Radio is a sound salvation
Radio is cleaning up the nation
They say you better listen to the voice of reason
But they don’t give you any choice
‘cause they think that it’s treason.
So you had better do as you are told.
You better listen to the radio.

-Elvis Costello, “Radio Radio”

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If you’ve never seen Elvis Costello’s legendary SNL performance of “Radio Radio” from 1977, you can watch it here.

The song sharply criticizes the commercialization of mainstream radio (“They’re saying things that I can hardly believe”) and one can only imagine the shock NBC executives experienced that night considering their radio station was the very sort Costello condemned. Performing “Radio Radio” without warning at SNL got Costello banned from the show for 12 years.

Not all that much has changed in the world of terrestrial radio since then. Just look at the long list of radio stations Clear Channel owns.

But new media and technology is finally reversing the trend of putting “the radio in the hands of such a lot of fools tryin’ to anaesthetize the way that you feel,” as Costello would put it.

“I don’t see a single future for radio, as things seem to be splitting and recombining in interesting ways. When mobile operators are offering access to services like Rhapsody over 3G, satellite services like XM and Sirius are offering recording functions for their receivers, discovery services like Last.fm and Pandora are making it easier to find and listen to new music, and when community broadcasters are starting to regularly broadcast via the Web, I’m not sure there is a capital-R Radio any more, said Douglas Arellanes, Head of Research and Development at Campcaster. (See Full Intreview Here).

Campcaster is new open source software, launched by the Media Development Loan Fund, that essentially allows you to run your own station. It’s a bit like Pandora.com, where you can architect your own musical program and share it with others, but it comes with additional tools for audio broadcasting. Last month NewAssignment.Net wrote about Chicago Public Radio’s Secret Radio Project, which plans to air mostly user-generated content via a new format at a different frequency. Well, Campcaster essentially allows you to run your own station.

Best of all, Campcasting is free and on an open source platform, which means that anyone who knows code can make any changes to the software.

This means the media is being democratized on two levels. Everyone has a chance to get their voice heard “and the unsung heroes in broadcasting - the engineers - get something with its workings transparent and open for improvement; as opposed to commercial products, Campcaster is not a “black box” and has been specifically designed to encourage technical innovation,” said Arellanes. (See Full Intreview Here).

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Bess Kargman, like most Amherst College graduates, is a hard-core Red Sox and Patriots fan. She is currently completing a graduate degree in Journalism at Columbia University, where she is concentrating in New Media and Radio. Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post and she interns for the business radio show, “Marketplace” on National Public Radio.