The Wires (Jul 27, 2007)

Kurt Hanson: The NAB is "disappointed with SoundExchange" after the group has failed to respond to an offer to lower webcast royalty rates made by the broadcast organization nearly two months ago. In a statement today, the NAB has pledged its "unequivocal support" of the Internet Radio Equality Act and will fight to overturn the rates proposed by the CRB.

NAB makes the record industry an offer on webcasting. But so far there's no response. NAB spokesman Dennis Wharton says they're "disappointed" by SoundExchange's "continued reluctance to respond to the good-faith, reasonable offer." SoundExchange says it's still studying the proposal, but the NAB isn't waiting. It's turning its attention to "aggressively advocating" for a bill that would reverse the decision that dramatically increased webcasting royalties. Meanwhile, Live365 releases a study finding that over half of its stations' music comes from independent artists.

All Access reports that (with factual corrections) KROQ GM Trip Reeb is now President and CEO of Finest City Broadcasting, which operates but does not own (because they're Mexican-licensed) XETRA-FM (91X) and Hip Hop/R&B XHITZ (Z90). Reeb, a 17-year KROQ veteran, has been an interim GM of the two said stations for the last couple of months. He succeeds Mike Glickenhaus in the post.

Minumum Wage Finally Goes Up (July 26, 2007)

A raise in the U.S. minumum wage.

We're barely making ends meet in the richest nation in the world whose employers are too snobbish to realize that it costs a lot of money just to live in the U.S.

On Tuesday, a raise in the U.S. minumum wage finally went up from $5.15 to a still too low $5.85 an hour. The next year, it goes up to $6.55 an hour, then in 2009, $7.25 an hour.

To help make the minimum wage provision palatable for Republicans, Democrats added $4.84 billion in tax relief for small businesses to help them hire new workers and offset any cost associated with an increase in the minimum wage.

A person working 40 hours per week at the current minimum wage of $5.15 makes about $10,700 a year. A raise to $5.85 an hour would increase that to $12,168 a year before taxes. An increase to $7.25 would boost that to just over $15,000 a year.

On the bad side, raising the minumum wage just isn't enough to calm the ire of the grumbling rich fat-as-a-cat fast food franchise owners who balk at raising the minimum wage to serve the public good.

Back in 1988, I was fired from Subway when the minumum wage went up from $3.25 to $4.15 an hour. I needed to work two or three jobs to make ends meet. Needless to say...

Boycott Subway! Eat at Quizno's!

Yes, back then, the cheap-rate fast food owners who would rather dish out substandard wages in order to compete with, guess what, other cheap-rate fast food owners, are not contributing to the public good by firing workers when the minumum wage goes up instead of raising their prices to cover the wage increases.

Even Wal-Mart isn't doing their job by touting that they pay their workers an average of a paltry $10 an hour instead of a more livable wage like $20 an hour. With a business that well-run, Wal-Mart can afford to share the wealth!

Tom Leykis, on Tuesday, bashing the minumum-wage earners as "lazy", "losers", and "retards", said that their boycotts won't do any good because they can't afford the products of his show's advertisers anyway. Leykis is right about this: people lose jobs when the wage goes up, especially for substandard employees. That's the hard bitter fact, and that's way mimimum wage businesses like Subway are not doing the public any good by paying substandard wages and offering expensive products that their employees can't even afford. I can't afford to pay $7.95 for a six-inch sub they're offering. Where does all that money go?

Judging from the loss of two of Leykis's affilliates in San Diego and Phoenix, I guess there are a lot of losers and retards who listen to free radio, rather than to pay for XM and Sirius where the rich can afford the $12.95 a month rate. Where were the rich when Free-FM and Leykis were in San Diego and Phoenix? Not enough of them to sustain the existances of the Leykis affilliates, that's for sure. They're all listening to satellite or CDs. This is why we got hip hop and Sophie instead of Free in their respective markets because free radio has to cater to the poor, since the poor can afford just a terrestrial radio.

