Starting Points: radio

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May 29, 2010

Muslim radio show talks up the taboo

Image by Ian Hayhurst via Flickr

By Raja Abdulrahim
Saturday, May 29, 2010; B02

LOS ANGELES As jazz music played, setting a relaxed mood, radio hosts Amir Mertaban and Mohamad Ahmad chatted casually with guest Isaac Yerushalmi.

The show could have dissolved into a heated argument between two Muslims and a Jew, but during the inaugural run of "Boiling Point" on what's billed as the nation's first Muslim talk-radio station, Mertaban was absorbed with more mundane matters.

Still wearing his burgundy Fairplex shirt from his day job as a manager for the Los Angeles County Fair, Mertaban looked over the show's introduction. He glanced at Yerushalmi's biography and a few reminders he had jotted down.

"Okay, I can't use the word 'freakin,' " he said to no one in particular.

In the control room, Nour Mattar, one of the founders of One Legacy Radio, clicked off some of the banned words. "I mean we're cool, but we still have Islamic character and morals, especially since we have a lot of kids, 16, 17, listening in. We don't want them to think this is okay." The hosts of "Boiling Point" -- a show that purports to take "taboo topics to the boiling point" -- are allowed one "What the heck" a show, said Ahmad, a UCLA law school graduate.

One Legacy Radio is an online broadcast that officially launched on http://www.onelegacyradio.com in November from a nondescript studio in an office park off the 5 Freeway in Irvine, Calif., with four weekly shows. Its three founders -- Muslims in their late 20s and early 30s who grew up in Britain and the United States -- have slowly increased the station's programming while trying to strike a balance between religious sensibilities and a more edgy, youth-driven conversation.

Although some of the programming is conventional, such as a show about converts and one devoted to parenting, "Boiling Point" and the religiously challenging "Face the Faith" are more provocative. The station owners are even working on a Muslim version of "Loveline," the often sexually charged syndicated call-in show.

It's an area the American Muslim media largely avoid and one the station owners' parents have shied away from or deemed un-Islamic.

"One Legacy is the fingerprint of the young Muslim ummah [community] -- it basically personifies the kind of ummah that we have right now," said Yasmin Bhuj, 31, a founder and marketing director who is married to Mattar. "If the generation before us did a radio station, it would be unrecognizable to what One Legacy is." Mattar said the station receives e-mails daily from young Muslims thanking them for tackling issues that are relevant to them.

"These are taboo topics that people don't talk about, but in Islam, you are allowed to talk about it," said Mattar, 32.

Taboo is a word heard often around the studio. The goal of the station and its founders isn't to ruffle religious feathers -- although that might happen -- but to create an outlet for the younger generation of Muslims in the United States whose parents mostly emigrated from parts of the Middle East and South Asia in the 1970s and '80s.

Saeed Khan, a history professor at Wayne State University who specializes in Muslim identity in the West, said many first-generation immigrants believed that Islam would act as a sort of divine shield against such societal ills as drug abuse and infidelity within the Muslim community.

Outlets like One Legacy, he said, have cropped up because of the limits of existing Muslim media.

During a January taping of "Objection!" -- about political issues and civil rights -- Reem Salahi interviewed a man whose brother, a U.S. citizen, has been held for several years in solitary confinement awaiting trial by the U.S. government. In the control room, Mattar and his brother Sami Matar (who spells his last name differently) sat at the console while browsing an online store for better radio equipment.

The studio has a slightly thrown-together look: prayer rugs draped over regular office tables and mismatched chairs. Most of the walls are painted deep purple and covered with sound-absorbing foam. Electric guitars, two ouds (Middle Eastern guitars) and a Middle Eastern drum lean against a rack.

On a wall there's a print by British street artist Banksy of a smiley-faced grim reaper, which with a long black veil pulled over its head resembles a Muslim woman wearing a hijab.

In an adjacent office, Mattar runs his online company, which sells laptop computer parts and funds the station's slim $7,000-a-month budget -- enough to pay for three part-time employees. They hope to begin selling radio ads soon. Someday, they hope, the station will be profitable.

