Good news and bad news

The Good: Yesterday I got word that I won Tod Maffin’s Third Coast International Audio Festival t-shirt contest.

The Bad: Yesterday I took my tape recorder (Sony TCM-5000EV) to an electronics repair shop, and they basically told me that it was irreparable. There is some sort of weird hiss coming through the speaker and headphone jack whenever the motor is engaged. Back in Sackville, when I took it to Munroe’s TV repair, Jim told me that he knew what was wrong with it — a filter problem. These electronic hotshots in Toronto think I’m plum out of luck. Perhaps I’ll bring it back to Sackville with me.

Popped Culture

While home this past summer, I spent some time at my favourite campus/community radio station, CKDU. On more than one occasion, I happened upon meetings for the CKDU Pop Culture Collective. I could tell that something exctiting was brewing.

And for the past few weeks, I’ve been enjoying the fruits of the collective’s labour: Popped Culture. Hosted by a cast of CKDU celebs, each half-hour episode is an examination of “all things pop and culture – movies and television, music and videogames, books and magazines and everything else that has an impact on popular – and unpopular – culture.” It’s a blast. So far, I’ve listened to programs on Jonathan Torrens, J-Pop, Jem and the Holograms, and tonight, the Surveillance Camera Players. I’ve set my copy of Audio Hijack to record CKDU’s live stream each and every week at 5:30 ADT.

“But Dan,” you say, “I don’t live in Halifax, and I don’t have any fancy stream-recording software.” No fear friends! The miraculous Stephen Kelly has set up an MP3 archive of recent CKDU programming. You can stream or download Popped Culture (plus many other quality programs) at http://ckdu.dal.ca. For instance, here’s a link to the episode I listened to tonight.

The CKDU Popped Culture Collective — is it any wonder Troy Richter called it his “new favourite posse in the world”?

The Future of Radio

From NPR’s Day to Day, a report on “two new products for radio listeners” — portable satellite radio and podcasting. You can listen to it here.

Staying up late listening to radio

Up way too late tonight. Listened to Invisible Ink Radio #67: Subservience, the latest Listening Lounge, and both hour one and hour two of October 23rd’s Weekend America.

The last three, plus a heads up that both the Listening Lounge and Weekend America are looking for pitches, came via Tod Maffin’s I Love Radio.org. Thanks Tod.

Outfront

Poking around the Outfront website, I came across their Pitch section. I remember looking at this section sometime last year, but I don’t remember seeing all this. It’s got helpful hints, a guide to the pitching process, and some basic recording techniques. The material seems to be culled mostly from their old Tell section.