Greetings fellow Earthlings

Hi, it's Jenna. I'm a first-year Media Studies MA student. The reason I added WNSR Radio Lab is because I had such a great time doing student radio as an undergrad (At Univ. of Arizona, check out KAMP Student Radio -- kamp.arizona.edu).

I have tons of ideas for producing short features segments, running around to concerts and getting rock stars to give us station IDs, as well as ideas on how to get the word out about WNSR.

Also, I used to be a Music Director, so I know all about reporting charts and calling up college promotions people at radio stations to send us music and giveaway items(oh boy, I sure wish we were streaming -- so much can happen in real-time, it really gets my adrenaline pumping! Maybe that's something we can work on putting together this semester?).

Well, those are my hopes & aspirations for working with you at WNSR. I also hope to become a ProTools master. If anyone has tips on how to record with the Media Studies audio recording kits, please send them my way -- I am very green when it comes to production.

Lehrer in the City Room

Take a moment to read this excellent Q&A from Brian Lehrer, host of the 10am-12pm community/public affairs slot on WNYC. We might also note that it's significant in and of itself that Lehrer goes to lengths to make himself available in other forums like this -- a great promotional tool and a good way to enforce accountability to the listenership. He's an excellent ambassador for his station and his program.

His thoughts on the future of radio and podcasting are notable in particular:

As a listener who catches up with your show by podcast later in the day or the next morning, my question is: Do you feel the future of radio programming such as yours is in podcasting? While your show often works on late breaking news and more immediate issues of the day, it has also proven to be quite valuable in the new forms of media which aren’t live, and therefore potentially lose timeliness. I wouldn’t be listening to your show in the first place if it wasn’t for traditional radio, but if not for podcasting I wouldn’t be able to continue listening, so considering that from a listener — how do you, as a host, reconcile your love of radio with the on-demand nature of the increasingly Internet-driven world?

— Posted by eric620

Eric, this is a huge question for the future of all radio shows. While old-line radio programmers compete for younger demographics, the real story is that many college students today aren’t choosing which local station to listen to. They simply don’t own radios. Poof, you’re history. Frankly, I don’t consider my program a radio show anymore. I think of it as a radio-based multiplatform interactive news and issue … media thing. If we come up with a short, cogent name for that, I’ll use it. Ideas welcome. But we use Twitter and Facebook and Flickr and YouTube in various ways in addition to the live radio stream and the podcast. Here, for example, is a video snippet of my interview with Felicia Pearson (Snoop from “The Wire”), which has drawn many thousands of hits on YouTube, gradually over time.

Like many shows today, we are improvising our way through the changing balance between real time and time-shifted listening. We seek to serve both real time and time-shifted audiences the best we can. The bottom line, though, is that we are a live show in the middle of business hours, and we never sacrifice live, real-time programming. The podcast is divided into separate files for each segment of the show. So downloaders can choose to ignore the dated ones and listen to the ones that hold up. In the future, we may slice the podcast in different ways and offer podcast streams by topic in addition to date, but so far that has felt too artificial.

A larger issue is that I don’t know where it will all wind up. But I’ll say I think this two-way street (really a three-way street: me-to-you, you-to-me, you-to-you) is very good for democracy — much better than any media model we have had before. I do not pine for any golden days of broadcasting, which, in the context of news and democracy, I don’t think ever existed in the first place.

Friday class

On Air and Radio Lab Classes will meet this Friday, October 3, at 3:15 at WNYC, 160 Varick Street, at the 8^th Floor reception area.

Here are directions:

Take the number 1 train to Houston; get on at the southern end of the train, or walk south after you reach the stop, and exit and King and Varick. Walk down two blocks to Charlton. The station is the corner building at Varick and Charlton, but the entrance is on Varick—a big set of glassed-in doors. Note: the address on the floor of the foyer says 10 Hudson Square—do not be confused; this is just a real estate address, you are in the right building.

Building security may ask for ID, then you take the right side elevators to the 8^th Floor and we will meet you in reception and take you in as a group.

Punctuality is important because once the tour starts, it will be hard to reach us in the building, but in case of emergencies Sarah’s number is 646-829-4137, and Jim’s mobile, which he will carry on the tour, is 917-620-6999. If you arrive late and don’t see anyone in reception, dial Jim and someone will come out to meet you.

We know you are all models of civility, but be especially aware that you are entering a working broadcast facility with people on air all the time, and a steady stream of guests and frantic reporters and producers, so please be as quiet as you can in reception and all the public areas.