New community radio conference in November

The people of WFMU, WAVE FARM, and ART FM are organizing the first-ever Avant Radio Fest on Nov. 13-15 in Jersey City, New Jersey.

They are bringing together experimental radio performers from around the country with new concepts for radio. The conference includes workshops, demonstrations, and live broadcasts that will help beginners get on the air and give seasoned professionals new tools to widen their influence.

The schedule includes many inventive and informative sessions. For example, they will air and discuss the documentary film, 40 Watts From Nowhere, which tells the story of the low-power loophole and how one Los Angeles station helped give birth to low-power FM. In another session, WFMU Station Manager Ken Freedman will share how the station expanded its audience so that its revenue could grow to $3 million per year. And Anna Friz, a sound and radio artist and a media studies scholar, will explain radio and transmission art, the kind of work she has created and presented since 1998.

Find the session list and registration here.

Suki Wessling, author of The Babblery and part of the team at KSQD, maintains a comprehensive resource page for programmers and producers seeking music for their shows. She recommends free-to-use music, particularly for radio shows that get re-produced and distributed in podcast form. And producers should always verify the licensing information for the desired track—even with music offered on a ‘free music’ site.

Here’s a worldwide index of community radio stations. Is your station on it? Submit here if you’d like to be listed.

Need help with password generation for the FCC’s new EAS security rules? Here’s a helpful explainer and tool from The Broadcasters’ Desktop Resource.

Communications Act of 1934, Sect. 326.

Nothing in this Act shall be understood or construed to give the Commission the power of censorship over the radio communications or signals transmitted by any radio station, and no regulation or condition shall be promulgated or fixed by the Commission which shall interfere with the right of free speech by means of radio communication.