The Wires (Apr 10, 2009)

Washington diary: Crying on cable. Excerpts: When John F Kennedy's life was brutally cut short by an assassin's bullet, Walter Cronkite told America the news. Cable news channels like Fox and MSNBC are competing for ratings. He took off his black-rimmed glasses and cleared his throat as if to dislodge a piece of unwarranted emotion, paused for a few seconds and then continued with the business of delivering the terrible information. The real, if restrained, grief of that fleeting moment was - and still is - eerily powerful. When Barack Obama announced another tranche of his bailout package for ailing banks, Glenn Beck on Fox News burst into floods of tears, as if his own mother had just passed away. His torrent for the Tarp as the Troubled Assets Relief Programme is known left me sadly cold. The traditional stiff upper lip of newscasters has morphed into a quivering lower lip. It is not just Glenn Beck. On the other end of the political spectrum, MSNBC's Ed Schultz kicked off his new show with a 10-minute - or was it 15? - diatribe that delivered a frightening crescendo of rage, as if the producer was yelling into his earpiece, telling him to crank it up a notch. The rant was so lengthy, I went off to make a cup of tea, came back to my desk and he was still at it. By the end of it I felt so physically exhausted I had not taken in a single coherent sentence of what he had to say. I think he was angry at the people who were angry with the President... Read the rest of the article at the link in this paragraph.

Inside Radio: Survey: Internet radio grows. More than a quarter (27%) of Americans report they've listened to an internet-only radio station, according to an American Media Services survey. The numbers were higher with younger demos. Among 18-24s, 47% had listened to an online station. Terrestrial radio listening holds steady

NY Times: The HD radio alliance has spent millions of dollars on promotion, ads and educational efforts. Yet even after four years of this, most people still don’t have any idea what HD radio is. And no wonder. You can’t sum up HD radio in a one-line movie pitch (“It’s ‘Forrest Gump’ meets ‘The Terminator’ !”). It takes a couple of paragraphs to explain it.

Gary Lycan: Hollywood Hamilton, former KIIS-FM personality (1986-1992) returns to Southern California radio April 13 when he takes over the 2-7 p.m. afternoon drive slot on 104.3 FM, better known as “104.3MYfm”

WLWT TV5: The FBI is investigating a call made to an Arizona radio station in which the caller said they witnessed a murder in Cincinnati 20 years ago. The caller, who identified himself as "Carl," called KISS FM in Phoenix Wednesday night during the station's confession contest.

Hear 2.0: WiII iPods kill Satellite Radio?

Winston-Salem Journal: Mobility is the key to Internet radio - Paul Garber interviews Tim Westergren.

CNET: Internet access in Ford trucks. Can cars be far behind?

Wired: CompUSA Comes Back From The Dead.

The Wires (Apr 9, 2009)

Randy Dotinga: Honey, they shrank the morning show. A new voice on KPRi sounds familiar. No wonder: It belongs to San Diego disc jockey Chris Cantore, former host of the 91X morning show. Cantore is now hosting weekend shifts at the station, spinning tunes by the likes of Bonnie Raitt and the Who instead of Green Day and Sublime. Cantore doesn't seem to mind.

Gary Lycan: Hollywood Hamilton, former KIIS-FM personality (1986-1992) returns to Southern California radio April 13 when he takes over the 2-7 p.m. afternoon drive slot on 104.3 FM, better known as “104.3MYfm”.

About Radio: The Wacky World of Radio -- Radio stations often are in one place and the actual transmitter and radio tower are in another place. We do that because radio waves have been proven to destroy brain cells. How else can you explain some of the wack jobs, screw ups, and weirdos that get hired to be on the air? Plus, many ranchers pay radio stations to place transmitters and towers on their farmland because few people know that AM and FM signals slow-cook the inside of cows and that permits ranchers to sell the cow directly to steak houses for a higher profit, thus avoiding that annoying trip to the slaughterhouse.

FMQB: The Southern California Broadcasters Association (SCBA) reports that So Cal broadcasters brought in over $1 billion in radio ad revenue in 2008. Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernadino and Ventura Counties combined to top the radio revenue world, with L.A. still the top market in the business.

No Performance Tax: The NAB has debuted a new website at www.noperformancetax.org as the latest weapon in its battle against performance royalties for broadcast radio.

San Diego Business Journal: San Diego’s radio broadcasters suffered a revenue drop of 11 percent in 2008, marking the second consecutive yearly decline, and the forecast for the next two years is no better, according to BIA Financial Network. Nationwide, radio industry revenue was down 8.5 percent last year, the Virginia-based media adviser said in a March 30 report.

ZDNet: Cyberspies penetrate U.S. electrical grid: report. Larry Dignan: Larry Dignan: Electrical grids were initially thought to be somewhat hacker proof but Russian and Chinese cyberspies have been planting software that could be activated at a future date, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The Masters on Sirius XM (Apr 8, 2009)

SIRIUS XM will offer listeners extensive coverage of the season's first major championship with live play-by-play from Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, GA, plus expert analysis every day of Masters Week.

Live broadcasts from Augusta will begin at 12:00 pm ET Thursday through Sunday with SIRIUS XM's John Tautges and Brian Katrek hosting The Masters Today, a daily preview show that will lead into each day's on-course play-by-play. The live hole-by-hole coverage will air from 2:00 pm ET through the end of each day's play giving fans live reports from around the course and access to golfers on and off the leaderboard. On-course coverage will be immediately followed by a nightly wrap-up show, Masters Replay, that will include a recap of the day's action with highlights, analysis and interviews with players.

In addition to the live play-by-play, SIRIUS XM listeners will hear daily talk and analysis by The PGA TOUR Network's lineup of expert hosts.

Every weekday morning, listeners can tune into special Masters editions of the daily talk shows Playing Thru (8:00-10:00 am ET), hosted by T.J. Rives, and Making The Turn (10:00-11:00 am ET), hosted by Peter Kessler.

The Wires (Apr 8, 2009)

Inside Radio: Steve Cannon dead at 81. The Upper Midwest is remembering longtime WCCO, Minneapolis afternoon personality Steve Cannon, who died last night at his Florida home after a five-month cancer battle. He created multiple characters, convincing many listeners they were real. WCCO remembers Cannon HERE. http://www.830wcco.com/In-Memory-Of/4123966

John Gorman: We knew a large percentage of our audience grew up with top 40 radio and the music played on that format influenced nearly all of the artists we played in our regular album rock format. Though we did play a large number of compatible top 40 hits from the sixties and early seventies in regular rotation, it was unusual to hear them back-to-back, hour-after-hour on WMMS. From the British Invasion to garage bands from surf to soul - we played it all - except for the wimpy stuff like the Carpenters, Helen Reddy, and Bobby Sherman

CGC: The FCC has shut down a pirate station operating at 106.1 FM in SAN DIEGO