Click here for over two minutes of wall to wall September Eleventh's, courtesy of America's mayor, [Rudy Giuliani]. Your mission from WFMU: turn some or all of them into music, to be reposted on WFMU's blog. The best one received by December 5 wins a WFMU messenger bag full of CDs and other assorted swag. Send your mp3 submissions to ken at wfmu dot org, but if they are larger than 8 megs, please post them somewhere and send me the URL. Submissions will be posted on the WFMU blog.

From David Oxenford in Broadcast Law Blog:

The US Court of Appeal for the District of Columbia has set the briefing dates on the appeal filed by various webcasting groups seeking review of the decision of the Copyright Royalty Board setting Internet radio royalties for the period 2006-2010 for the use of sound recordings (see our coverage of this controversy here, and a detailed summary of the CRB decision here). The briefs of the various webcasting groups who appealed are due on February 25. The brief for the CRB (represented by the Department of Justice) is due on April 25, and that of SoundExchange (the "Intervenor) will be filed on May 15. Reply briefs are due on June 12, and oral arguments are yet to be scheduled. As the Court usually takes a summer break in July and August, the argument is likely to be held in the Fall of 2008, and a decision would likely not come until very late in the year or, more likely, in 2009.

Appeals were filed by the a number of groups including large webcasters (including AOL, Yahoo and DiMA), the small commercial webcasters, various noncommercial groups (including two collegiate broadcasting groups and the National Religious Broadcasters Noncommercial Music Licensing Committee), and various commercial broadcasters who also stream their signals on the Internet. A group called Royalty Logic, which is seeking to become a collective that is competitive with SoundExchange, also filed an appeal of the CRB decision.

Already, there has been a settlement announced on one narrow aspect of the case, the minimum fees for companies that stream multiple channels, limiting the per company minimum fee to $50,000. Obviously, if there are other settlements, these appeals could become unnecessary in whole or in part.

From Medianetwork blog:

Shortwave radio hobbyists have reported deliberate interference to the Amharic-language transmissions of Germany’s international broadcaster, Deutsche Welle (DW), beamed to Ethiopia. A US hobbyist noted “jamming” of DW’s signal on 11645 kHz on 14 and 15 November, and to DW’s Amharic broadcast on 15640 kHz on 15 November. (Glenn Hauser, DX Listening Digest, 15 November)

A German listener said the interference resembled a combination of sounds, “like bubble, motorboat, pips, and whistle buoy howl.” In a separate report, Ethiopian Review website reported on 13 November that VOA broadcasts to Ethiopia had been jammed since 12 November “with the help of the Chinese government that provided technicians and powerful radio jamming equipment.” (Source: BBC Monitoring research 16 Nov 07)

From Liz Berg in WFMU Beware of the Blog:

Ever since the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was passed, the FCC has been required to periodically review the country's broadcast ownership rules. For those who may not know, the 1996 Act was responsible for widespread media consolidation: as ownership regs were loosened, companies like Clear Channel and Infinity Broadcasting were allowed to purchase many more stations across the country (and were also allowed to own more than two stations in a single market). Most recently, the FCC's 2006-07 review of the media ownership landscape has been met with unprecedented outcry; citizens are not happy about the homogenization of their airwaves, and are serving the feds with tons of public testimony and mounds of comments, urging them to steer clear of further ownership deregulation.

Localism, dull/homogeneous programming, and concerns about the lack of station ownership by women and minorities appear to be at the crux the public's beef with broadcast radio and TV. These sentiments were reflected during the FCC's town hall meeting on media consolidation in NYC last year which I attended, and you can read the wrap-up on this post (as well as listen to the whole damned thing).

It would seem as though the teeming masses who are upset with the current state of radio are simply asking for more community-based broadcasters. There is space reserved for community radio on the low end of the dial, but in many areas, religious conglomerates and NPR affiliates outbid local community groups for non-commercial, educational spectrum. So now, even non-commercial frequencies are sounding more and more alike across the U.S. No wonder the people are angry.

How do we solve the larger, interrelated problems of media consolidation and crappy programming? How do we allow more voices to be heard on the non-commercial end of the dial, especially those who don't have the resources to purchase and manage a full-powered FM station? A loaded answer would be LPFM.

