As part of an epidemic of higher education institutions nationwide ridding themselves of educational TV and radio licenses, the San Mateo Community College District in Northern California has announced the upcoming sale of KSCM-TV, the noncommercial TV station it has owned and operated for 48...
0 Comments | Posted April 5, 2011 | 4:17 PM
To this T-Mobile customer, last week's announcement of a proposed merger between AT&T and T-Mobile sent shivers up my spine. And not just because I anticipate a 25% increase in my monthly wireless bill.
A survey of strip malls across the country reveals an AT&T store and a T-Mobile...
0 Comments | Posted February 15, 2011 | 1:25 PM
Like the B-52's? Metallica? The White Stripes?
You might have never heard of them if not for KUSF, the venerable San Francisco college radio station that first played their music.
College radio is part of the diverse package of community media voices around the country that with spit-and-glue...
0 Comments | Posted January 22, 2011 | 11:51 PM
The Internet You Need, a production of Bad Monkey Studios and Media Alliance
0 Comments | Posted December 22, 2010 | 5:39 PM
Sometimes you might get it.
For most of the past year, public interest groups worried about the future of the Internet have pushed for action on net neutrality by the Federal Communications Commission. In response to that call, Chairman Julius Genachowski moved in the spring to reclassify broadband services,...
0 Comments | Posted October 28, 2010 | 10:21 PM
As we grow increasingly dependent on the Internet for everything from soup to nuts: employment and educational opportunities, staying in touch with friends and family, and accessing critical news and information, the question of how this essential network operates has never been more important. Does it work in the interests...
0 Comments | Posted September 17, 2010 | 11:29 PM
I often hear, as a Pacifica Foundation board member that terrestrial radio in general and Pacifica radio in particular, is irrelevant.
I would make the case that anything that generates as much sound and fury as Pacifica has for the last 20 years cannot possibly be irrelevant.
There is no...
0 Comments | Posted August 19, 2010 | 1:57 AM
Ever had one of those weeks where the distance between what was said and what was done stretches way out into the blue yonder? In my job as director of Media Alliance, many things pass my desk that generate moments of disbelief, but the 1st week of August was truly...
0 Comments | Posted July 15, 2010 | 5:27 PM
This is a guest blog by James Owens. Originally published on Media-Ocracy.
Based upon comments delivered on June 24, 2010 at the U.S. Social Forum workshop, "Control of Public Media as a Social Justice Issue: Lessons from the U.S. and Latin America."
Who produces media systems? Answering...
0 Comments | Posted June 13, 2010 | 1:00 AM
The news is full of the lack of news. Everywhere pundits, commentators, and academics mourn the death of the crusading journalism of the fourth estate. My own organization, Media Alliance, was founded in 1976, in the heady days following the Watergate scandal that ended a presidency. Movie stars Robert Redford...
0 Comments | Posted May 17, 2010 | 7:22 PM
(This is a guest blog from the Prometheus Radio Project, a long-time ally and friend in media justice).
The FCC is coming to Silicon Valley. The famously old-school agency will make an unlikely visit to the high tech mecca, asking if "legacy media" (radio, television, and newspapers) even...
0 Comments | Posted May 10, 2010 | 10:06 AM
On May 21st, the FCC traveling road show will come to Stanford University in Palo Alto, California for the third of three field workshops on media ownership. Academics, pundits, and various other mucky-mucks will debate whether the explosive growth of online news and information means the old time print and...
0 Comments | Posted May 10, 2010 | 9:53 AM
On May 6th, FCC Commissioner Julius Genachowski laid out a six-page plan for trying to make everyone happy in the net neutrality battle. It's a big question whether he will succeed.
A little background: In 2008, in response to a complaint by barbershop quartet aficionado and engineer Robb Topolsky,...
0 Comments | Posted April 8, 2010 | 10:04 PM
First, we had the Supreme Court affirming the free speech rights of corporations.
Now we have the DC Court of Appeals telling us Comcast owns the Internet.
But they don't.
We do.
A year ago, after a guy like you filed a complaint that Comcast was choking his file-sharing exchanges,...
0 Comments | Posted March 22, 2010 | 7:41 PM
As we arrive at the end of the long health care reform battle with something less than nirvana, media activists have been waiting with bated breath for the release of the long-awaited National Broadband Plan from the Federal Communications Commission.
Well over a year in the making, the plan sets...
0 Comments | Posted February 10, 2010 | 3:40 PM
In May of 2009, I became a public access television producer. Couldn't have picked a worse time.
Not because I don't enjoy hosting and co-producing Media News. It's a great joy to interview guests and try to shed a little light on the issues closest to my heart including: net...

0 Comments | Posted March 12, 2012 | 1:34 PM