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Room on the Dial: Group Wants Community Radio in Scranton

Posted by NewAmerica.net Blog Posts on Aug 25, 2010 in Civic Engagement, Public Service Media, Spotlight, Universal Broadband

Scranton, Pa. — The FCC has granted Scranton a grassroots opportunity. Armed with a temporary radio construction permit and guided by the Prometheus Radio Project, local non-profit organization Community Radio Collective, Inc. plans to launch full-power FM station WFTE 90.3 and they have five months to do it. Community Radio Collective has begun a capital campaign to raise $15,000 to be on the air by midnight Feb. 10, 2011, when its construction permit expires. The money will pay for a 60-foot tower to be built 10 miles away in Mount Cobb, creating an FM signal strong enough to reach the city and its suburbs clearly—that is, an area of about 200,000 people.

The Case for Open Data in Public Broadcasting

Posted by NewAmerica.net Blog Posts on Apr 19, 2010 in Public Service Media, Spotlight

History suggests that independent private sector providers of information such as Nielsen and Arbitron will develop over time to give a finer grained understanding of such measures of impact. That said, the measures of impact required are more measures of the “public good” that such media is generating rather than advertising value which is often the priority of private measurement companies focused on private sector advertiser driven media. In a world where the audience is sliced ever smaller across a larger and larger set of channels measures of impact such private companies will work to generate will be validity in measures of demographic slices rather than measures of of community reach and engagement.

How ‘healthy’ is Scranton’s news and information system?

Posted by NewAmerica.net Blog Posts on Mar 12, 2010 in Civic Engagement, Local Journalism, Public Service Media, Spotlight

Scranton, PA – One of the tests for an informed public advanced by the Knight Commission on Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy is: Does the community have at least one high-quality online hub? Until 2009, the newspaper of record here avoided the drastic cuts already underway or completed in other metro area, and each of the three major commercial television networks aired local news.