The WRYR Holiday Concert is cancelled due to the blizzard and will be rescheduled. Stay tuned for more information on the new date.

12/15/09

WRYR / Local Lowdown Holiday Fundraiser Concert

Andy Och, host of WRYR's Local Lowdown, has signed up some of the finest bands from the DC area to convince you to experience the gift of giving and part with some of your holiday cash to help your favorite local radio station, WRYR, and you get to hear some great music! The entire night will be broadcast LIVE ON WRYR!

Join us on Sunday, December 20, 2009 at DC9 from 7 pm to 2 am, and you'll hear a whole sleigh-full of great music. Tell a friend, heck, tell 50! $10 at the door gets you hours of great times. DC9 will have food and drink specials. A whole lotta music for a little money, and you'll be helping your community radio station.

Line-up for the night includes Koshari, Brandon R. Hayes & Co, Red Sammy, Throwdown Syndicate, The Screws, The New Retro, DJ Danny Fal & Mike O'Brien.

If you have any questions, email the Ochster at locallowdown@yahoo.com.

Thanks go out to DC9!

8/24/09

WRYR Helps Get High School Station On the Air

WRYR's Chief Engineer, Mike Roche, helped Sherwood High School in Sandy Spring, MD get their radio station on the air, an event had been in the planning for three years. WRYR will be sending speakers to their Media Classes to share with the students stories of community media. Special Thanks to Mike Roche and Mike Shay and all the WRYR folks that made this possible.

Here's a note from Jeff Deitchman, the English teacher at Sherwood High School who led the project:

           "That was pretty darn exciting today. I've been dreaming of this for three years, and to hear one of
         my kids through my car radio was an unmitigated joy. Since you guys do this all the time, I guess it's
         routine, but it's anything but that for me; and my kids will, I am positive, levitate when I crank it up for
        them. You've both helped make an awful lot of kids happy; and like the balloon seller in
        Georgetown used to say, "When the children are happy, everybody's happy."

         If we can inspire other schools to do this, I'm all for it. I've helped a school in Baltimore get off the
         ground, and I've let as many people as possible know that I'm willing to do the same for them. I have a
         heck of a time trying to get my regular English classes to edit a paper they write for me; my radio kids
         run back to their seats six, seven, eight times to polish a 30-second spot after I show them where it
         needs work. Radio is the best teaching tool I've come across, hands-down."

5/23/09

Championship Game of the Baltimore-Washington Diamond Classic Women’s Baseball Tournament Live on WRYR

The Eastern Women's Baseball Conference is partnering with WRYR to bring you the Championship Game of the Diamond Classic Women's Baseball Tournament Live on WRYR. The Championship Game will be held Monday, May 25th at 10 am.

The Eastern Women's Baseball Conference (EWBC) is dedicated to providing opportunities for girls and women to play organized baseball and preparing amateur female baseball players for national and international competition. The EWBC uses Major League Baseball rules and includes teams from the metropolitan areas of Baltimore, MD and Washington, DC.

4/4/09

Tom Wisner Featured in The Washington Post

**WRYR's Host of Chesapeake Country, Tom Wisner, "The Bard of the Chesapeake", is featured in The Washington Post.** He no longer performs for large crowds, just occasional visitors eager to learn what they can from the 78-year-old folk-singing environmentalist before the tumor in his lungs claims his life. His trademark white beard disappeared after chemotherapy. The treatment made his fingers so sensitive that he no longer plays guitar.

3/16/09

NAB Sues FCC On Low Power Radio Displacement

Prometheus intervenes on behalf of FCC Today, the Federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is hearing oral arguments in a lawsuit brought by the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) against the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The lawsuit alleges that the FCC defied the Radio Broadcasting Preservation Act when it granted waivers to keep low power radio (LPFM) on the air. Were the FCC not to intervene, these low power stations would be forced off the air by full power stations wanting to change their broadcasting location. Prometheus Radio Project, represented by Media Access Project attorney Parul Desai, is an intervenor in the case on behalf of the FCC and the threatened LPFM stations.

