From techmeet
Free radio and television
Introduction, broadcast pirate radio has gone. The one pirate TV has also gone. The analogue technology - one-way-broadcasting that radio used to do - maybe has been transfered to the internet, where you can now see how many/few are actually watching.
The future of pirate radio?
Is it important to broadcast anymore?
Or should we be making our own versions of youtube.
Problems with pirate television was it takes too long to produce material. Better to leave things on in for download on the web. Radio is easier, and people leave their radios on, people also have radios in other locations. Easy to leave on at work.
Alternative, use both mediums. Problems with priate radio is people look towards the tv first when they get home. First tv then radio. For the internet you have to look things up. TV is there. Radio you are more likely to leave just as background.
Tools available. Example in Berlin where they make cheap mini-transmitters with 100 metre radius, have lots of them all over the city. Just stick onto a computer with an internet connection. Very difficult to find so many. It's distributed, no single attack point.
Issues of reliabilty.
They were built into the routers.
Last.fm listen to your playlist, with community involvement. Shouldn't we move away from the playing music 'people we like, who don't much like your music'. Local pirate radio you want to be able to get information to people in real time. At the moment you couldn't make an alarm call on the one radio station left.
Maybe we should develop something more like last.fm where we can add this information.
Example from Brazil. Community radio/free radio. 7000 illegal radio stations, because of the restrictions of the law. It's not just about the content that we do, it's about the process, it's illegal. The content is not going to change the audience it is the structure that comes from it. You can get the streams from the internet, we connect them to Drupal community website, and link to other sites like indymedia.
Even here where there is nothing, it is important in principle to have it there. Even if there are only two listeners.
In Barcelona, we have been working with free radio alot. We want more than just free radio or internet radio. Community radio that covers one block, legalised. Audio on demand mixed with radio. Studio which was a source of conflict. Usually don't have a studio - with one everyone wants to do a radio - doesn't scale. Library of streaming and programs. Downloaded programs have 100s of listeners when the stream may have only had a few listeners.
Yellow pages for streaming. See the streamings that are available, how many listeners etc. Too much streaming going on, but people don't know about it. Just talk about their one local stream. Library allows podcast / mp3 downloads to listen off-line.
Analogue radio. bbc fan, because they produce content. the trouble with patapoe is that it doesn't produce enough content. Now you have lots of streams. But if you aren't producing interesting content, that is not actually produced by the mainstream media, you could gain listeners with this. Topics they cannot get in the mainstream. Just playing music, then you can make your playlist at home. You can share knowledge without showing your face, and sharing knowledge that is not available in the mainstream. You also need to be dedicated.
The quality, expression, the content, the role of the community. Reproducing the production with the interesting content. This does not change the structure of the media. We have the tools to produce the things. What does it involve this process. Do we want our content to be accessible, but the structure. For Indymedia, it is clearly open.
Here in the last few years a lot of pirate radio stations were shut down. They moved to just stream on the internet. Lots of people who were producing content just stopped. The streams continued but with less produced content. Lieden just announced final shutdown. Even though the number of listeners maybe the same as broadcast. This is a local situation to The Netherlands. Elsewhere low power broadcast radio is more of a possiblity.
Is content produced, is it feisbible? It depends on the community that exists. Example the 100s listening to download the content. Lots of people are getting to expect everything is customisable and available now. It's a defunct idea here to have to listen to what ever there is there now. Elsewhere it is different, the infrastructure is different. So the encouragement to produce content is different. Here there are lots of blogsites.. where I can more effectively describe what is going on about my community.
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