BERKELEY CYBERSALON: The Future of Radio
5-7 p.m., Sunday, February 19, 2005
The Hillside Club
2286 Cedar St., Berkeley
Radio is changing in two radically divergent ways: big broadcasters like Clear Channel that rely on advertising are buying up little stations, while subscriber-based satellite channels, public radio channels, and podcasts are proliferating. What’s a listener to do?
Come hear from experts in public radio, commercial radio, and the mechanics of radio what you can expect from radio in the future and how you can make intelligent choices about your future and radio as well.
Carol Pierson, President and CEO
Carol Pierson represents community radio at the national and regional level with Congress, the FCC, funders, and networks, as well as other national and regional organizations. To further NFCB’s role as a supporting umbrella for its various constituencies, she worked with the Native American stations following up on the Inter-Tribal Native Radio Summit and with the Latino controlled stations to organize the Latino Station Summit. In addition to providing organizational and fiscal leadership, Carol works to develop resources that will help NFCB members in revising The Public Radio Legal Handbook; writing Digital Audiocraft; direct consulting with stations on management, operations, planning and board development.
Prior to NFCB Carol served as Program Director and Director of Radio Productions at KQED-FM in San Francisco for ten years. Previously, she was Assistant Station Manager, Director of Operations and National Programming Director at WGBH-FM in Boston. Her radio career started at WYSO in Yellow Springs, OH, where she was Public Affairs Director and Assistant Manager for three years. In her spare time, Carol sings soprano with the La Peña Community Chorus in Berkeley.
Gregg McVicar — Independent Producer — http://www.radiocamp.com/
Gregg McVicar grew up in Walnut Creek, listening daily to KPFA, underground KMPX and progressive KSAN. Starting in college radio, he has worked at numerous commercial and non-commercial stations and created programming for all manner of radio outlets, including early experiments in “pay radio” and Internet distribution. One of his innovative documentary series was the second radio program ever distributed on the Net (the first was a Net-only show, “Geek of the Week”). He holds a master’s degree from the Annenberg School for Communication at USC and was instrumental in creation of The California Channel, the cable TV channel featuring live gavel-to-gavel coverage of the state legislature.
Since establishing Pacific Multimedia/RadioCamp in 1990, Gregg has produced national documentaries such as “The Privacy Project” (1991), “Hell’s Bells: A Radio History of the Telephone (1993) and “Computers, Freedom & Privacy” (1994-95). For the past seven years, he has hosted and produced the national Native music program Earthsongs, heard nationally on some 65 stations and on the Web. He is also host and producer of a new national eclectic music program, UnderCurrents, heard on 19 stations.Gregg is also a member of the volunteer staff at KPFA and an adjunct professor at California College of the Arts where he teaches radio classes.
Tim Pozar
Tim Pozar is a communications consulting engineer specializing in microwave engineering for government and commercial applications. He was an early entrepreneur and developer in the Internet startup area, by co-founding a number of companies such as TLGnet (San Francisco’s first ISP), Brightmail (first commercial anti-spam company) and Omniva (digital rights management). Previous to this, for 25 years Pozar was a radio broadcast engineer for commercial and non-commercial radio stations.
Pozar is active in community wireless networking. As such he is a co-founder of the Bay Area Wireless User Group. Pozar is also leading an effort, called Bay Area Research Wireless Network (BARWN), to study the issues (such as scaling, sustainability, etc) of deploying wireless high speed Internet access for urban and rural settings to address digital divide issues. The BARWN network is currently being built out through the San Francisco Bay area. The infrastructure is based on very low-cost unlicensed equipment. Pozar has also published a number of papers covering the regulatory issues in the United States and engineering of high speed wireless networks.
Roger Coryell
Strategic Marketing Director and Internet Director, Bonneville
International Corporation San Francisco
Roger Coryell’s job is “making sure commercial radio remains relevant to our listeners and advertisers in the future.” As part of that job, he oversees webcasting, podcasting, wireless initiatives and HD Radio efforts for KOIT, KDFC, and 95.7 Max FM in San Francisco, and manages the websites and online listener clubs for the three stations.
Roger has a longer radio resume than he likes to admit to, working since 1973 in almost every job in commercial and public radio (including Program Director, Account Executive, Morning Personality, News Director, production Director, Traffic and Continuity Director, Chief Engineer and Webmaster) for a number of commercial and public stations in the Bay Area, New England, and the San Joaquin Valley. He was also an early adopter of webcasting technology, and currently operates non-commercial streaming channels TwangCity.com and SoulShack.net.
Doors open at 5:00 and a $10 donation is requested for wine and cheese. Everyone is welcome, and the Hillside Club is wheelchair accessible.
Directions:
By car: From Oakland or the Bay Bridge, take Hwy 80 and exit at University, make a quick RIGHT under the freeway and onto the frontage road, and turn RIGHT at the 4RENT sign onto Cedar St. Continue straight two miles past Shattuck and park. From the Richmond Bridge, take Hwy 80 and exit LEFT at Gilman, turn RIGHT on San Pablo for a few blocks, and LEFT on Cedar St. 1.5 miles past Shattuck, and park.
By foot/bicycle: From downtown Berkeley BART, go north on Shattuck, and east on Cedar St. This is an easy and safe 15-minute walk.