We're seeing the overpaid supermarket cashiers crowing about their new union contract that they approved, putting me between a rock and a hard place. Should I do business with Wal-Mart where the prices are low and the wages are low, or should I do business with Vons where the prices are 50 percent higher and the union wages are higher? I'll just think about myself, the cheapskate working poor, and do business with Wal-Mart, in protest, and avoid the supermarkets where the prices are inflated and overpriced.

I visited an Albertson's store after three years and noticed something that wasn't there three years ago: six automated cashier stations. Guess how many employees were let go?

So what will happen to the minumum wage earner who can't quit when retirement age is reached? Will the tax-subsidized programs pay for their elderly years? They couldn't afford college, couldn't get good grades through K-12, couldn't get a job, couldn't get a well-paid job, all because of society's ills such as the businesses in San Diego, who like to shun people who need to work, but are too picky to accept what they can get.

In California, the minumum wage goes to $8 an hour. In a rich and expensive state like this, it should be about $15 an hour (with tax-subsidized programs based on age, not higher employer wages), just for a single person.

Where will the subsides come from? The working rich like the pro sports players who make tens of millions of dollars. The poor can't afford to see them live anyway.

A better solution. Have an arbitrator correct the overinflated prices of real estate such as property and rentals. They're three times too expensive, and not anywhere close to being worth that much to begin with. $1,400 a month for a rental is more than what one minimum wage earner makes.

How about a law forcing an employer to hire a worker after being fired when the minumum wage is raised? How could that be enforced?

Time to stop grumbling and share the wealth if you can afford it, and most employers can.

The Wires (July 26, 2007)

NAB.org: NAB filed a 30-page response to comments on the proposed monopoly-merger of XM and Sirius. The NAB filing concluded "there is no legal or factual basis upon which the Commission can approve the proposed merger between XM and Sirius"

From Jimmy Rabbitt: On this day in music history in 1976 this week, Elton John finally had a #1single in the U.K. It was a duet with Kiki Dee, called “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart.” He would later re-record the song with RuPaul for his 1993, Duets album. This new version hit #7 in the U.K., but stalled at #92 in the U.S. Kiki Dee, however, was not to be forgotten as her duet for John’s album, “True Love,” had already made it to #2 in the U.K. three months previously (read more - www.TheRabbittReport.com) D.T. addenda: also that year, on a New Years Eve-themed episode of "One Day at a Time", Valerie Bertinelli did an Elton John impression singing that same song. Anybody know what happened to Kiki Dee? We knew Valerie's singing stunk, but, like Tiffany, Hannah Montana, and other then-teenage female singers, nobody cared as long as they were cute, meaning, not to be taken seriously because they're not that serious about music anyway.

NAB Gets Behind Internet Radio Equality Act WASHINGTON—July 25: Saying SoundExchange has ignored its offer to settle webcast performance royalties, the NAB is lending "unqualified support" behind a House of Representatives bill that would set aside webcast performance royalties set by the Copyright Royalty Board

Lauren Bacall Bashes Men (July 26, 2007)

NY Post: Today's men are neither intelligent nor witty enough for Lauren Bacall. "They don't exist anymore. Why? Don't ask me. I haven't met anyone I wanted to spend an evening with, much less a life with," the Hollywood legend, 82, tells the Times of London (read more - NY Post Page Six)

D.T. addenda: we can add Lauren to the list of ladies not to watch or listen to because they're overrated humorless twits, along with others like Annette Bening, Tori Spelling, Victoria "Posh Spice" Beckham, and Kristy McNichol, who are basically over-the-hill snobs who have lost their value as they grew old without maturing or gaining wisdom and intelligence. I say that it's women like these, including Lauren, who are full of "it" themselves, so much so that they're as closed minded about the diversity of men as the Pope is closed minded about the diversity of Rainbow Pride. It shows us all that Lauren and others like her have no class at all.

To continue on with this, since I'm fired up about this, I find most women that I encounter lacking in politeness, intelligence, interest, class, beauty, and approachability. Too many of them I see smoke, which is a big fat no-no in my life, dress like boys, chew gum with their mouths open, have no manners, look too scary to come near to, act dumb, talk on their cell phones all the time, expect me to pay for their stuff, and put down the men for being fat or poor (and this is just in the San Diego outland!)

