The Antidote to Corporate Radio

Written by Laura Hauther

Killradio.org is the aural equivalent of a ‘zine - both have their roots in the DIY (Do It Yourself) impulse inspiring kids in the late seventies and eighties to stop being passive consumers and start creating their own music, clothes and magazines. Back in the day anyone with access to a typewriter, photocopier and stapler could turn out a self-published literary magazine, chapbook, travel journal, scene ‘zine or fanzine.

These ‘zines still exist though by the nineties computers and desktop publishing software made the process quicker and easier. Now anyone can turn out a fairly high-quality self-published magazine right from the increasingly ubiquitous home computer. And blogging, for better or worse, allows anyone with even rudimentary technical knowledge to express their thoughts and have instant worldwide distribution without investing a penny.

Technology has transformed self-broadcasting too. Like ‘zines, pirate radio was generally cobbled together on the cheap. Broadcasting to as many people as equipment and antenna height would allow, DJ’s played music mainstream stations wouldn’t touch or preached radical politics - at least until the FCC decided to pull the plug. Killradio’s stream was picked up and broadcast by a pirate station several times over the years, but the stations were usually shut down within months.

When Killradio started webcasting at the end of 2000 broadband connections were not common and listening over a dial-up produced low quality sound and an unreliable stream. Despite those issues, webcasting had the advantage - as it does now - of being legal and having a worldwide reach. It also allows DJ’s to get around the FCC’s vague yet ever tightening restrictions on speech and content. Now that broadband connections are more popular, however, Killradio’s biggest challenge is not getting lost in a sea of Internet broadcasts - as of March 2006 there are over 55,000 Internet radio stations.

But in 2001 DIY Internet radio stations were unique enough for a nascent Killradio to rate a LA Weekly cover story. Reporter Deborah Vankin profiled a handful of Killradio DJ’s covering the range from Quinn the feminist-anarchist-vegan reading straight out of a book on evolutionary theory to the "surreal, proudly juvenile" Buddyhead show, featuring drunken DJ’s and prank phone calls. Both of these shows have since moved on, but the wildly diverse programming continues to be an integral part of Killradio - more by default than by design.

Killradio grew out of the Alternative Media Center’s webcast radio at the 2000 Democratic National Convention by pulling together the most enthusiastic volunteers. In just a few months we managed to find office space, equipment and a server. Because Killradio aspires to be an antidote to mainstream culture and media we decided to run the station using the consensus process, a non-hierarchical governing structure. Ideally, this allows every DJ to participate fully and equally in every station decision. On the downside consensus can be a very slow and cumbersome process and some DJ’s wind up focusing almost entirely on their show instead of the station as a whole as a result.

These days ever-growing networking technology has fundamentally changed the way listeners connect to Killradio. An individual show might get around 5-25 listeners during a live broadcast but regularly get hundreds of hits as an archive. Killradio has put up it’s own MySpace page to interact with listeners, bands, other DJ’s and Internet radio stations. DJ’s also set up their own MySpace pages to link up with hundreds of politically and musically like-minded friends allowing listeners to access pictures, archives of shows, blogs and email all through one simple link.

Jon Hershfield and Marc Caldwell, for example, started their unsigned band showcase, Hear Here, by using craigslist posts. This got them a small but steady stream of submissions, which they played regardless of quality or taste. Their mantra went, and it still does: if submitted, it will air on Killradio. When Jon and Marc switched to MySpace as a way to locate and attract unsigned bands, they discovered that there are hundreds of bands throughout the world, hungry and ready to be heard.

Unlike Hear Here, Hershfield’s solo show, ...IS GOOD centers on discovering the indie, rock-pop-punk-electro beats of LA. An antidote to the sanitized Volvo-centric sounds of Morning Becames Eclectic, Hershfield invites local gems from LA’s underground to perform and be interviewed in their "studio." The results are nothing but amazing - musicians are free to talk and play their music without worries or reprimand, giving his show an air of intimacy hard to find on commercial radio stations.

All of this helps circumvent big labels and radio stations more focused on the bottom line than talent and musical innovation. Bands and DJ’s can now perform, record, network and promote without the help or intervention of a large corporate entity. Music and music lovers can finally create and control their own community.

Technology continues to evolve transforming seemingly overnight how people communicate. As soon as people start using new technology there are attempts to control and brand it as a new product. In six short years we’ve seen the explosion and corporate commodification of not only Internet radio stations but also blogs, podcasts and on-line social networking. Killradio is helping keep the DIY network up and running - hoping to be, at least in some small way, the antidote to corporate-controlled radio.