The Digital Hub of Erik Anderson
Dr. Gary Russi On The Erik Anderson Program
Jun 7th
Oakland University President stops by the final Erik Anderson Program for an in studio interview. We discuss the no confidence vote being postponed, summer construction at OU, sports, and more.
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M.L. Elrick On The Erik Anderson Program
Jun 7th
Detroit Free Press Reporter M.L. Elrick calls into the Final Erik Anderson Program on WXOU to discuss the latest happenings with former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. Recently, the former mayor was sent to prison on a probation violation, he is currently serving between 18 months and 5 years and is currently under federal investigation.
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Another Vegas Trip In The Books!
Apr 27th
So…NAB / BEA 2010 is over!
I’ve actually been back home for over a week, I’m just finally getting around to finishing up my blog posts about the show. Once again another wonderful trip. Like Justin, I have not idea when I’ll make it back to NAB / BEA or Vegas for that matter. Although I certainly look forward to returning whenever I can.
My thanks to everyone who stopped by the blog the read about our Vegas adventures. I apologize for not keeping you up to date on the “Vegas Numbers.” I can tell you that I lost $80 total on the gaming floor, and lost count of how many adult beverages I enjoyed throughout the week during my off time. I can tell you it was an enjoyable trip.
In other news, I have completed my final exams at OU and will be walking across the stage on Saturday, May 1st! I’m very excited to close one chapter of my life and begin another. If you haven’t been following me on Twitter, for now I’ll say a handful of new oppritunites have come up and I’m looking forward to starting working on those on Monday.
More to come on that later in another blog post. For now…3 days remaining as General Manager of WXOU. WOO HOO!
That’s All Folks!
Apr 27th
We’ll that wraps up another NAB/BEA Conference for me… don’t know when I’m going to be able to make it back, but the NAB is a good place for Broadcasters to find out about some cool equipment for their stations, and the BEA for students to get ideas from other like minded stations facing similar issues.
Thanks for reading the blogs! Although I wanted to get to the movies in LV to do a review, I ran out of time – however, you can find all my reviews over www.beyondthefilms.com. Have a great summer – I’m GRADUATED!!!
Phantom
Survival of The Fittest
Apr 27th
Justin already spoke about this panel, and I don’t have too much more to add except for a few minor comments.
This panel focused on community radio in foreign countries, mostly England and New Zealand. From what I gathered, in England, the BBC has a good lock on radio. They are the government agency that owns radio stations in England. They really don’t want little community radio stations being setup in England. They are like the Clear Channel of England except they are government controlled.
There seems to be a listener demand for community radio in England. Those stations even cross-promote what the BBC is doing on their stations. The BBC contends that community takes away from their audience and fights tooth and nail to try and prevent more stations from being setup.
Overall an interesting panel.
Internet Radio
Apr 27th
On Saturday, I sat in on a panel regarding the history of internet radio.
The panel discussed different methods of setting up your webstream. I learned that at WXOU our webstream is setup as most standard web stations are setup, through Shoutcast. I also was reminded like I am every year at BEA, that WXOU is also a lot better off than most stations. First because we are directly funded, Second, because we have an FM frequency, and Third because even though our frequency range might suck, we can still be heard in some areas.
The panel was great because there was a lot of interaction between panel members and audience members. One woman asked if other stations had as much problems working with IT departments. Everyone in the room laughed. I suggested that if you’re gonna work with the IT department at your university, make sure you are dealing with the person who can click the button on whatever settings you need verses a customer support person. I found that if you don’t have the final person, the tech support person might tell you something can’t be done when in actuality, it can.
Judging by this panel, radio is definitely getting more interactive and will definably have a future online.
Day 5: Internet and Broadcast Radio
Apr 27th
The reasons for starting internet stations are powerful. While broadcasting ON AIR the traditional way has its own benefits, the fact is many bands in metropolitan areas are completely full (which is the case for WXOU and why our broadcast is relatively weak compared to some of the big stations), internet radio can be a great equalizer.
Creating a local appeal can still be a powerful way to make a community impact, even if you are available globally via the internet. Local bands and sports are sill a key in College Internet Radio, as they can get the community involved in the radio explicitly.
Using the Twitter feed as a headline for your news and website feed are a great way to keep listeners up to date on the station – the 140 character limit per Twitter post lends itself to being a headline. Creating a specific hash tag for the story can allow other people to use it and create a dialog among consumers of the news and the news source. Hopefully when wxou.org gets a face-lift, we will be able to greater include Twitter and other social media to help build a greater fan base.
-Phantom
Day 5: Community vs. Big Radio
Apr 27th
This panel focused on the differences between commercial (”Big”) radio and its non-profit and community oriented alternatives. Big radio offers “cheap and exploitative” content but is financially profitable. On the filp end of the spectrum is community radio, which WXOU might fall under, tries to focus on local issues and providing content that is relevant to listeners lives, however, they are often not financially stable. Indeed, if WXOU were not a part of Oakland University, it likely would not exist.
There are 2 levels of sustainability:
1) Social – being relevant to the community
2) Commercial – Gettin’ Paid
As one can imagine, small radio stations often have more social sustainability than financial and vice versa. Community Radio is cited as having distinct features from big radio:
1) Small scale, non-profit
2) Social gain, and community benefit
3) Defined by location of niche interest
This was in interesting panel, however many of the ideas presented would likely not work in America as many of the presenters were from the UK and New Zealand, places where broadcasting laws are vastly different – it was interesting to see those countries focusing on community though and it would be interesting to see a focus on that in America.
Covering The Crisis
Apr 27th
One of the better panels at BEA that I saw discussed covering crisis and emergencies. The panel discusses how some college stations. It seems as though students at the stations that were discussed, really wanted to be involved with covering emergencies, until the emergency involved them.
Yeah you can talk about a tornado, but when the tornado comes, are you in the shelter or are you outside shooting video? That’s the question everyone should ask before joining a team to cover weather emergencies.
Two interesting ideas came out of this panel. First, at one of the schools, the campus radio station was able to work out a deal with campus police so that the police could immediately take control of the radio station in the event of a campus emergency. A system was setup so that campus police could simply pickup the phone and dial into the station, go on air, relay information, and then return the station to normal programming.
This service is something that we might want to consider implementing at Oakland University and at WXOU. If we could get a similar system in place, when all hell breaks loose on campus, it could be very helpful.
Another idea comes from Western Kentucky University. There, students organized the WKU Storm team. The team is a group of students who are interested in forecasting weather. A storm team would be a great idea for WXOU. I think it would be a great addition to our news coverage. That is of course if we had some volunteers who were interested in forecasting weather verses reading it off of weather.com.
Click Here for more information on the WKU Storm Team.
Overall this was a great panel. I hope we could implement some of these ideas at WXOU.
Day 4: Emergency Broadcasting
Apr 27th
What is the best way to disseminate emergency and health information for a radio station? Again, the panels turn to the ongoing dialog trying to figure out the “correct” model to optimally use the internet. PSAs, live remotes from vaccine events, and interviews with health officials may be options to get the information out on air as opposed to the internet. As the industry seems to be currently, a mix of both the social and new media and traditional methods may be the best.
Mass texts, such as those used by Oakland University might overload the system if too many people use the tower at once. Any system is going to have a finite number of texts or emails at once… this gives the choices of increasing the bandwidth on the network or tier-ing the texts/emails. Training the DJs in imperative as nervous DJs on air with an emergency have no credibility. For campus emergencies, one university has a close partnership with the campus police, which is a cool alliance that WXOU doesn’t necessarily have, which might be interesting for WXOU to explore further in the future.