Mattar, Bhuj and Mohammad Harake formed One Legacy Media in 2008 to publish Islamic books, CDs and DVDs, and hold educational seminars, the first of which was about marriage.

That's when they came up with the idea of a Muslim radio station. Years ago, they considered broadcasting from a low-frequency radio station with a maximum radius of 40 miles but then decided it wasn't practical. In early 2009, they decided to take advantage of the rising popularity of online broadcast and cellphone radio apps.

For much of the first year, the station streamed only Koran and religious lectures.

"Seven to 10 listeners a day, max," said Harake, 26, the sales and promotional director.

"A day? A month," Mattar said.

Since then, they have added iPhone, BlackBerry and Android apps. Mattar wouldn't disclose listenership numbers but said that the figure has doubled each month and that about 4,000 people have downloaded one of their cellphone apps.

The boldest addition to their lineup is likely to be what Harake likes to call "Muslim Loveline." The show would be far less raunchy that the syndicated show but would address such topics as pornography and premarital sex, both banned by Islam.

The hosts have a laundry list of topics to get their listeners riled up: polygamy, temporary marriages, Shiite and Sunni relations, and finding a spouse.

They had expected listeners to object to their pro-Israeli guest on their first show, but the feedback was entirely positive. The conversation mostly revolved around recent events at the University of California at Irvine between Muslim and Jewish students but ended in a non sequitur.

"Before you go, we talk about all the differences, we took it to the boiling point, the house is burning down right now -- I have to call the fire department, but let's talk about something that is very similar," Ahmad said to Yerushalmi.

"You're not doing this, for crying out loud," interjected Mertaban.

"I am doing this, I am gonna go there," Ahmad said, launching into a long-winded, meandering introduction that ended with a simple question to Yerushalmi: "Is your mother trying to find you a good Jewish girl?"

Mertaban jumped in: "Check it out, actions to words. You should marry a crazy Palestinian woman that is hard-core anti-Israel just to make a statement."

-- Los Angeles Times

Mar 8, 2010

How Pandora Avoided the Junkyard, and Found Success

Image via CrunchBase

By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER

OAKLAND, Calif. — Tim Westergren recently sat in a Las Vegas penthouse suite, a glass of red wine in one hand and a truffle-infused Kobe beef burger in the other, courtesy of the investment bankers who were throwing a party to court him.

It was a surreal moment for Mr. Westergren, who founded Pandora, the Internet radio station. For most of its 10 years, it has been on the verge of death, struggling to find investors and battling record labels over royalties.

Had Pandora died, it would have joined myriad music start-ups in the tech company graveyard, like SpiralFrog and the original Napster. Instead, with a successful iPhone app fueling interest, Pandora is attracting attention from investment bankers who think it could go public, the pinnacle of success for a start-up.

Pandora’s 48 million users tune in an average 11.6 hours a month. That could increase as Pandora strikes deals with the makers of cars, televisions and stereos that could one day, Pandora hopes, make it as ubiquitous as AM/FM radio.

“We were in a pretty deep dark hole for a long time,” said Mr. Westergren, who is now the company's chief strategy officer.. “But now it’s a pretty out-of-body experience.”

At the end of 2009, Pandora reported its first profitable quarter and $50 million in annual revenue — mostly from ads and the rest from subscriptions and payments from iTunes and Amazon.com when people buy music. Revenue will probably be $100 million this year, said Ralph Schackart, a digital media analyst at William Blair.

Pandora’s success can be credited to old-fashioned perseverance, its ability to harness intense loyalty from users and a willingness to shift directions — from business to consumer, from subscription to free, from computer to mobile — when its fortunes flagged.

Its library now has 700,000 songs, each categorized by an employee based on 400 musical attributes, like whether the voice is breathy, like Charlotte Gainsbourg, or gravelly like Tom Waits. Listeners pick a song or musician they like, and Pandora serves up songs with similar qualities — Charlotte Gainsbourg to Feist to Viva Voce to Belle and Sebastian. Unlike other music services like MySpace Music or Spotify, now available in parts of Europe, listeners cannot request specific songs.

