroyed by the music industry. In the 
open-source world their work survives in the form of Limewire and 
other systems that take advantage of the Gnutella network protocol.

Whatever else one might call music sharing over the Net, it serves as 
the listeners' workaround of the commercial radio's failure to care. 
In the old days, radio was a system whereby professional connoisseurs 
shared their music collections with listeners. Yes, there was 
commercial involvement but not of the massive and cynical industrial 
sort we see today, where radio acts as a sampler tray for goods 
pumped from Production to Consumption through thoroughly integrated 
manufacturing, promotion, distribution and retailing pipes, whose 
unseen powers bear a creepy resemblance to those of The Matrix.

On the Supply side, we have on-line radio stations created and run by 
the same kind of connoisseurs that once thrived on commercial radio 
(and persist on some noncommercial stations). You'll find a few of 
these on Yahoo's and Real.com's radio listings, which are dominated 
by licensed commercial and noncommercial stations that employ those 
companies' server software. You'll find a lot more on places like 
Live365, which lists on-line stations streaming MP3 audio. Apple's 
iTunes tuner also lists hundreds of streaming MP3 stations 
(maintained, I am told, by a Kerbango veteran). Ogg Vorbis is out 
there too.

Taking the lead at making on-line radio an actual business is "Wild" 
Bill Goldsmith, who is responsible for the lovably anachronistic 
KPIG, a highly successful commercial FM station that serves the Santa 
Cruz-Salinas-Monterey Bay area of California over the air on 
107-oink-5 (from, no kidding, the town of Freedom), and the rest of 
the world over a sparkling 128Kb MP3 stream (plus others of lower 
fi). Bill's other labor of love is Radio Paradise, which he runs out 
of his place in (no kidding) Paradise, CA.

Bill has built both KPIG's and Radio Paradise's on-line broadcast 
systems on Linux and other open-source hacks, which he is eager to 
share with the rest of the world. There's even money in it, Bill says.

I'm bringing this up today because Bill will join us on "The Linux 
Show" this evening, and because I've written about Bill twice already 
for Linux Journal, and the links are still fresh. Here they are: 1) 
the January 2002 "Linux For Suits" editorial , and 2) the November 1, 
2001 SuitWatch newsletter.

And yes, I have an ax to grind. I love good radio, and I miss hearing 
more of it on the air. I believe Open Source Radio is the best 
hope--not only for on-line broadcasting but for over-the-air 
commercial broadcasting as well, mostly because it not only saves 
money but gives commercial broadcasters a cornucopia of connoisseurs 
that might well serve as sources for over-the-air "content".

For that we'll need the Open Source community to start pushing the 
ball Bill started rolling.

Are we up for it? I'd like to hear what you think.

Doc Searls is Senior Editor of Linux Journal.
-- 
Monica Narula
Sarai:The New Media Initiative
29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054
www.sarai.net