Cheers for San Diego Radio 2001

KOGO 600 - the good news? Clear Channel is committed to giving the San Diego Outland a strong radio news prescence on the dial. The bad news? There's not enough time spent on broadcasting the news after 9am, mostly due to the fact that the syndicated shows eat up all but the first six minutes of the hour, giving the local stations only three minutes of time devoted to news, weather, sports, and traffic, while the rest go to commercials. More about radio news in tomorrow's State of the San Diego Radio Address.

KFMB 760 - the nights are put to use with Hooked on Trivia as an alternative to the syndicated talkers on the other parts of the radio dial.

KCBQ 1170 - Saturdays were spent reminiscing the olden days of radio with I Still Q in My Car, a series that ended this past summer. We could use a time-capsule music show such as Radio-A-Go-Go specializing in exploring the deep parts of 60's music culture and other shows like it on the dial.

KPOP 1360 - someone finally realized that financial talk didn't belong on a nostalgia music station. Too bad the station's powers that be fooled around and made a lot of people angry.

KSDS 88.3 - the only college radio station (San Diego Community College) serving San Diego on the public part of the FM band (88.1-91.9 MHz).

KPBS 89.5 - finally, some FM stereo classical music in the heart of San Diego! Too bad it's only part-time, but it's better than AM!

Z90.3 - all local (though the music mix has gotten uninspiring as of late).

91X - at least they retained Steve West for Sunday mornings!

92.1 - a free airwave alternative to cable college radio, as well as 91X

92.5 - live most of the time.

93.3 - The Digital Groove late Saturday nights. Too bad it's on so late and so short a time.

94.9 - San Diego's all-80's station prevails.

96.5 - committed to serving the family lifestyle.

97.3 - today's country adult contemporary.

98.9 - at least they have dance mixes on Fridays and some parts of Wednesdays.

100.7 - Jeff and Jer's show is the top morning show this year, and has been among the top favorites since 1990.

102.1 - AAA for people who want more than just 1-2 decades of adult rock.

Not much, is it? Some smaller cities have it better than ours in terms of variety. More about what's missing tomorrow.

A Message From John Fox

Hello!  Your ol' pal John Fox here.

I hope your holidays are going as great as mine.

If you know of anyone who wants a great deal on a car or truck - new or used, please have them call me IMMEDIATELY.  Here's why ...

    - 0% financing ends in two days
    - If you live in LA County, sales tax goes up January 1.
    - If it's a business purchase or lease, you must make your deal today to get a deduction for 2001.
    - Rebates are available up to $4,000 (depending on the model.)

I don't want you or your friends to miss out, so call me now for an appointment!

Ask about my finder's fee program.

Thanks and have a great New Year.

John Fox
Rio Rancho Pontiac GMC Buick Isuzu
888 404 3208
909 227 2171 messages

January Holidays

                           JANUARY 
 
January is... National Fiber Focus Month
    
January 1 is... First Foot Day 
 
January 2 is... Run Up the Flagpole and See if Anybody 
                Salutes Day
 
January 8 is... National JoyGerm Day and Man Watcher's Day
 
January 10 is... Peculiar People Day
 
January 11 is... National Step in a Puddle and Splash Your 
                 Friend Day
 
January 12 is... Feast of Fabulous Wild Men Day
 
January 22 is... National Answer Your Cat's Question Day 
 
January 23 is... Measure Your Feet Day
 
January 24 is... Eskimo Pie Patent Day
 
January 27 is... Thomas Crapper Day 
 
January 27 is... "Weird Al" Day
 
January 28 is... Kazoo Day and Rattle Snake Round-Up Day

$9.99 CDs Coming in 2002?

Guess again. For the year 2002, CDs at $9.99 may soon be a standard offer at music stores as retailers slash prices in bid to battle the scourge of online music piracy.

With a lack of quality product since "Beatles 1" gave the band its first #1 selling album for any year on the Billboard album charts, studios, artists, and retailers are singing the blues as predictions for another year of flat CD sales may be ahead.

But in this day and age, the brick-and-mortar stores have some strong competetion, courtesy of Amazon, just to name two online CD stores (davesfunstuff.com runs several record stores with albums linked to the pages on those merchants).

On the Internet, there's far more music to satisfy your musical tastes such as electronica, folk, and comedy/novelty than there is at the record store, plus, you can sample the songs in the privacy of your home without fear that someone might make fun of your musical taste if you select to sample something from The Olsen Twins or something.

The price cutting at the brick-and-mortar shops does nothing to improve the quality of the product. A $10 CD that sucks is just as much a waste of your money as a $20 CD; you get burned equally for seeing a lack of thought that was produced in the product.

