Author: Barrett Golding/Archives

Shared Public Integrated Digital Media Mission Distribution Association

There’s been a congestion of conferences lately striving to save our sorry pubradio asses. Their themes range from the grand From Participatory Culture to Participatory Democracy to the mundane Making the Transition. They’re put on by groups with amorphous promises in their names: Beyond Broadcast Digital Distribution Consortium Integrated Media Association — mix & match to create your own exciting organizational combos.

DDCOnce conferences were safe excuses to get away from spouses and commune with co-workers. Now they’re powerpoint infested face2face fests, where people stare at their computer screens. Once there was a time-honored tradition of spending conference nights genuinely interacting with real folk, i.e., chasing hookers and hootch. Nowadays, everyone runs back to their hotel rooms to blog, stream, cast, and flickr.

You must post your opinion, preferably at length, prodigiously linked to all other opinions, and prefaced with urgent proclamations of bullet-pointed self-perpetuation:

And don’t forget to mention Web 2.0, even tho you’ve no notion wtf that means. I, however, know exactly what Web 2.0 is, and I’m willing to share this insight; as soon as I’m invited to give the keynote at the next conference.

Listening to Northern Lights- Vid

Using our NPR story “Listening to Northern Lights” (NPR Lost and Found Sound), Joel Halvorson of NASA Earth-Sun Museum Alliance made a video for the Minnesota Planetarium (for use in dome, thus the circular frame of the images):


When solar flares hit the Earth’s magnetic field, the skies at both poles can light up with auroras. The particles also create very low frequency electromagnetic waves, a type of natural radio that can be picked up around the globe. Every year sound recordist Steve McGreevy heads north where the reception is best and points his receiver at the sky.Produced for Minnesota Planetarium and Space Discovery Center, by Joel Halvorson NASA Earth-Sun Museum Alliance (ESMA), as part of the International Polar Year (IPY). Aurora photography by Calvin Hall.Natural Radio recording by Stephen McGreevy. Radio story produced by Barrett Golding, for the series NPR Lost & Found Sound.

Pedestrian Fanatic cast

This week’s HV cast is “Pedestrian Fanatic” (mp3) by Abner Serd: The paving of America as seen from the shoulders and sidewalks of our country’s roads. Musings-in-motion recorded during a 5000 trek from Arizona to Georgia to Maine. “It is becoming illegal to travel this country by foot.” Music by Jeff Arntsen of Racket Ship. (9:55):

Has Success Spoiled NPR?

From the latest issue of the Washingtonian: Has Success Spoiled NPR?

"It would be an immense source of pride for me if NPR could find in its heart new beats and new sounds -- not radically different ones, just different enough that they would belong to the people who are now 17 but who are going to be listening 40 and 50 years from now." --Robert Krulwich

"[NPR is] the retirement community of the air. What was once an insurgent radio movement now sounds like Chet Huntley reading the evening news.” --Alex Beam, Boston Globe

"NPR is run by newspaper people. Sometimes I think they don’t even like radio." --Bob Edwards

State of News Radio

Journalism.org just released a massive report on The State of the News Media 2007. We @ HV are most taken with revelations in the Radio chapter, such as:

  • most popular format- Country Music.
  • pubradio listeners- NPR 26M, APM 17M, PRI “difficult to track.”
  • Clear Channel gets most of the cash; CBS gets some; the rest split scraps.
  • radio news folk work for peanuts, and lately just for the shells.
  • podcast listeners are pretty evenly spread out b/w 12-54yo, except for those 18-24 who podcast LESS (but a bit more than 55-64).
  • most educated audience- Sports Talk listeners (gotta be to track all those March Madness stats)

When you finish with the factoids, do waste some more time with their “Design Your Own Chart” feature.

Goroka, Papua New Guinea- Vid

Skye Rohde’s sound and images from her day at the annual cultural show in Goroka, in the Eastern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea. This is the social event of the year, a swirl of colors and costumes, traditional songs and dances. (Broadcast: Mar 12 2007 on NPR Day to Day):

Ninja- What is Podcasting?

Just in case some of y’all don’t know about Ask A Ninja, thot I’d post an epsiode. This one explains in precise detail the technology of podcasting:

Mad World

Two very different videos, both with the same song, both beautiful in their own opposite ways. First, a TV ad for the video game Gears of War:


Next, the music video for the song:


The song’s a cover (improvement) of Tears for Fears “Mad World.” It was done for the Donnie Darko soundtrack (the music video is on the Director’s Cut) — a great flick w/ score by composer & pianist Michael Andrews. The singer is Gary Jules.

That’s Jules and Andrews are on the rooftop of the music vid, which was directed by filmmaker Michel Gondry (Endless Sunshine, Human Nature, Science of Sleep).

Sam Jackson’s Stack-O-Lee

Once again I try to get music stuck in my head out, and into yours. This week it’s Samuel L Jackson’s smokin’ cover of the trad Stack-O-Lee (mp3):

It’s from the soundtrack to the movie Black Snake Moan, w/ R L Burnside’s band backing. For you fellow on-air radio types, here’s an edited (de-fuq-ified) FCC-friendly clean mp3, cuz the original sure ain’t.

Found the file at Salon‘s Daily Download, which also linked to the masterful Mississippi John Hurt 1928 vers (mp3 at archive.org):

Al Mormon

If Al Queda recruited door-to-door like Mormons:

Kiss & Dying cast

As promised in prev post, here’s our latest HV Podcast:

May Ray photoThe Kiss and the Dying by Ceil Muller (7:36)
“His mouth might have been the most antiseptic place in that hospital. Certainly it was the most welcoming. Greedily reaching out for every possible life giving experience he could get. Death was not without pride, it just was greedy.” An etiquette list for those who may be dying soon, and for the soon-to-be survivors. (Photo by Man Ray.)