The FCC re-established low-power radio licenses in 2000 as a response to an outraged citizenry, who were upset over massive media conglomeration just like they are today. Many believe that LPFM was not a real solution to the problem, as it relegates community radio to the teeny cracks of spectrum left over once the commercial giants and moneyed national non-profit groups had bought up all of the full-powered frequencies. Let the big guys broadcast at 50,000 W, and toss out 100 W scraps to community groups.

Although these inequities certainly illuminate the secondary (or some might argue tertiary) status of local broadcasters, something is better than nothing. The fact that local groups were even given a space on the public dial was monumentous in itself.

Today, the idea of establishing even more LPFM stations is gaining steam, with the Senate Commerce Committee voting to remove certain interference limitations for low-powered stations. The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) is arguing (as they did in the late 90s) that LPFM stations will cause third-channel interference problems for their member stations (mostly large commercial broadcasters). Although a study debunking this theory was just released, NAB is claiming that these findings are flawed and will continue to lobby against LPFM and S.1675 (the Local Community Radio Act). LPFM cannot be expanded until the House and Senate vote for this bill.

Prometheus Radio and Free Press are encouraging LPFM supporters to write to their representatives in support of S.1675. New Jersey residents in support of LPFM should pay special attention, as Senator Lautenberg has added an amendment to S.1675 that would essentially block any new LPFM licenses from being allowed in the Garden State.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MThThdEmswU&rel=1]

From Xeni Jardin in boing boing:

This English-language footage from Russia Today shows riot police rolling through the streets of Tblisi in pickup trucks, small dishes in hand. A high frequency pulse follows. "Georgian police used an acoustic gun -- it's a non-lethal weapon that disorients people for a period of time," says one "special weapons expert."

Seems like the Federal Communications Commission is in the midst of one of its annual sweeps of New York City-based pirate radio operators. Reports here and here (probably the same source, actually, a known anti-pirate crusading engineer) indicate that "Red Hot Radio" 102.3-FM in Brooklyn was shut down Nov. 6. Red Hot Radio's web stream, at least, is still on the air. On Nov. 2 the FCC definitely sent Sean Buckner a "Notice of Unlicensced Operation" for microcasting on 94.3-FM (or 90.1-FM, the notice lists both frequencies) in Brooklyn. Often the NYC FCC enforcement office, now led by District Director Daniel W. Noel, will take action against several local pirates within a week or two, usually once or twice a year.
--Tom Roe

Celebrating Art's Birthday is a tradition started by French Fluxus artist Robert Filliou who declared, on January 17, 1963, that Art had been born exactly 1,000,000 years ago when somebody dropped a dry sponge into a bucket of water. Throughout the last decades artists continued organising annual celebrations in the spirit of Filliou's "Eternal Network" or "La Fête permanente." In 2008 people all over the world will again be preparing numerous networked birthday parties for art, several of these under the motto "Forever Young."

Kunstradio invites you to join our celebration by contributing presents to our party, which will take place on site at Common Ground, QDK, Museumsquartier Q21 in Vienna from 8 p.m. on January 17, 2008. These presents we invite you to upload to our present pool online under
http://www.kunstradio.at/PROJECTS/AB2008/presents-upload.php

We will be listening in on your presents and streams during our party on site in Vienna, artists will re-mix and further distribute these online and via our live Kunstradio broadcast on the cultural channel on the Austrian National Radio Ö1 from 11 – 12 p.m. CET, as well as on the EBU satellite.

A selection of presents will also be presented in later on air editions of
Kunstradio. Should you have any questions or plan to organise a party yourself, please do not hesitate to contact us under: kunstradio@kunstradio.at Spread the word! This is a party you can bring as many people and presents as you wish! More about Art's Birthday can be found here: http://www.artsbirthday.net

MATA (Music at the Anthology) is currently accepting scores for consideration for commissions and performances for the 2009 MATA Festival in New York City, in the spring of 2009. Materials for submission must include: 2 recordings of samples of recent work - a maximum of two works may be submitted (MIDI tapes will not be accepted), scores to accompany the above recordings (unless scores are not pertinent), biography or résumé, list of works, contact information, SASE if you wish to have your materials returned. Although commissions are only awarded to composers under 40 at the time of submission, composers of all ages who are at the early stages of their careers will be considered for programming on the festival. Commission amounts range from $1500 to $5000, depending on the parameters of the work. Composers are expected to attend the premiere of their work. Please include a sentence in your cover letter specifying if you would like your works to be considered generally for the festival in the event that you are not chosen for a commission. MATA will consider works of any instrumentation and duration; please send whatever you consider to be your best work. In addition to our traditional festival programming, MATA encourages submissions in the following sub-categories:

Site-Specific Works
• Works conceived for and directly influenced by particular indoor or outdoor spaces, ranging from non-performative speaker-based installations to spatialized instrumental ensembles. For multidisciplinary collaborations, please include a detailed description of the role your composition played in the resultant work. DVD or online video documentation is encouraged. Works of extensive duration will be considered in this category.

