Internships and more

Hey everybody. Springtobefest went well I thought, sorry for being slow! I wish I had more of a chance to kick it with you guys, but I got sucked into working behind the bar. Let's get down to business.

Jobs/Internships:

This first one is for you radio kids: The BAYLISS RADIO INTERNSHIP PROGRAM is still looking for interns to fill some slots in the Bay Area. I do not believe they require credit, and you can get paid $8-$10 hr. They are purposely looking for BECA students for these positions.
You can go to: www.baylissfoundation.org for the application and more info. If you have questions contact Ms. Rachel Sprinkles at: rsprinkles@baylissfoundation.org

This next one is great for people who want to work with kids. There's two positions available, one as a production intern and one as a communications intern. It's 15-20 hours a week, unpaid, and they are willing to give credit or not depending on your need. Check out their website at: www.commonsensemedia.org and if you're interested send a resume and cover letter to diana@commonsensemedia.org

BECAFEST is coming up and we're encouraging all of you to participate. It's simple, just bring in a DVD or a CD to the CAGE and drop it off with this entry form. Submissions are due April 23rd by 4 PM. Anything you've made this year is eligible. What the hell are you waiting for? While you're at it, bring in a copy for CSB to see and we'll give you points.

FCC:

As you know I'm a big proponent of Network Neutrality. I found a really in depth article about the subject. This one is particularly good because it sums up not only the FCC's deliberations on the matter, but also information about the congressional rulings and where it stands these days. There is argument that the FCC does not have the right to regulate privately owned lines. The congress is responsible for deciding exactly what the FCC is responsible to regulate, so if they can pass legislation to this effect the debate on whether the FCC has the right to protect Internet users will be over. Unless you'd like to see major telecoms and media conglomerates controlling the Internet the way they control TV and Radio, people need to fight to keep in the way it is now. Read it, this is important stuff:

LINK

The next one I found is a blog about the local radio scene. I have some experience with KZSC, where I got my start in broadcasting way back in 2000. Although I'm more into TV now, it's kind of interesting to see what's going on in the radio business from time to time, and these guys are insiders. It has all kinds of details about the inner-workings and people behind the scenes of a great deal of local stations. Worth taking a look if you're into radio in the bay area.

LINK

CSB:

LA is just one week away! I'm excited, can you tell? Stay tuned because the next post will be about this week's meeting. It's Trivia time! There will of course be a category on my blog so I hope you've all been following along.

No member meeting on 3/28

CSB notes 3/21/07

First of all: There is no member meeting this week! Come to Elixer at 16th & Guerrero in the Mission at 9 on Wednesday for Springtoberfest! Sorry it's taken me a little while to get this info up, I've been super busy.

Big news on campus: We got our graduation funding! It’s official!

The strike vote passed overwhelmingly and our campus was the one with the highest positive vote of any CSU campus, probably because the cost if living is so high here. The strike is going to be sometime in April. I’ll keep you posted. There's rumors that an agreement might be reached, so it's still sort of up in the air.

Also, Abtin won his election, so say congratulations if you see him. He's going to be around next year, and I'm sure he'll be pulling for us.

FCC:

I found an article about HDTV and what it’s all about. For those of you who don’t know, it has been mandated that on Feb 17^th 2009 all television will have to be broadcast in the HD format. This is a transitional time for the medium, much like the advent of color back in the old days. People are upset about it, but it’s the way o the future and all of you should know about it. Some detailed info here:

LINK

The next article I found is about the idea of sending out broadband internet over the airwaves in so-called ‘white spaces’ between channels 2 and 51 in the regular spectrum. Microsoft and Google have both submitted devices for testing to FCC which could utilize this space. They call it Wi-Fi on steroids, and as always, the fight over our limited spectrum is being fought between giants, when in reality it’s owned by you and me. Anyway, this could become a big story soon:

LINK

Here’s a little update on the Sirius-XM merger. Critics had been saying that the FCC might treat this like the merger between two major satellite television companies, DirecTV and Dish, which was not accepted. The FCC is arguing that in that it would have made the choices to limited to consumers. But this isn’t the case with satellite radio. What? Their reasoning is something like this: thanks to AM, FM, CDs, iPods, DVDs, etc, people have more than a few choices when it comes to choosing what to listen to in their cars. So this means they might let this merger happen. I think this would be a bad thing, but here’s the article in case you want to learn more:

LINK

The FCC has given their blessing to HD radio, meaning that now stations don't need special permission to begin to broadcast in the new format. This means that the same bandwidth can now hold about five times as many radio stations, which is going to mean more choice for consumers. You can read about it here:

LINK

Now for a quick update on the Google/Viacom lawsuit: Google is confident that Youtube has done nothing wrong, Viacom says that their copyrighted clips have been viewed over 1.5 billion times. Here’s a great break down of the details:

LINK

CSB:

Eva needs help with her creative project! Talk to her about it!

Conan O’Brien is coming to San Francisco and I want tickets. Go to www.nbc.com/conan/sanfrancisco for information on reserving tickets. I really really really really want to go. St. Patrick’s day was damn fun, Blake has another event this weekend but I can’t make it. Also, I’m backing out of the NAB conference. I had planned to go, but in the end it didn’t make sense for me. I’m going to go next year for sure though.

For those of you who want to go, here's the NAB website and the convention itself. See you at Elixer!

Don't forget to vote!

This is election week on campus, so I want to use my tiny amount of influence and ensure that you realize who is on our side in this campaign.
First off: my committee member Abtin Forghani (PSU) is running. You should definitely vote for him.
Also, John Bergman (SF) and Hector Jimenez (PSU) helped us with the graduation fund and they deserve our support. So don't forget to vote today and tomorrow from 9:00 am to 9:00 PM in student center in front of book store or cafe Rosso.
Get out there and vote! That is all.

Some new stuff

Hey everybody.
I have a project I've been working on called respondback.com that you should check out. It's a debate website where you can post your opinions and vote on the opinions of others. This is a little startup that I've been working on as a side project, and we need people to start using it.

www.respondback.com

I don't have any new internships or anything this week, remember that there's a ton outside of Camacho's office downstairs. Instead I thought I'd give you guys some free torrent resources.
The first is a common/license torrent page with all kinds of things. All of these are free to distribute and use for your non-commercial projects:

www.legaltorrents.com

Here's another collection of resources that might be useful too:

LINK

FCC:

This week I'm going to be focusing on Viacom's recent litigation against Google. The cable/movie/video store/network etc. etc. megaconglomerate wants a billion dollars from Google, who says that now that they have bought Youtube they are suddenly responsible for millions of other people's decision to post copyrighted Viacom content. Ever since Clinton singed the DMCA in the late nineties, these kinds of battles have been raging over digital rights management. At the time a little software company called Napster was held responsible for the activities of users it's peer-to-peer file sharing protocol. But Google is no Napster, and while that tiny company could be pushed around by the Music Industry, Google is ready to push back. On legal grounds, since Youtube has mainly been a forum for original content, they are much less at risk than Napster was. They also have a policy of removing copyrighted materials as soon as they are made aware of them, something Napster didn't do. These two factors make this lawsuit pretty spurious, but I'm sure Viacom figured it would be worth the trouble for a cool billion.
You can learn more about it here:

LINK

Another interesting wrinkle is that as late as August last year, Viacom and Google were planning to work together on a new ad targeting program. Google's adsense has made them a fortune, and it's no secret that they would like to take the same idea and apply it to television and radio. What could make two giant companies that were ready to do business with each other 6 months ago into enemies? For some info on their previous dealings, check here:

LINK

CSB:

LA trip planning is going well so far. If you missed the planning meeting this week and you gave us a deposit, you need to contact Eva right away so we can arrange transportation and a room for you.
Remember Graduation forms are due April 6th, no exceptions.
Bash has changed from the 12th to the 11th.
All of these updates to your calendars can be found on the csb website.

CSB Notes for 3/7/07

Hey everybody. How was Holy Cow last week? Sorry I couldn’t make it, I'm excited about St Paddy's Day though. Don't forget to email Blake to get you and your friends on the guest list.

