* Chicago Public Radio has made some bold and interesting sounding claims about its coming expansion here, and here. But in late September, the station met strong zoning board opposition to the necessary WBEW-FM transmission tower height permit. Read here and here. Is this the beginning of the unraveling of station ceo Torey Malatia’s “kingdom in the sky”?

* From the San Francisco Chronicle: “The board of directors of public television station KQED sent ballots to its 190,000 members this week proposing an unusual twist to the notion of democracy: It asked members to vote to strip themselves of their right to vote on "major corporate decisions" or to choose the board of directors.” KQED is the only community-chartered public tv station in the U.S. with a member-elected board of trustees. We’ll be following this one.

* Here’s something really cool – it’s a free tool called Pubcatcher with which you can create download subscriptions to oodles of local and national pubic radio programs such as Media Matters, Media Geek, Open Source, various things from Indymedia, Democracy Now! and a lot more. Exploration of the Pubcatcher software is encouraged!

* Did you know that set-owning Israeli citizens are generally required - sort of like in the UK - to write a check yearly to help pay for their public tv and radio provider Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA)? The fee is roughly $123 (523 New Israeli Shekels). But the real kicker is the fact that "public" tv in Israel is, like here, semi-commercial. Worse, Israeli "public" radio is fully commercial. Oy! and Ouch! Source: Wikipedia.

Posted by Scott Sanders, Chicago Media Action
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