The selection of novelty and comedy songs are pretty slim on the brick-and-mortar stores, so people go to Amazon to search for what they like and buy them online. If you want a more browsable novelty/comedy record store, you can visit my newly-redesigned Comedy/Novelty Artists A-Z Page right here...

http://www.davesfunstuff.com/2100.htm

Other competetive products are the popular DVD videos, and coming soon, a wider selection of music available on DVD Audio to compete with the CD Audio offerings.

Piracy is rampant in Asia as about 80 percent of CD sales are pirated music products. People just buy a CD, copy the tracks on their own CD burner they can get cheap nowadays, copy the CD sleeves and imitate the CD labels, and presto! Instant copy, albiet, often far from absolute perfection. The lawyers representing the RIAA and the record labels are feverishly trying to get some legal handle on this situation in non-U.S. areas such as this to put a stop to this; the labels make nothing on sales of pirated music.

Internet song-swapping services popped up like mushrooms once the popular music-file swap service Napster was shut down and evolving into a pay service this year. Meanwhile, the countless central-less file-swap services have grown in number, stretching the policing by the labels, and lawyers too thin to reign control of the wild wild Internet.

The record companies and retailers intend to make money on CD sales, but they need to change their business model to a point where people can sample what they are about to buy before they consider buying the music, and the only way to do that is to make some of the music free, just like what radio is doing with a much more narrow selection of new music. The free music can easily be made available from the websites, or sample mini-discs, and the copyright police, artists, and labels, will together have control of what copyrighted music gets out to the masses for free.

If you can't hear the music, you can't consider buying it! That's the problem with commerical radio, so Napster provided us a way to let us learn what new music is out there, since radio is just ignoring most of the new music. The labels should be working with Napster, not against it; it's a well-oiled publicity machine, althogh rather out of control in giving way just plain too much away for free.

One problem with the file-swapping servers I use is that I find a song I like, but all it has are the keywords such as "Techno" or generic terms such as "artist" on the ID3 tags of the MP3 files, and I cannot identify the song I like so that I can buy the album wence it came from. The copyright police should do something at least about MP3s that go unidentified so that people can name the songs, artists, and albums from the tune they hear, and, with that knowledge, buy the album somewhere.

Some of the rights holders will have to make some concessions such as letting go of the royalty rights for the distribution of music samples intended to be free. If the label and distributor make no money off giving away free music, how could they pay the rights holders on sales of zero dollars? If the rights holders want to make some money, they will have to give something away to get some publicity going so that they could make money from the people who sampled their music, liked it, and decide to buy their music. Let the people sample nothing? Expect your CDs to gather dust!

Will music CDs soon be selling at the standard price of $9.99? If that's so, expect a music retail and label shakeout to change the landscape of the music CD business radically. Expect cassette and single versions to be dropped altogether from the retailers while the stores begin a push for the newer higher-density DVD Audio and SACD discs of the music that is expected to battle each other for the high-end supremacy audio sector. With DVD Audio outranking SACD by a factor of four, expect DVD Audio to be the new music standard, existing alongside the CD versions (DVD Audio can play CD Audio discs) for quite some time. There will always be a market for cheap CD versions, but DVD Audio will be the premium sound versions of, we hope, better musical products.

What is D.T. Watching Tonight?

6pm ABC Monday Night Football
8pm NBC Weakest Link (on tape)
10pm ABC Who Wants to Be a Millionaire

Label to Buy Out Mariah Carey Contract

LABEL TO BUY OUT MARIAH CAREY CONTRACT

It's been a rough year for Mariah Carey. The pop diva had an emotional and physical breakdown, and sales of her much-anticipated album Glitter were not as sparkly as expected.

As a result, Carey's record label is reportedly trying to buy out the rest of her contract. Carey signed a deal with EMI-Virgin records earlier in the year for a reported amount of between $80 million and $118 million -- depending on whether she produced four or five albums for the label.

Another reported term of the deal between Carey and Virgin was that she receive a $20 million advance for each album, $6 million for production of music videos and $1.5 million to promote four singles.

However, Glitter was released at the wrong time -- on September 11 -- and sold only 2 million copies worldwide. EMI-Virgin reportedly lost $10 million in the process.

Now it is being reported that the label is looking to buy out the rest of Carey's contract, offering to pay the singer a one-time lump sum, hoping to dissolve the previous deal.

Wired News

Surf 'N Hemp: Feel the Power (Technology Friday) http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,49087,00.html?tw=wn20011229 A Hawaii congresswoman is pushing hard for alternative energy sources, including turning waves into electricity and using industrial hemp as a replacement for petroleum products. By Steve Kettmann.