Though Pandora’s executives say it is focusing on growth, not a public offering, the company is taking steps to make it possible. Last month, it hired a chief financial officer, Steve Cakebread, who had that job at Salesforce.com when it went public.

It is all a long way from January 2000, when Mr. Westergren founded the company. Trained as a jazz pianist, he spent a decade playing in rock bands before taking a job as a film composer. While analyzing the construction of music to figure out what film directors would like, he came up with an idea to create a music genome.

This being 1999, he turned the idea into a Web start-up and raised $1.5 million from angel investors. It was originally called Savage Beast Technologies and sold music recommendation services to businesses like Best Buy.

By the end of 2001, he had 50 employees and no money. Every two weeks, he held all-hands meetings to beg people to work, unpaid, for another two weeks. That went on for two years.

Meanwhile, he appealed to venture capitalists, charged up 11 credit cards and considered a company trip to Reno to gamble for more money. The dot-com bubble had burst, and shell-shocked investors were not interested in a company that relied on people, who required salaries and health insurance, instead of computers.

In March 2004, he made his 348th pitch seeking backers. Larry Marcus, a venture capitalist at Walden Venture Capital and a musician, decided to lead a $9 million investment.

“The pitch that he gave wasn’t that interesting,” Mr. Marcus said. “But what was incredibly interesting was Tim himself. We could tell he was an entrepreneur who wasn’t going to fail.”

Mr. Westergren took $2 million of it and called another all-hands meeting to pay everyone back. The next order of business: focus the service on consumers instead of businesses, change the name and replace Mr. Westergren as chief executive with Joe Kennedy, who had experience building consumer products at E-Loan and Saturn. Pandora’s listenership climbed, and in December 2005, it sold its first ad.

But in 2007, Pandora got news that threatened most of its revenue. A federal royalty board had raised the fee that online radio stations had to pay to record labels for each song. “Overnight our business was broken,” Mr. Westergren said. “We contemplated pulling the plug.”

Instead, Pandora hired a lobbyist in Washington and recruited its listeners to write to their representatives. “A lot of these users think they’re customers of the cause rather than users per se,” said Willy C. Shih, a professor at Harvard Business School who has written a case study on Pandora. “It’s a different spin on marketing.” The board agreed to negotiations and after two years settled on a lower rate.

Some music lovers dislike Pandora’s approach to choosing music based on its characteristics rather than cultural associations. Slacker Radio, a competitor with three times as many songs but less than a third of Pandora’s listeners, takes a different approach. A ’90s alternative station should be informed by Seattle grunge, said Jonathan Sasse, senior vice president for marketing at Slacker. “It’s not just that this has an 80-beat-a-minute guitar riff,” he said. “It’s that this band toured with Eddie Vedder.”

Yet in 2008, Pandora built an iPhone app that let people stream music. Almost immediately, 35,000 new users a day joined Pandora from their cellphones, doubling the number of daily signups.

For Pandora and its listeners, it was a revelation. Internet radio was not just for the computer. People could listen to their phone on the treadmill or plug it into their car or living room speakers.

In January, Pandora announced a deal with Ford to include Pandora in its voice-activated Sync system, so drivers will be able to say, “Launch my Lady Gaga station” to play their personalized station based on the music of that performer. Consumer electronics companies like Samsung, Vizio and Sonos are also integrating Pandora into their Blu-ray players, TVs and music systems.

“Think about what made AM/FM radio so accessible,” said Mr. Kennedy, Pandora’s chief. “You get into the car or buy a clock for your nightstand and push a button and radio comes out,” he said. “That’s what we’re hoping to match.”

Jan 18, 2010

Longtime host of Haitian radio show turns focus to earthquake recovery

Image by Hugh Cree via Flickr

By Michael S. Rosenwald
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 18, 2010; B01

Just before 10 p.m. Saturday, a Maryland state highway engineer sat down in the DJ's booth at WPFW, a tiny radio station on a narrow side street in Adams Morgan.

His name, in official traffic and engineering circles, is Jean Yves Point-du-Jour. But on Saturday nights, sitting in front of an old, dusty soundboard, he becomes Yves Dayiti, host of "Konbit Lakay."

