Radio Voices

If you want to hear what people in New Orleans are concerned about, tune in to United Broadcasters of New Orleans via WWL, the Big 870. In New Orleans you can actually get this on a number of different channels on both AM and FM, but the Big 870 can be heard in something like 20-odd states (at night, anyway). It’s also streaming over the internet. Fascinating stuff. The main format is call-in talk, interrupted by commericals and regular news breaks as well as press conferences, but mainly it’s people calling in with reports of what they’re experiencing on the ground in New Orleans and the surrounding area, what they’re worried about.

Listen for a few minutes every day, and you’ll begin to get a sense for the enormity of the challenges that the Gulf Coast region now faces.

There’s also Radio Algiers, which is a low-power “pirate” radio station which you can only catch in the Algiers Point in New Orleans (88.7FM) but you can also get it on the internet: Radio Algiers [mp3] or Radio Algiers [m3u]. (Only the second link works properly for me.) It has more of an underground, radical perspective.