In a rare instance of unity, religious broadcast network Educational Media Foundation (EMF) and grassroots radio advocate Prometheus Radio Project have found common ground regarding the future of Low Power FM (LPFM) and translators. Over the past decade, Prometheus and EMF, the owner of the nationwide KLOVE/AIR 1 FM network, have held opposing views regarding the remaining available radio spectrum. Now for the first time, the organizations have come together on a mutually beneficial policy proposal, submitted to the FCC as a Memorandum of Agreement.

After more than a year of internal conflict and public protests, the controversial figure at the helm of Granger's beloved Spanish-language radio station has been fired.

Radio KDNA's governing board dismissed executive director Maria Fernandez in a meeting Thursday. An interim replacement, immigration attorney Laura Contreras, begins today.

"It's just a culmination of things that said we probably need to be in a different place, going in a different direction," said Len Black, a member of the Northwest Communities Education Center governing board. "And it's a good opportunity for Maria to begin pursuing other opportunities."

In May of 2009, I became a public access television producer. Couldn't have picked a worse time.

Not because I don't enjoy hosting and co-producing Media News. It's a great joy to interview guests and try to shed a little light on the issues closest to my heart including: net neutrality and the digital divide, coverage of turmoil abroad and at home, the loss of local public affairs coverage and the rise in citizen journalism. I feel privileged to bring voices that need to be heard onto my local TV dial.

The reason it was bad timing is that the nation's more than 3,000 public access centers are on the verge of extinction. Yours may go next week, next month or next year, but their days are numbered due to statewide cable franchising.

Communications rights and freedom of expression are under attack in South Korea, as Lee Myung-bak's New Right government takes disturbing steps to shut down independent media, and to defund media, arts, and cultural organizations across the country. The latest blow is an attack on the internationally-respected public media center MediAct, which has played a key part in the democratization of Korea's media system, trained thousands of people in media production, and developed many successful media policy proposals to open up Korea's mediascape to diverse voices. Recognized as an international leader in the communications rights movement, MediAct cofounder Myoung-Joon Kim (shown) is one of Reclaim the Media's Media Heroes.

Please take action now to express international support for MediAct. Join the Facebook group for updates, and click below to read more.

Throughout the earthquake's aftermath, the voices of many Port-Au-Prince radio stations have been loud and clear.

Radio Solidarite 88.5 FM is one of the outlets to survive the tremors. It resumed broadcasts from its small studio, at the top of a two-storey building in the city's centre, once the staff found some gas for their generator just two days after the quake.

"We have tried to say to the population to be strong, we appreciate their courage," said Radio Solidarite Director Georges Venel Remarais. "The international press was talking about violence but we didn't see any. The help is very slow at times, and people get angry. Our work is to say, let's be calm."

Ecuador's 14 indigenous nationalities will be able to present proposals that will help them get low-frequency radio permits for at least one citizen-based, "community radio" station in each nation, El Telégrafo newspaper reports. Guidelines should be available in two weeks.

The government-published "official" newspaper, El Ciudadano (The Citizen), says the measure is part of the Correa administration's strategy to democratize access to media and to ensure balance in the radio spectrum.

The president of Ecuarunari, the largest indigenous organization in Ecuador's Andes, says he hoped the new radio move does not form part of a political campaign to diffuse everything about the ideology of the ruling party, the AP adds.

Commercial radio, like many other media, is in serious trouble. The prevailing view at the Chicago Independent Radio Project is that traditional radio has created its own problems: beholden to advertisers, disconnected from the community and increasingly out of reach for all but a few, well-connected artists.

Chirp — a fledgling, non-commercial, online radio station set to begin next month — will try to be everything Big Radio is not: independent, intensely local and musically adventurous.

“I’m a true believer,” Shawn Campbell, Chirp’s president, said in a recent tour of the project’s brightly lighted but crowded and poorly insulated studios, located above a photo album factory in an industrial stretch of the North Center neighborhood in Chicago. “I really love radio,” she added.

The United Church of Christ's media-justice advocacy arm and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) are celebrating a significant victory in one of its most important and longest standing legislative efforts in the area of media reform. On Wednesday evening, legislation that will expand low-power radio to 140 million people who are currently unable to receive it has been passed on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, poising the legislation for final approval in the Senate.

On Dec. 16, the House of Representatives passed the Local Community Radio Act (HR 1147) by voice vote. The bill would allow for the creation of hundreds, possibly thousands, of new, low power FM (LPFM) radio stations dedicated to broadcasting community news and local perspectives to neighborhoods across the country.

In the Senate, the companion bill has been approved by the Commerce Committee, championed by Senator Maria Cantwell. A full-Senate vote has not yet been scheduled, but is the next and final step for the expansion of LPFM to become law.

Turmoil at Spanish-language radio station KDNA continues long after the end of an employee strike, with employees staging a sit-in Wednesday night that carried into Thursday.

Protesting and picket signs, led by teamsters, fired KDNA employees and other members of the local Hispanic community. It's an all too familiar site in Granger.