Finding Our Voices
Channel: LIVING SOCIOLOGY
Date: 2019-12-12

First Person, Plural on CFUV-fm, Victoria, BC 
Originally aired January 2, 2003

December has been a difficult month for Pattie as she recovers from pneumonia.  She still has a croaky voice that forced us to get creative for this week's episode.  We used this occasion to reflect not only upon 2002, but also upon the need for people's voices to be heard and our own particular need to speak out and to have others listen.  This episode is a mediation on the state of radio in North America and upon our own desire to produce radio.

On May 1, 2002, a number of webcasters protested the process by which the Librarian of Congress arbitrated royalty payments for Internet radio.  Because the board that oversees the process is called the Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel (CARP), the theme for the day at the Live365.com website was "stinky fish."  In support of this effort, Pattie co-produced an episode of Women on Air at CFUV-FM with then-Women's Radio Collective Coordinator Geraldine Bulosan, dedicated to the protest.  Included in that show was an interview that Geraldine did with Pattie.  We are re-airing that interview in its entirety.

Our first foray into radio started on June 20, 2001, when we came up with a simple idea for an Internet radio show: We like to talk. We like to drink coffee. We like to go to coffee shops and talk and drink coffee. Why not do a show where we go to a coffee shop, drink coffee and talk about the world around us? We recorded 30 episodes of "Coffee Shop" over the next 14 months, and each one was encoded using our own computer and made available to listeners on the Internet via the LIVE365.com website. Subsequent "decisions" by the U.S. Library of Congress and by LIVE365 made it impossible for us to continue to use the latter to host the project without the ludicrous consequence of our paying "royalties" on our own intellectual property. We offer today a sample of "Coffee Shop" excerpts from Episode 6:  The Freedom to Be Heard.

copyright: Carl Wilkerson and Pattie Thomas

http://sociologylegacy.pbworks.com/w/page/93416441/Episode%2029%20Finding%20Our%20Voices