The Death of a Radio Pioneer Lorenzo Milam, 1933-2020

[Kali]

https://reason.com/2020/07/23/the-death-of-a-radio-pioneer/

A broadcast pioneer just died in southern Mexico, a few weeks shy of his 87th birthday. Back in the 1960s and '70s, Lorenzo Milam helped launch about a dozen offbeat FM stations—eclectic, adventurous outlets that tried to avoid the straightjacket formulas of both commercial and public radio. He also wrote one of my favorite books about radio, Sex and Broadcasting, and one of my favorite memoirs, The Cripple Liberation Front Marching Band Blues.

He published a bunch of other books too, some under his own name and some pseudonymously. He wrote for literary journals, disability magazines, radio program guides, and the Whole Earth Catalog; he even did a couple of articles for Reason. For a while in the '60s he had a column in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. His best-known piece of writing was a petition to the Federal Communication Commission, but hardly anyone actually read that one—they just passed along word of what was allegedly in it, and it became an urban legend.

more at link

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenzo_Milam

[tirebiter]

1. I wa an engineer on a station based on Milam's model

KUSP, Santa Cruz, Pataphysical Radio. He got sort of depressed as time passed. We got NPR. and it was downhill from there. Station went belly up.

[Kali]

2. I only got involved in community radio in the 90s so missed the heyday

but have that distant connection to what it could have been

[tirebiter]

3. Still can

Last edited Mon Jul 27, 2020, 01:52 AM - Edit history (1)

Most my brethren went on to start another station KSQD, Ksquid also here in Da Cruz. Good luck, it can be done.

[Kali]

4. they burnt me out, no interest in taking on a project like that now

[tirebiter]

5. I let other people do that part

I have no patience after 40+ years. But I do have some healthy collections of Firesign Theatre, NatLamp Radio Hour and such to get me through the door..

[hunter]

6. Religious radio and syndicated hate radio needs to be booted into outer space.

Current radio bands could be converted to digital as television was, which would allow anyone willing to pay the power bill to open a radio station, much as anyone can create their own web site. All ground stations could be required to have local ownership and 60% locally produced content.

Opening a radio station would be as easy a buying a transmitter and signing some FCC paperwork agreeing to abide by a few simple regulations. The transmitter would be programmed to do the rest.

I support our local public radio station partly because I don't want the channel to be taken over by "Christian" radio.

Christian radio is intolerable to me. In college I shared an apartment with a guy who had it on constantly whenever he was there. I'd rather sleep in the library or under a bush than suffer that.

It's possible traditional radio and television are dead and don't know it yet. My adult children and their cousins don't pay any attention at all to it. Everything they listen to comes from their cell phones. They 'cast podcasts and music to their car and house speakers.

[Kali]

7. I ditched tee vee a long time ago

but do still listen to radio in the car, and I stream the community station from Tucson through a Goldberg set of connections to the stereo - so both computer and old style in one!