For 26 years, from 10 to midnight on 89.3 FM, Dayiti has brought the sounds and news of Haiti, his native country, to thousands of Haitians in the Washington area.

On Saturday, he was supposed to have the night off. He was supposed to be visiting Haiti.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

"But here I am," he said as he opened the show. "We have a lot to talk about tonight."

This was probably the biggest show of his radio career, coming days after an earthquake had flattened the most populous area of Haiti, including the block in Port-au-Prince where he grew up. He assumed -- and a sudden spike in interest from the mainstream media affirmed -- that he would be speaking to a much broader audience.

"It is only in a time of disaster that people know we exist," he said in an interview before going on the air.

But Dayiti's weight in the Haitian community is such that his first guest was U.S. Rep. Donna F. Edwards (D-Md.). Dayiti has never feared to use his influence, criticizing the Haitian government and describing what he says is neglect of his native country on the part of rich global powers, such as the one based on Pennsylvania Avenue NW.

On the phone with Edwards, Dayiti called the $100 million that President Obama pledged to rebuild Haiti "a first step," adding, somewhat sharply, and not as a question: "We can get more than that."

On the show, Dayiti talked with Haitian leaders from Miami and other parts of the United States. He spoke in English, in contrast to most Saturdays, when the program is mainly in Creole. Organizers of relief efforts provided Web site addresses and phone numbers. If the program sounded more like an urgent late-night infomercial rather than the usual offering of Haitian hit tunes and political debate, Dayiti didn't seem to mind.

Dayiti, 56, came to the United States as a student, ending up at Morgan State University in Baltimore. He worked as a dishwasher and has used education -- receiving three degrees -- to build a professional life.

He got the radio show, a volunteer gig, as other hosts often do, starting low on the totem pole. Through fellow Haitians, he had heard that WPFW, a listener-sponsored, noncommercial station, needed extra hands. He answered phones and had some on-air appearances that led to "Konbit Lakay."

On Saturday, Dayiti, wearing a yellow shirt and mustard-colored tie, pulled his show notes out from a black plastic shopping bag tucked under the soundboard. As he chewed gum, his headset bopped in and out from his ears. In addition to playing host, queuing up music and quizzing guests, he answered a 1970s-era telephone with "WPFW!"

The thermostat in the announcer's booth was set to a balmy 77 degrees, but Dayiti didn't break a sweat, even when callers engaged in the eternal scourge of talk radio: leaving their radio on too loud in the background. Dayiti just shouted: "Listen to me, not the radio! Turn it down!" Most of the time, this did not work. He never hung up on anyone, though.

One of the few calls in English came from a woman who had been sitting in the station's lobby, listening to the show earlier with other members of the Haitian and Caribbean communities. On the air, she said, "I think I forgot my purse."

Dayiti told her, "You're on the air."

During the show, Dayiti kept his expressions of disdain for the Haitian government to a minimum, tossing a few light barbs here and there. But earlier in the evening, when he was a guest on "Caribbeana," the station's long-running program of island music, news and culture with Von Martin, Dayiti was less restrained.

"People built homes where they shouldn't have been built," he said. "There are no building standards. . . . This disaster was foreseen. It was waiting to happen."

He blasted "the leadership that brought us to the position we are in," and he looked ahead to the rebuilding: "I'm going to fight to make sure my country does not become an experiment. We have to do it right. Either they kill me, or it works."

On Tuesday, he goes back to work as a traffic engineer.

Aug 3, 2009

#FreeMediaVe: Venezuelans Using Twitter to Protest Media Crackdown

by Ben Parr

Over the last few days, Venezuela has been closing down radio and media stations that are denouncing the government and its actions. This is not going down quietly, though, as protesters are fighting back against what critics consider the infringement of free speech.

However, with stations being “recovered” by the government, citizens and protesters alike have turned to a new communication platform to concentrate their efforts: Twitter (). Venezuelans are coordinating their tweets of opposition with the hashtag #FreeMediaVe, which started to pick up steam late Friday.