Electro-Acoustic/Computer Works
• Live ensemble works utilizing electricity as a primary element in their execution and/or construction. Works that incorporate improvisative/indeterminate notation as core components are strongly encouraged.

Chamber Music for Wind Instruments
•Works for brass and woodwind ensembles ranging from solo to quintet. Non-tradtional groupings are encouraged, but conventional quintet submissions will receive equal attention.

If your music has been programmed by MATA, or you have received a commission, you must wait three years before re-applying. Only one commission will be awarded to any one composer in his or her lifetime. Postmark Deadline: February 15, 2008. To submit or for more information, contact:
MATA
293 Warren Street #2, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Phone: 212-563-5124, Email:info@matafestival.org, Web: www.matafestival.org

--Missy Mazzoli, Executive Director & Chris McIntyre, Artistic Director

From Jose Fritz in Arcane Radio Trivia:

This was in an issue of Popular Mechanics in 1934. Early in the golden years of radio, the fascination reached nearly hysterical heights where we thought radio was going to fix everything, do everything and be everywhere. In reality, we only ever really go to that last part.

Five coeds donned blindfolds and then competed in a pseudo-scientific race. The gauge was not really speed as it was difficult to navigate at all. Each participant was guided only by a radio beacon. Each girl carried a small radio receiving and wore earphones to hear the signal. They navigated by moving the set to turn the nulls toward and away from the beacon to navigate their path. The signals were the same kind used in aviation in that era. Apparently carrying the receiver and its battery was more difficult than following the beacon. Of course today the University of Cincinnati doesn't even own a college radio station. But they had an Amateur Radio Club all the way back to the 1921. Professor Carl Osterbrock, Jr. was the trustee for a 1ooo watt Collins transmitter and matching receiver. It's calls were W8YX.

From Cory Doctorow in Boing Boing:

The RFID Guardian project has released the hardware and software schematics for the latest version of its personal RFID (radio frequency ID) firewall. The RFID Guardian is a device that detects all the RFID tags on your person (passport, transit pass, bank-card, toll-card, car keys, etc), and interdicts them so that they can't answer queries anymore. The Guardian can clone all of these tags, and emit their signal on demand, but unlike a dumb tag, the Guardian only emits when you tell it to, and gives you a central way to set and enforce policy about when you will be identified and by whom. The new version is completely open, and the relaunched RFID Guardian site includes a wiki, source code repository and bug-tracker.

This multi-media art exhibition, curated by artists, will bring together diverse expressions of the War in Iraq, opening in several venues in Pawtucket and Providence, from March 5 to March 30, 2008. It will then travel to Fall River in April and to Boston in May. In these times of extreme political division and inadequate or biased media coverage, the exhibition will engage the American public in a broad-based dialogue that promotes awareness, understanding, and healing. Through the universal language of art, the exhibition seeks to give a human face to the complex conflict in Iraq and to engage those who have unconsciously cocooned themselves from the fearsome reality of the war. We ask the questions: What does it mean to experience this war firsthand, in combat, or as an Iraqi civilian? What does it mean to experience it from a distance, or on television? How can we in America reconnect to the reality of war? Are there shared visions of peace despite cultural and religious differences? The work will be selected purely on artistic merit and look to include as many perspectives as possible, beyond politics. The call goes out internationally to both soldiers and civilians for video, audio, photography, drawing, painting, sculpture, installation and the written word. The show will open simultaneously in the Arts Exchange (Pawtucket Armory), Machines With Magnets, Blackstone Valley Visitors Center, AS220 and the Cable Car Cinema, in Pawtucket and Providence, RI.

