We will screen PIRATE RADIO USA on the last weekend of May in Amsterdam as part of the H3R3TIC! FESTIVAL.

For more info please check: www.videoinferno.nl

We will be screening Pirate Radio USA when it gets dark. Some snacks will be available, but feel free to bring food and beverages for yourself or to share. For more information please visit www.slant-house.com or email 917@slant-house.com

Fifth Annual Davis Film Festival, April 3-5, 2008.

www.davisfilmfest.org

Friday, April 4th Fundraiser for KDRT low power radio station

FCC Hearings happened here in Seattle Friday–and wow, what a turnout!

Over 800 people showed up, packing the hall, staying till after midnight to near uniformly testify against FCC plans to lift the media cross ownership ban.

FCC Councilman Michael Copps rocked the house, bemoaning the lack of hearing notice and hip checking FCC Chairman Martin’s last minute attempt to let Big Media get Bigger. Unfortunately, the board’s GOP tilt means Chairman Martin may well have the last say, regardless of what the people, or the facts say.

An FCC engineer on hand I spoke with marveled at the crowd, telling me it was the biggest crowd he had ever seen testifying before the FCC. Even the Governor spoke, and it all made front page news.

I testified too, to remind the commissioners, regardless of what they decide, that people are already doing something about big media being awful: making their own media. You can check out my speech, and everyone else’s on Pacifica, who broadcast the whole thing, live.

And now Congress is getting into the act, with the Senate threatening to take action to cut the FCC off at the pass.

Even mainstream media is beginning to admit the downside to increasingly homogenized media.

Round one for us, but the fight continues…. stay tuned…..

From Washington Post, via Free Press

By Frank Ahrens

Even though the media landscape has changed radically since the last time the Federal Communications Commission tried to alter its media-ownership rules, a hearing at the FCC yesterday showed that the debate remains as heated as ever.

A range of social, political and consumer groups that successfully petitioned a federal court to throw out the FCC’s 2003 attempt to relax ownership rules is once again fighting to keep limits on how many radio and television stations conglomerates can buy.

The groups testified as the five-member commission works to update its ownership rules to the court’s satisfaction, a task it hopes to accomplish soon.

read more

Source: reclaimthemedia.org

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin plans to hold the last of six official public hearings on media ownership rules in Seattle, before rushing the agency’s 18-month long consideration of the rules to a fast-tracked conclusion by mid-December. The hearing will be the only chance for Northwest residents to weigh in on proposals that would allow giant media companies to grow even more concentrated. While Martin had proposed holding a Seattle hearing in early November, no date has been officially announced.

>> read more

hannahjs(at)prometheusradio.org

The United States Senate Commerce Committee voted this afternoon to substantially expand the number of community media outlets in the United States. In a consensus vote, the Committee moved to report Senate Bill 1675, the Local Community Radio Act of 2007, to the full Senate — and opened the door for thousands of new community radio stations to be built in America’s largest cities, and smaller communities across the nation.

Read more…

When we started out as little radio pirates back in 1996 Big Media looked pretty big already (check this out in the first few minutes of Pirate Radio USA for free @ www.bside.com) but now it’s even bigger. In 2007, just NINE media conglomerates– Disney, CBS, Time Warner, News Corp, Bertelsmann AG, Viacom, General Electric, Lagardère Group and Vivendi SA– own more than 90% of the media market.

But for every action, though, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

In the process of documenting the pirate radio movement in our film, we captured a larger movement afoot we were part of—the rise of citizen media in the USA. Regular people sick of the mass(ive) media, decided to make an end run around them—creating their own media and taking it to their audience with sweat equity and available technology. From the Internet and Indymedia to the rise of the Blogosphere and Low Powered FM, citizen media has risen to encounter the media powers that be.

This is also happening with documentary films— controversial material that once could never hope for distribution by big film and theatre chains (like the underground world of pirate radio) now have alternative distribution channels like we’ve found with B-Side Entertainment, who is helping us offer Pirate Radio USA directly to the public via copy protection free downloads (www.bside.com/films/pirateradiousa).

And very soon a series of grassroots screenings to bring us (and many other films) directly to cities and people across the country says the battle between Big Media and small is really just beginning… and let me say right now, I’m betting on the little guy.