S2 THE DIVIDED DIAL EPISODE 4: Wall St. Wants Your Airwaves

On the Media | May 28, 2025

EPISODE 4

In recent years, creative, often music-focused pirate broadcasting has been thriving on shortwave. But these surreptitious broadcasters are up against a surprising ideological foe: Not the FCC, but a deep-pocketed group of finance bros that is trying to wrestle the airwaves away from the public, and use them for a money-making scheme completely antithetical to broadcasting. What do we lose when we give up our public airwaves?

The Divided Dial was supported in part by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism

Flights from JFK, LaGuardia resume, but Newark remains grounded after equipment outage

Equipment issues caused several outages across the Northeast.

Gothamist |

How Extinction Entered the AI Debate

And human debaters face-off with chatbots

On the Media |

Designing the Magical Effects On Stage in 'Paranormal Activity' and 'Stranger Things'

All Of It with Alison Stewart |

Learning to Drive in New York and New Jersey

The Brian Lehrer Show |

On the Media

On the Media is a weekly show that uses the media as a lens to understand our world.

Our theme music was written by bassist/composer Ben Allison.

Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Transcripts are posted to individual episode pages as they become available.

Be alert for scams. WNYC never asks for nor accepts money for coverage or interviews. Anyone making such a request does not represent WNYC.

WNYC is funded by sponsors and member donations

S2 THE DIVIDED DIAL EPISODE 4: Wall St. Wants Your Airwaves

Top Stories

Flights from JFK, LaGuardia resume, but Newark remains grounded after equipment outage

How Extinction Entered the AI Debate

Designing the Magical Effects On Stage in 'Paranormal Activity' and 'Stranger Things'

Learning to Drive in New York and New Jersey

On the Media

Inside WNYC

Get Involved

Get in Touch