COMRAD

[dviramontes]

No description provided.

[dzimmerman902]

What is the idea

Comrad is an open-source web application for use by community radio stations that helps with crucial show scheduling and playlist entry to organize all on air and streaming processes for hosts and DJ’s.

There is an initial version of it in use at KGNU in Boulder, CO, but the system needs several feature and usability improvements to bring it to the point where other community radio stations can adopt it.

This fellowship will allow the building of Comrad 2.0, permitting a standalone open source distribution in English and Spanish that will greatly benefit the small to mid-sized community radios as well as the hundreds of budget limited Lower Power FM radios just taking to the air in the United States.

Why

This project intends to reduce the economic, administrative, programming, and compliance requirement burdens faced by small to midsized and LPFM community radios.

The project will go one step further, guaranteeing a native Spanish interface to support the growing number of Spanish language and immigrant radios.

The impact will prove to permit community radios stations to easily install this standalone on air playlist and schedule management tool through a dynamic API or a locally installed localhost, reducing the need for expensive scheduling and compliance tools, allowing stations to focus energy on production and show quality without diverting precious financial or electronic resources.

Potential Partner(s)?

KGNU

Additional Background Context

The democratization of media is a fundamental struggle in the fight for social justice and a healthier more balanced democracy. Dating back to the 1980 UNESCO’s International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems that produced the Many Voices One World report, more commonly known as the MacBride Report, the commission cited the concentration of the media, commercialization of the media, and unequal access to information and communication" as key obstacles to the democratization of the media and to maintaining healthy democracies.

The commission further noted that "grassroots communicative practices" urgently needed to be recognized and supported to further balance power because commercial and even public media was often overly influenced by the military-industrial and corporate interests. Yet today, independent, grassroots, community media outlets – particularly community radio face tremendous compliance issues imposed by both the FCC and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, among others.

Complicating issues more is the lack of affordable and open source technology designed to reduce and organize the on-air and digital compliance for low budget stations, making it difficult for grassroots community radios to easily and economically comply. This project will provide a tool that may be integrated with other open source tools to reduce this economic, organizational and compliance challenge for community radios.

Details

Champion: Sean Williams
Repo: https://github.com/codefordenver/Comrad
Waffle Board: https://waffle.io/codefordenver/Comrad