President Hugo Chavez, the controversial socialist leader, ordered that about 240 radio stations be closed down earlier this July, but now the media lockdown is being implemented in full force. This is where Twitter has come into play – as radio stations have fallen, opponents of the socialist leader have taken to Twitter, dominating nearly 1% of tweets at times.

In fact, there has been so much activity on Twitter that it has prompted a government response, where they said the social network was being used just by extremists.

Twitter’s power to challenge repressive governments and galvanize worldwide support was seen in full action during the dramatic events of the #IranElection crisis. It proved to be a major means of communications for Iranians as the government closed down other channels (Twitter’s role was even big enough to concern the U.S. government).

We may very well be seeing the “Twitter effect” in action again. How big it gets, how long it lasts, and how effective Twitter will be in fighting back remains to be seen. We will be watching the #FreeMediaVe movement closely.

Jun 26, 2009

AFP: Indonesia Radio Becomes Voice for Tolerance

By Jerome Rivet

JAKARTA (AFP), June 26 — A young radio news agency in Indonesia is attracting fans and international recognition for programming that eschews "infotainment" and focuses on hard issues like human rights and corruption.

Founded 10 years ago after the fall of the Suharto dictatorship, KBR-68H is making the most of the liberalisation of Indonesia's media to spread values of free speech and religious tolerance across the huge archipelago.

The country's only independent national news agency now has a network of more than 600 local radio affiliates and an audience of more than 18 million people in almost all corners of the mainly Muslim country.

Co-founder and managing director Santoso said that in the era of Facebook and Twitter, old-fashioned radio was still the "cheapest and most flexible" way to reach a wide audience.

"Our goal is to expand our network to Indonesia's remote areas such as central Papua, Sumba island or Maluku. It will encourage citizen participation and strengthen democracy," he said.

As Indonesia is broken up into thousands of islands, the best way in KBR's view to reach listeners is to offer ready-made programming to community radio stations in each region.

"We send eight hours of programmes per day -- news bulletins, reports and a lot of interactive talk shows," production director Heri Hendratmoko said.

The subscription fee can be as low as 10 dollars a month. The subject matter is serious: human rights, corruption, economic development, deforestation, religious tolerance, women's health.

"These are the key themes for a country like Indonesia, which is in the process of democratisation," Santoso said.

And in a country where the airwaves are swamped every day with giddy celebrity stories, KBR stands apart.

"We refuse to do 'infotainment' -- light news -- like most of the commercial radio and television stations," Hendratmoko said.

"It is very important in today's Indonesia to make in-depth reports and discuss issues such as deforestation or local corruption."

Wanting to be faithful to the activist spirit in which KBR was founded, the station's journalists are not afraid to get their hands dirty in the pursuit of balanced news.

Eric Mahaley, owner of KBR-affiliate DMS Radio in Ambon, said the network won respect for its reporting of bloody fighting between Muslims and Christians in the area between 2002 and 2004.

"During the Muslim-Christian sectarian conflict, the radio owned by Christians and Muslims was a voice of tolerance and dialogue," he said.

"From 2002 to 2004, we broadcasted appeals launched by kids to stop the conflict. I think this played a significant role in raising awareness of the local people."

Sometimes its broadcasts upset vested interests such as illegal loggers or religious extremists, but KBR is able to fall back on its right to free speech which is well established in post-Suharto Indonesia.

It also works with government ministries on community service programming, for example to explain the latest economic reforms or to promote maternal health.

"In remote areas of Papua or Nusa Tenggara, radio is the only media available. There is no electricity, so almost no TV, and newspapers are not delivered," Hendratmoko said.

Where electricity is scarce, the radio network has worked with aid agencies to build solar-energy or microhydro generators to run community radios, he said.

Employing 100 people at its head office in Jakarta, KBR has diversified in recent years.

It has launched Green Radio, specialising in environmental issues, a video service with the Tempo Group for local television and an international service which is picked up by around 50 stations from Nepal to Australia.

In recognition of its hard work, KBR won the 2008-2009 King Baudouin International Development Prize in Belgium on May 19 this year, worth some 150,000 euros (209,000 dollars).