From WFMU:

We are pleased to announce that WFMU's live streams are finally available on the iPhone. iPhone listeners can point their browsers at iphone.wfmu.org and listen to our live mp3 streams at either 128k or 32k and also choose from a selection of our archived content and podcasts. Based on our initial testing it will come as no surprise that tuning in over Wifi will get you the best results however we've also had reports of listeners with strong EDGE reception tuning in at 128k without issue. Since the Quicktime Player in the iPhone has somewhat poor buffering compared with thick client-side players like Winamp and iTunes, we recommend listening to the 32k stream while connected over EDGE. For the time being we are only offering a small subset of our archived content and podcasts on the iPhone but will be adding more content as time goes by....

Tversity: A month or so ago, Tversity, a New Jersey based software company, announced that they had figured out a way to stream to the iPhone. Tversity's main product offering is a media server that allows you to stream all your audio and video content from your home computer to various web enabled devices (including many mobile devices and game consoles). I tend to think of TVersity as a variation on Sling Player or something similar to DotTunes but with many more features.

After contacting Tversity we learned that they also have some products aimed at enterprise level clients and they do a lot of work providing media delivery solutions to various wireless carriers. Over time we've been able to do some minor tweaking with their product and we're very pleased with the results.

From Arcane Radio Trivia:

I read the term in a radio history book "toll broadcasting." I immediately thought of New Jersey. The concept was announced on WBAY-AM on August 3, 1922. The station had only been on air for a month. Then the AT&T Long Lines Commercial Department manager George W. Peck took the microphone to explain an idea of his. More here.

AT&T had been mumbling about toll broadcasting since February of that year. The concept was a new kind of station, a nationwide chain of stations. These weren't conceived as broadcasters but as "radiotelephone" stations... Mr. Peck compared them to phone booths. A user entered a booth, paid a fee and broadcasted on their radio stations nationwide. Any Joe on the street could become a broadcaster; it could have been a public broadcasting service.

Two weeks went by with only one user. Then they noticed the WBAY-AM signal was very weak. So they switched the broadcast to the Western Electric owned WEAF. The improved signal attracted a lot more attention to the idea. The Queensboro Corporation paid $50 for a 10-minute chunk of air time to promote some of their real estate. It appeared to work and they became a regular buyer. The American Express Company and the Tidewater Oil Company also were early adopters. But the first 60 days of "toll broadcasting" only made $550.

Interestingly only AT&T was allowed to sell airtime. Other stations were doing it, but AT&T was uniquely incorporated and licensed to do so because they owned the telephone lines. While ordinary citizens never took an interest in their "radiotelephone booths" other New York stations did. RCA’s two New York stations, WJZ-AM and WJY-AM, started toll broadcasting. AT&T called in the lawyers and threatened to withhold use of the phone lines.

The FTC tried to break up the fight by accusing most of the players with restraint of trade. instead they reacted with a back room deal. AT&T would get out of radio manufacture and in return got a cut of revenue for use of the phone lines. The AT&T, RCA and GE stations would be grouped under the ownership of a new company, NBC. More here.

From Center of Integrated Nanomechanical Systems:

We have constructed a fully functional, fully integrated radio receiver, orders-of-magnitude smaller than any previous radio, from a single carbon nanotube. The single nanotube serves, at once, as all major components of a radio: antenna, tuner, amplifier, and demodulator. Moreover, the antenna and tuner are implemented in a radically different manner than traditional radios, receiving signals via high frequency mechanical vibrations of the nanotube rather than through traditional electrical means. We have already used the nanotube radio to receive and play music from FM radio transmissions such as "Layla" by Eric Clapton (Derek and the Dominos) and the Beach Boy's "Good Vibrations." The nanotube radio's extremely small size could enable radical new applications such as radio controlled devices small enough to exist in the human bloodstream, or simply smaller, cheaper, and more efficient wireless devices such as cellular phones.

From Broadcast Law Blog:

This afternoon the [Federal Communications] Commission announced that it will hold its sixth and final public hearing on media ownership issues in Seattle, Washington on Friday, November 9, 2007. The hearing will be held from 4 to 11 p.m. at the Town Hall in Seattle, and will conclude the Commission's tour around the country to gather information on media ownership to assist it in reworking its media ownership and cross-ownership rules. More importantly, the timing of this final public hearing seems consistent with Chairman Martin's publicly announced target of wrapping up the Commission's reconsideration of the multiple ownership rules by the end of the year.

