Here's where you'll find:

            - Current Press Releases
            - Print-ready Images
            - The Schedule for this Year's National Third Coast Festival Broadcast
            - More about the Third Coast Festival and its public events series, annual competition and conference
            - News from the Third Coast Festival

If you have further questions, or if you're interested in covering the Festival please contact Public Relations Manager Cindy Hansen.

Here you’ll find regularly updated news and other information about the world of audio:

            - Third Coast Festival News
            - Audio News From Around the World

However, by no means do we think we’ve got a handle on everything going on out there. In fact we’re looking to you as radio/audio fans and producers to help keep this page robust and current. If you know something we should know or have a project you'd like to share, please get in touch.

The Time Has Come!
The Third Coast Festival/Richard H. Dreihaus Competition opens on May 1st! We're looking for the most creative, intriguing, enriching, ineffably powerful audio stories that have been produced worldwide for the radio or Internet in the past two years. $25,000 will be awarded in three categories: Best Documentary, Best New Artist and Radio Impact. Additionally, nominations will be accepted for the Audio Luminary Award, presented to an honoree who has made outstanding contributions to the field. Send us your best!

It's Here...Our 2007 Public Audio Project: Dollar Storeys!
We recently announced a new project inviting producers, artists, writers and radio fans of all experience levels to submit short audio stories inspired by items purchased at a dollar store. The *carefully* selected  items include
a brightly colored mug with the inscription "Well-behaved women rarely make history." Come see all the dollar store picks, hear the first couple submissions and find out how you can take part in Dollar Storeys.

TCF Offers Spring National Broadcast: "Radio Across Time Zones"
Hosted by Gwen Macsai of the TCF's Re:sound, Radio Across Time Zones will showcase some of the most unforgettable and innovative audio documentaries and features being made worldwide. Hopping time zones, the program will present the work of leading producers from Australia, England, Ireland and Canada and bring their stories straight to your ears. Radio Across Time Zones, A Third Coast Festival Special Broadcast will be distributed nationally by PRI, Public Radio International in May.

Find the TCF's First-Ever CD in the Pages of Stop Smiling Mag
The fall issue of Stop Smiling Magazine - it's "ode to the Midwest" - has hit newsstands and we're gratified to have been included. But more than that we're thrilled to have had the opportunity to cut our first cd, featuring a handful of our favorite short documentary works. Producers Rick Moody, Sherre Delys, Jill Summers, Amy Dorn, Hillary Frank, Dan Collison and Elizabeth Meister and musican Sufjan Stevens are all part of the new collection. We hope you'll check it out for yourself.

This One's For All My Homies in Chicago
What sounds evoke Chicago? How about the traffic cop's whistles, the Beluga whales being fed at Shedd, the hot dog vendors at Wrigley, and of course, every single noise that comes out of the El system. At Favorite Chicago Sounds, recordings of these places and events have been collected and catalogued so that even when you are away—or if you want to travel to Chicago on a tight budget—you can close your eyes and feel like you’re there. Be sure to make a request or contribute your own audio.

Turn that racket down!
Have you ever had an old song randomly come up on the iPod and it was so much quieter than the other songs that you had to jack the volume all the way up to hear it? It's not just in your head, and not because that particular MP3 encode is low. Music has gotten much louder over the years. Compression has reduced the dynamic range (and has lead to the dramatically increased volume) of commercially released music. So instead of having valleys of pin-drop quiet followed by intense wailing or booming, modern music is consistently loud throughout the track.

Loud music is wicked awesome and all, but compression is necessarily a loss of information about the sound. A piece of data has been removed, namely relative volume. Does that make for a better listening experience? Nick Southall at Stylus Magazine thought a lot about this, and then got me thinking about it, and now I pass it on to you.