Presented every two years since 1980, the prize recognises contributions to the development of southern hemisphere countries or to links between developing and industrialised countries.

Jun 18, 2009

Persian News Network Finds New Life in Contested Iranian Election

By Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 18, 2009

Voice of America beams a youth-oriented TV show into Iran each evening, usually a mix of Hollywood releases, music videos and tips on high-tech gadgets. This week's show featured a weightier topic: how to evade a crackdown on free speech.

"What we're seeing is a new level of cyber warfare," said producer Gareth Conway, referring to the Iranian government's blocking of text-messaging services and Internet sites, and Iranians' attempts to fight back. "We're trying to give viewers updates on technology, how they can continue to communicate with each other."

As protests have erupted over the heavily disputed reelection of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, VOA's Persian-language TV network and a similar BBC service have emerged as a critical way for Iranians to share information. It is a moment of redemption for the VOA service to Iran, which grew rapidly during the Bush administration but has been dogged by problems.

Unlike some of the U.S. government's other Middle Eastern broadcasting efforts, VOA's Persian News Network is genuinely popular, according to analysts. Iranians have bombarded the satellite network this week with calls, e-mails and amateur videos of demonstrations. In a sign of their concern, Iranian authorities have tried to jam the VOA and BBC services.

And yet, some analysts say the Persian service has been slow to capitalize on the moment. For example, hours after the presidential voting ended in Iran on Friday, the VOA reported the initial results, then ended its live programming. It did not broadcast fresh material until 16 hours later.

"They could have done a much better job," said Mehdi Khalaji, an Iran expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who once worked for the U.S. government's Radio Farda, which also broadcast in Farsi, or Persian. "It seems to me they don't understand the sensitivity of the time."

The Persian network is part of a shift at government-funded VOA from the days of Cold War shortwave broadcasts to an era in which U.S. officials are trying to blunt the influence of media-savvy Islamist extremists. As part of a U.S. broadcasting push into the Middle East and South Asia, the Persian service increased its live programming from one to seven hours a day in the past two years and more than quadrupled its staff, to about 200. The network had a budget of $16 million in 2008 and has a Facebook page, a dedicated YouTube channel and blogs.

Satellite dishes are technically illegal in Iran, where the domestic news media are largely under state control, but they exist by the millions. VOA estimates that 30 percent of Iranian adults tune in each week, based on a survey it commissioned in January.

And VOA officials say they think that number has jumped in recent days.

"It amazes me -- people in Iran are willing to speak, willing to identify themselves. They feel very strongly," said Alex Belida, the network's acting director.

That was evident this week on "Straight Talk," a Persian News Network call-in show. One Iranian after another called the studio in Washington to air opinions and describe what they were seeing.

"Today a lot of people were gathering downtown. They wanted to voice their objections. Police forces were trying to force the people, not let them into the streets," said one caller yesterday who identified herself as Saidi from Ahvaz.

"Students are all waiting to start fighting for their rights," Ramin, a university student from Isfahan, said Tuesday. "The situation is very chaotic in Isfahan. There are police forces everywhere."

As the callers spoke, the show broadcast jumpy amateur videos of demonstrators, fires burning in the street, and protesters showing off bloodied elbows and heels.

The one-hour show got about 2,000 e-mails Tuesday, five times the norm, and saw a sharp increase in its blog posts. "We're being used as an information conduit," said the executive producer, Susan Jackson.

VOA is facing stiff competition from the BBC, which many Iranians see as more objective. It has added five hours a day of live programming since the demonstrations began, for a total of 13. VOA has increased its programming by an hour. The BBC has recruited young journalists from Iran. In contrast, some of VOA's reporters left the country decades ago.

The State Department's inspector general blasted the VOA Persian TV service in March, saying morale was poor, the executive editors didn't speak Persian, and "maintaining quality presents a challenge."

VOA officials say that they are addressing the problems and that staff morale has improved.

"They're all psyched," Belida said. "It's a great story -- both as a journalist and as a Persian."

Correspondent Thomas Erdbrink in Tehran and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.