The Chairman apparently remains undeterred by congressional calls to slow the rule making process down. Yesterday, the Senate Commerce Committee announced that it would hold a hearing on media ownership on Tuesday November 6, and today the House Energy & Commerce Committee has followed suit by announcing that it will hold its own hearing on the issue on December 6. While these hearings may put more pressure on the Commission to refrain from enacting new rules this year, by concluding its ownership tour next week, the Commission appears to still be aiming for a December action on the issue. And according to at least one news article, the Chairman is aiming to publicly outline his media-ownership proposals by November 13, in theory to advance those proposals before a vote at the next FCC Open Meeting tentatively set for December 18.

From David Pescovitz in Boing Boing:

NASA posted some wonderfully trippy sounds collected from Saturn and its moons. For example, one is the sound of winds on Titan, another is magnetometer data from Enceladus translated into audio. The weird recordings remind me of avant-garde electroacoustic music from the 1950s and 1960s.

Territories Reimagined: International Perspectives (TRIP)
Manchester, 19-22 June 2008. Call for Papers and Projects.
Psychogeography, neogeography, deep topography, urban interventions, locative media, collaborative mapping.

Between June 19 and 22, 2008, TRIP brings together artists, academics, movers, shakers, do-ers and dissenters in a unique event combining an interdisciplinary conference with a city-wide series of actions, exhibitions, and screenings. TRIP enables the previously separate worlds of theory and practice to interact, initiating new approaches and energies, and furthering techniques to take on and alter the physical environment.

Beginning as a reaction to the industrial revolution, the re-imagining of the city by romantics, bohemians, and avant-gardists evolved into a diverse range of strategies, practices and arguments, from the psychogeographic drift or derive to the artistic intervention. By the 1990s these were being utilised by artists, writers, activists, and historians, attempting to negotiate urban and rural space in the post-modern world.

But practices developed in the twentieth century encounter a different world in the twenty first - a more observed and policed world on the one hand, a more corporate, globally-connected world on the other. Increasingly the body, social, individual and political, is the site of contradictory demands - the demands to consume versus the demands of control.

TRIP will be based at Manchester Metropolitan University, on the city's main southerly corridor, Oxford Road. But we want events to take place throughout Manchester, in as wide a variety of spaces and venues as possible. Like many northern cities, Manchester is changing fast. Perhaps you want to critique the implications of "regeneration", or perhaps you want to stimulate new ways of engaging with an increasingly consumerised environment. Maybe you're passionate about the possibilities of inventive walking and drifting, or maybe you're a performance artist aiming to change the energy of a public space. Wherever you're coming from, TRIP wants to hear from you with your ideas. To submit a paper, you should send an abstract outlining your subject and the key points of your presentation.
To submit an idea for an intervention, performance or a walk involving members of the public, please outline in one paragraph the aims and ideal locations for your project. To submit an idea for a gallery-based project, please outline in one paragraph the thinking behind your installation or work. Please try to keep your paragraphs to a maximum of 200 words. And don't forget your contact details. Deadline for submissions: October 1st 2007. Deadline extended until December 22, 2007. Submissions should be emailed to: TRIP@mmu.ac.uk for further information on festival announcements, walks, talks and events, then please access our blog-space, which will be updated regularly at: http://trip2008.wordpress.com

free103point9's Tianna Kennedy was recently at CKUT's Redefining Media: Media Democracy and Community Radio conference in Montreal. Her panel, "Radio, Art and Freedom of Thought" also featured CKUT's Kathy Kennedy and Charlotte Scott. There is audio of all three presentations here:
http://www.radio4all.net/pub/files/newsnet@ckut.ca/1193-4-20071025-RadioArt1tianna.mp3
http://www.radio4all.net/pub/files/newsnet@ckut.ca/1193-4-20071025-RadioArt2kathy.mp3
http://www.radio4all.net/pub/files/newsnet@ckut.ca/1193-4-20071025-RadioArt3charolette.mp3

From Reclaim the Media:

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin plans to hold the last of six official public hearings on media ownership rules in Seattle, before rushing the agency's 18-month long consideration of the rules to a fast-tracked conclusion by mid-December. The hearing will be the only chance for Northwest residents to weigh in on proposals that would allow giant media companies to grow even more concentrated. While Martin had proposed holding a Seattle hearing on Nov. 2--less than one week away--no date has been officially announced. Beginning next Wednesday, Reclaim the Media will provide testimony workshops for anyone wishing to testify at the Seattle FCC hearing, or to learn more about media ownership issues.