USA: FORMER STATION MANAGER NOW LEADS STUDENT RADIO WHERE HE STARTED HIS CAREER

FORMER STATION MANAGER NOW LEADS STUDENT RADIO WHERE HE STARTED HIS CAREER
Mallace has led various Phoenix radio groups including Sierra H Broadcasting, Radio Disney, Big City Radio and others for more than thirty years
Source

It comes full circle, Michael Mallace told Radio Ink, a US radio newsmagazine. He will direct KVIT-FM, the high school station in Chandler, a city in the Phoenix metropolitan area, where he started his career. In fact, the East Valley Institute of Technology (EVIT) has appointed him as general manager of 88.7 FM The Pulse, the high school radio station that aims to engage students to acquire the necessary skills to make their way in the world of radio. Over the past 30 years, he has run various radio groups in the Arizona capital, not just chasing ratings and profits, but valuing people and nurturing talent.

A very American phenomenon

With a power output of 15 kW, The Pulse can be heard in a car as far as the outskirts of Tucson
With a power output of 15 kW, The Pulse can be heard in a car as far as the outskirts of Tucson, as can be seen in the map drawn up by FMLIST (the green and yellow squares indicate where the station was received in a car outside a calculated reception area)
Source and dsta processing: FMLIST

The Pulse is one of more than four hundred US campus radio stations (one in 15 of the approximately 6400 active FM stations) that have been in existence since the 1960s when the FCC (Federal Communication Commission, the US airwaves regulator) began issuing licences. They operate with an identifier (call number) similar to that of commercial and public stations. In Canada there are 52 of them, in FM and even on medium wave: the first was CJRT, from the Ryerson Institute of Technology (Ontario Department of Education). Known as Jazz Radio, it started in 1949 on 88.3 MHz with a power of 3 kW and today is on 91.0 MHz with 40 kW. The United States and Canada have the largest number of FM student stations, but there are such stations in over 40 countries. Often they operate only on the web because regulations do not offer them space on the airwaves.

Talent hubs and trendsetters

The article on university radios published on the Red&Blue website draws a parallel between Italian and American web radios
The article on university radios published on the Red&Blue website draws a parallel between Italian and American web radios
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Working in college radio is part of the student experience. Stations are run completely independent but can make use of contributors from the community to which they belong for programmes. Some are set up to train professional radio staff, others to make educational programmes or to be an alternative to commercial and public radio. They often uncover musical trends or emerging artists before they make a name for themselves. One example among many? Music promoter Marco Stanzani writes that Anderson Paak, a pop artist of worldwide notoriety, had been noticed when he was still in the early stages of his career by Italian rapper Mondo Marcio thanks to tracks broadcast on a US college radio station. So much so that since 2010, with his agency Red&Blue Stanzani, he has organised Uniweb Tour – a real live acoustic live tour on the web radios of major Italian universities – to promote the artists he covers.

USA: Radio Disney closes

The report in the Argentine daily La Nación points out that Disney’s radio station has helped launch a number of celebrities, including Selena Gomez (pictured).
Source

In the first quarter of 2021, the Walt Disney Company will close Radio Disney and Radio Disney Country. Opened in 1995, the station owned 23 medium-wave stations to reach a large audience of young people and teenagers, but with the spread of streaming in 2014 most of the stations (22) had been sold and the signal was being broadcast digitally, on satellite and in some HD Radio subchannels. Radio Disney Country, a secondary streaming brand launched in the autumn of 2015, was no longer on AM as of 2017 because the station broadcasting it, 1110 KDIS in Pasadena (Los Angeles) had changed its name and format, becoming KRDC. The end of broadcasting is also caused by the uncertainties of the pandemic about the future of live music events. Thirty-six employees (full-time and part-time staff) will lose their jobs and the Pasadena station will be sold off. The closure does not affect Radio Disney in Latin America.

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