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Current DJ: Clarence Ewing: The Million Year Trip
Bryan Ferry Slave to Love from Boys and Girls (E.G.) Add to Collection
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Thank you so much to everyone who contributed during our spring fundraising campaign! You helped us meet — and pass — our $10,000 goal!
We’re so grateful to you for your belief in and support of CHIRP Radio. Since we launched last January (and even before), hundreds of you have stepped up to support live, local radio for Chicago and beyond. CHIRP truly is a labor of love, built and staffed by more than 150 volunteers, and without our listeners and supporters, none of our work would be possible.
Whether it’s a campaign like this, a Record Fair, or another CHIRP effort, it’s amazingly humbling and exciting to see the warmth and enthusiasm our supporters feel for the station. Thank you so much for believing in us, and for making this station possible.
Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs is conducting its 2011 Creative Chicago Survey, which invites creative practitioners who live and work in Chicago to describe who they are and what they need to thrive, including specific space and business assistance information.
This information will help the City determine policies and programs to support its Creative Sector, and be shared with interested organizations, research and advocacy efforts. The Creative Chicago Survey is unique because it invites the creative community to opt-in and define itself, rather than working from a pre-determined list.
To have the greatest impact, their goal is to hear from all creative people who live and/or work in Chicago. Who is a creative? An artist or an architect, a chef or DJ, a member of a church choir or a fashion designer, a teaching artist or playwright, an arts administrator or a filmmaker, a knitter or an industrial designer. Not just professional artists, but every person who engages in a creative practice as their job or their hobby is considered “a creative.”
Click here to take the survey, in Spanish or English, from Friday, February 4th to Friday, February 25th.
After ten years of effort by low power FM activists, the Local Community Radio Act has passed Congress and goes to President Obama for his signature!
CHIRP volunteers and supporters have worked to pass the Local Community Radio Act since the organization’s founding in 2007. The bill’s passage means that the FCC will be able to license hundreds of new LPFM radio stations – stations licensed at 100 watts or below – nationwide.
What does this mean for CHIRP? The path to a LPFM signal for station hopefuls in the country’s largest markets still will face a tough, but not impossible, road. With the power to license back in the hands of the FCC, the hope is that groups in top five markets like Chicago will be able to use alternative means of finding space on the dial. The FCC has expressed openness to these methods.
Now that the bill has passed, we should learn in coming weeks and months just what new LPFM applicants can expect from the FCC.
Regardless of what the future holds in terms of a broadcast license for CHIRP, this is a tremendous victory for the country’s media democracy movement. We’re so excited to be a part of it, and are optimistic that we can work with the FCC to find a path to a broadcast license.
Thank you so much to all our wonderful supporters and volunteers for all the work you have done over the years, writing letters, making phone calls, and generally spreading the word about this issue. You made this victory possible!
Executives at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), the lobby group representing large commercial broadcast stations across the United States, were surprised to look out their windows on Monday to see a veritable circus of community radio supporters. Dozens of people hula-hooped, juggled, and asked NAB chief Gordon Smith, former Senator from Oregon, to stop blocking a bill that would expand access to 100-watt low power FM (LPFM) noncommercial community radio stations across the US – the Local Community Radio Act, HR 1147 and SB 592.
They cheered at the NAB, “Stop making us jump through hoops! Support low power FM radio and the Local Community Radio Act!” They also asked their Congressional leaders to pass this widely loved and bipartisan bill before the end of the 111th Congress.
“Low power FM radio stations not only put local music, news, and political debates on the FM dial, they saved lives after Hurricane Katrina because they put up-to-the-minute local information on the air – and they are small and flexible enough to keep running with a car battery when the power goes out,” said Pete Tridish, an organizer with the Prometheus Radio Project, a nonprofit that supports low power FM radio stations nationwide and friend of CHIRP. “By passing this bill today, Congress will be supporting thousands of constituent organizations instead of bowing to one big broadcast lobby’s wishes. Gordon Smith is silencing voices across the country by opposing the expansion of community radio. So we’re here to say: Gordon Smith, don’t make a circus of our democracy – stop making us jump through hoops; work with Congress to pass this bill.”
There are about 800 stations on the air across the US, but thousands of other groups were unable to get licenses when LPFM was established in 2000. The Local Community Radio Act, which would expand LPFM, sailed through the House in 2009, and has broad bipartisan support in the Senate. Unfortunately, new reports showed that NAB CEO and former Senator Gordon Smith is organizing secret Senate holds on the bill to kill it. The NAB claimed that they were working to compromise or negotiate on expanding low power FM radio, but as of Monday the 13th, they had rejected every offer that Senate sponsors and LPFM advocates have brought before them.
Hundreds of diverse groups, including CHIRP, support expanding low power FM radio nationwide, including emergency responders, national civil rights and faith-based organizations, and many others. They have waited years for the opportunity to serve their communities, but the FCC has been unable to give out licenses to them because Congress restricted LPFM.
Now is the time to act! Watch the hula hoopers below, and then send an email to Senator Durbin asking him to help bring the Local Community Radio Act to the floor for a vote.
The CHIRP studios (and our entire block) are currently without power, apparently due to today’s high winds in Chicago. Because of this, we’re airing backup programming until our power comes back on. That means you won’t see updated playlist information scrolling on CHIRPRadio.org. We hope to be back live soon, and we appreciate your patience. Until then, please enjoy some great archived CHIRP Radio shows airing now!