Internships/Jobs:

Greg told me about this job opportunity to be part of the FreeFM Street Team. It's a part-time, low paid gig, but it might be fun and it could help get your foot in the door. Send your resumes to:

KIFR-FM
ATTN: Promotions
865 Battery Street
San Francisco, Ca 94111-1503
cdenatale@1069freefm.com

I was also pretty inspired by Dejra Turley at this weeks meeting. She could use people ASAP. Check out www.astarforthenight.com to learn more.

FCC:

There’s been a recent payola settlement between the FCC, CBS, Clear Channel, Entercom and Citadel. The agreement would pay 12.5 million to the FCC. There’s also a settlement that s supposed to allow more independent music to be played on these stations between 6am and midnight. It seems like this could be a good thing for radio. Although these networks admit no wrongdoing, there's got to be a reason that they agreed to make all of these concessions.

LINK

Kevin Martin is asking for a la carte cable television. The idea is this: instead of buying a cable package which includes asset of basic channels and special upgrade packages, you would be able to choose specific channels that you want, and pay only for those. The cable industry is not happy about this, and it seems like it might be a pipe dream. Either that, or there's something fishy going on and someone is looking for a quid pro quo. Read more about it here:

LINK

Martin has also started asking questions regarding the testimony of satellite radio executives to congress. It looks like the merger might not be as good for consumers as it would be for the two companies involved. What a surprise.

LINK

I’m actually glad to see Kevin Martin doing his job for a change and putting the welfare of American consumers over those of the corporations. Let’s hope this signals a real change, not just a whole lot of lip service. This might have something to do with vocal protests from consumer watchdog groups. If your interested in some of these grassroots efforts, check out this story:

LINK

At the bottom there's a link to send a petition to the FCC.

CSB:

I’ve been talking to professors to serve us at Springtoberfest, so far Dina and Brent are willing, and I think I have Skye and my friend Bret on board as well. Feel free to ask your professors if they are free on March 28^th, and if they’re willing to come pour drinks for CSB members as a fund raiser. Tell them to contact me here if they're interested. I turned in my deposit for the LA trip, I'm really excited about it. We're still working out the details, but hopefully we can keep it cheap and easy for those of you who're coming.

Until next week, I'll be see'n ya.

Lot's of Stuff

Hey everybody. Sorry for the delay. Computer has been screwy.

CrushTV is a network and content website for college students, and they are looking for people. Basically if you have work you’d like to show, they want to show it for you on TV or the internet. They claim that this is a fairly high profile Student Producer position: contact them here.

There’s going to be an inter-genre discussion on creativity, sponsored by the Creative Writing Wordsmith’s Guild. It’s going to be next Tuesday March 6^th in Hum 512. They’re looking for people of all backgrounds to talk about writing and creativity and stuff. There’s going to be a Belgian documentary filmmaker Rogier van Eck giving a talk as well. Might be cool.

FCC:

The FCC has just broke their record for the biggest fine ever given. A fine of 24 Million will be handed out to Univision for failing to show the required three hours a week of educational programming for children. They had been saying that soap operas qualified as educational programming, and they have no comment on the fine. The previous largest fine was 9 million to qwest communications international.

LINK

Any of you use skype? It’s a voip service, and they just recently began to petition the FCC to allow the wireless carrier to be allowed to be activated on any phone. I think this would be a great thing.

LINK

CSB:

Yes, that was my laptop frying last week. The hard drive failed and they’re mailing me a new one, but I did lose my notes for last week. It breaks my heart that the episode got cut off in the middle. For those of you who want to see my show in it's entirety, check out our MySpace. We're working on a new one as we speak, hopefully I can show it in the meeting when we're done.

I just ordered some free business cards for the LA trip and Vegas from Vistaprint.com. The first 250 are free after shipping, it’s a pretty good deal.

I have an announcement for Marta our webmaster: she needs some talent for a shoot. There’s a male speaking role, and one female dance role with no lines. She also needs two or three extras, and a bartender. Applicants need to be available March 21^st between 1-4pm for filming. Contact Marta ASAP if you’re interested.

Finally I remember I had found a cool page that had a bunch of streaming TV sites. I've looked around, but I can't find it again. I found this one, which is pretty cool though.

LINK

Sorry I missed Holy Cow, hope you guys had fun. I saw The Host instead, which was excellent. Take care until next time.