Full power broadcasters currently have the right to demand that any low power stations that are in the way of their expansion or relocation plans must turn off their stations. While the rule allowing this has been on the books since 2000, displacements happened quite rarely until a rule streamlining full power station relocation was issued in 2006. Soon after the streamlining order, hundreds of LPFM stations faced a loss in signal coverage, and 40 stations were slotted to be wiped off the dial entirely. Some of these low power stations were alerted of their demise when they had only been on the air for months.

The FCC took action in December of 2007 to give threatened LPFMs more options to stay on the air. One of the methods approved was to allow LPFMs to use a more accurate form of engineering criteria for predicting interference than they are ordinarily allowed to use in order to search for a new slot on the dial. These engineering methods, which are only used for LPFMs in dire straits, are the same methods that are used as a matter of routine to give out full power and repeater stations. "The FCC acted within their authority to grant waivers for LPFM stations, and they only took measures that were allowable under the RBPA. In fact, there are many more steps that the FCC really should take in order to treat LPFMs more fairly." said Pete Tridish, a broadcast engineer with the Prometheus Radio Project.

"The NAB has filed suit in a spiteful effort to make sure that LPFMs lose their channels," said Sakura Saunders, a board member of the Prometheus Radio Project. One of the 40 stations that could lose their signal as a result of this lawsuit is KDRT-LP in Davis, CA, a station that Sakura herself helped start in her old college town.

"KDRT negotiated with the full power stations and other stations in the area – a new process made possible by the FCC waiver policy – to ensure that everyone was happy with the outcome; KDRT found a new frequency on which to broadcast and the full power station got to move their transmitter. Now, the NAB is threatening the very existence of KDRT, despite the fact that no harm was done to any broadcaster in granting KDRT the waiver." Much of the lawsuit revolves around questions of whether the FCC violated the Radio Broadcast Preservation Act (RBPA) of 2000, a bill that put restrictions on the licensing of the LPFM service because of interference claims put forth by the NAB. This bill included a stipulation that the issue of interference would be studied further, resulting in the multi-million dollar congressional study contracted out to the MITRE corporation. The results of thisstudy were given to Congress in 2004, and found that interference concerns raised by incumbent broadcasters were largely baseless and recommended explicitly that restrictions on LPFM be lifted.

Since that time, bills have been introduced by three consecutive Congresses to repeal the RBPA. A current bill, the Local Community Radio Act, was recently introduced in the House by Congressmen Mike Doyle and Lee Terry, and an identical companion bill is in the Senate with Senators Maria Cantwell and John McCain as lead co-sponsors. This bill has widespread bi-partisan support and is widely believed to be ripe for passage in the coming months. "The NAB's arguments against low power radio lack any legal merit in the first place, and will be even more irrelevant once the Local Community Radio Act is passed. At this point, we can only surmise that the NAB is just trying to create further confusion and hassle for LPFMs," said Pete Tridish.

For more information, contact Sakura Saunders at 415- 287-3737 or Pete Tridish at 215-605-9297

2/15/09

Radio from Downtown Returns Live on WRYR on Feb. 21st

The dynamic, thought-provoking, hopefully entertaining and certainly long-running radio program, Radio from Downtown, will be returning to the historic Avalon Theater in Easton, MD on February 21st at 8 pm. This latest in a series of attempts to enter the world of big-time show business will be “performed,” if that is the right word, before a live audience and broadcast live on WRYR. The show will feature music by the Uptown Vocal Jazz Quartet; a Chesapeake Bay update (or whatever else he wants to talk about) by author Tom Horton; the Downtown Players (with NPR Special Correspondent Susan Stamberg) in an original radio play about the dire global financial situation and how it affects a small business on Maryland’s Eastern Shore; the nine-piece house jazz band, the No-No Nonette; some other stuff; and some “jokes.”

2/3/09

Quirky South County Radio Goes Live at Roller Derby

WRYR staffers went to Washington last week to pull off their first live broadcast for their low-power station at 97.5 FM. Inauguration wrap-up? Well, no. Roller derby. That's right, roller derby.