The cause of this: it seems that these women are looking to the wrong kind of women as role models. People like Bacall, Spelling, Bening, McNichol, Beckham, and I must add Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, and others like them expect me to admire them and buy their Hollywood-produced shit while they put us down. We'll guess what, men, we aren't going to put up with them, so let's do the DTB thing and leave them behind, sagging cellulite and all!

I know intelligent and ladylike women exist somewhere, but I haven't encountered any of them lately, not even at places where I do business.

Besides, "Family" and "Tori! Tori!" both stunk!

Merry Christmas in July (July 25, 2007)

AM 1700 Going All News-Talk (Jul 24, 2007)

1700 AM will be Cash-ing out its business talk format in favor of a news-talk format on August 1. Their handle will be "San Diego 1700". The new lineup will begin with Mark Larson, who quit KOGO recently, followed by shows from Ray Lucia, Bill Holland, and others at times to be announced.

Larson will also serve as the station's program director.

Drew Carey New Price Host (Jul 24, 2007)

He replaces Bob Barker, who finally retired in June after hosting the game show since 1972 and going on for 6,586 shows.

Carey, 49, spent nine seasons on his own ABC sitcom "The Drew Carey Show" from 1995 until 2004, and also was host of the game show "Whose Line is It Anyway?" from 1998, a comic improvisational show.

Carey also hosts a new CBS prime-time game show, "The Power of 10," that will air beginning next month.

The Wires (Jul 24, 2007)

Kurt Hanson: Despite press reports to the contrary, SoundExchange spokesperson Richard Ades has told RAIN that the organization does not see DRM implementation as the only solution to the streamripping "problem".

Happy Hare: Roger Hedgecock’s first foray called, “Light up the border,” occurred in 1990, when he inspired hundreds of San Diegans to charge to the border and stand guard against the invasion of illegals. Since then, he has declared war on amnesty, and the President’s apparent sub rosa aim to bring it about. He even excoriates Bush when he guests on Rush’s program, something that guest protocol would not have allowed even months ago. Roger Hedgecock not only used his San Diego KOGO AM radio show and Rush’s big forum for his campaign to blast the disguised amnesty bill, but recently reached out to 29 other talk hosts across the country to join him in what he calls a “Hold their feet to the fire” trip to Washington to confront the pro amnesty lawmakers face to face.

XM and Sirius Radio to offer a la carte programming. The companies will give subscribers the ability to pick their programming line-up - and pay nearly half what the base rate is now. A bare bones package for 50 channels will cost just $6.99 a month. The catch - subscribers will have to buy a new radio to get the new service plan. In a move to win regulator support for their proposed merger, they'll also give credits to consumers who opt to block adult programming like Howard Stern.

Epoch Times: From Denis Charleton -- What many people today may not realize is that most of the '60's music for which Britain is famous would never have seen the light of day were it not for the offshore "pirate" radio ships. They gave exposure to countless artists who had no chance of getting their records played during the meagre seven hours a week allocated to recorded music by the BBC. For those of us who were teenagers in the Britain of the 1960's the pirate radio stations literally changed our lives. A young Irishman by the name of Ronan O'Rahilly, only 23 years of age, was the visionary who put Radio Caroline, the first offshore broadcaster run from the UK, on the air on Good Friday 1964

John Gorman: Mitch Bainwol and his pit of serpents of the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) -- They’re incapable of delivering a direct aim. Given the opportunity, they’ll always opt for jackboot tactics. How about their illegal downloading law suit against Tanya Anderson, the handicapped 44-year old African-American single mother from Oregon? When the RIAA was proven wrong, they sheepishly dropped the law suit and claimed it was an honest mistake. Facts schmacts. But Anderson didn’t acquiesce and now she’s countersuing the RIAA for Oregon RICO violations, fraud, invasion of privacy, abuse of process, electronic trespass, violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, negligent misrepresentation, the tort of "outrage", and deceptive business practices. Her counterclaim also demands a trial by jury. Can’t wait for that one

KSCF adds Jeff “JT” Stewart for 9 a.m.-noon duties and Tony Martin takes on the night shift