The Wires (May 1, 2010)

Jay Posner TV/Radio Sports: Run for Roses is fashionable for females in TV audience.

John Maffei: TV/Radio Sports: Woods boosts TV ratings, but his on-course reactions are often vulgar.

Apple sours on Lala. The streaming music service Lala will be shut down May 31. The site was bought by Apple last December and many analysts believe its demise may lead to an iTunes-based streaming service that will compete with radio webcasts and web-only services such as Pandora. Lala amounted to a virtual iPod by allowing users to buy songs for 10 cents and store their music on the companyÆs server.

Harker Research: What do the pundits say about local radio? (Radio) is hilariously obsolete in the digital world. Radio has been thrown out the door. IÆm not so sure how savable radio is. The radio industry is a melting ice cube. (Radio) programming is just not appealing enough. What do listeners say about local radio? Yes, there are new options, but IÆll continue to listen to radio as I do now.

Baxter Bulletin: Many talk radio conservatives scapegoat immigrants to boost ratings. Eric Hogue understands why. "It's easier," he told me. "It produces good entertaining radio. It's kind of an 'us versus them' -- it's lazy talk radio".

Westwood One Primetime NFL Schedule Released: This season's WESTWOOD ONE NFL primetime coverage schedule launches with this year's Hall of Fame Game exhibition between the BENGALS and COWBOYS on AUGUST 8th and includes all SUNDAY, MONDAY, and THURSDAY night games for the season. The network will feature five games with the SUPER BOWL champion SAINTS, seven with the COWBOYS, and nine with either the GIANTS or JETS, including the JETS' opening game at the new MEADOWLANDS stadium in NEW JERSEY on SEPTEMBER 13th, SUNDAY night games are subject to the league's "flex scheduling" changes.

The Wires (Apr 30, 2010)

Radio World: AM Daytimers Need to Begin Service Earlier, Some Say

Inside Music Media: CBS is bringing back contesting to its radio stations in 35 cities nationwide. That's a luxury radio operators could not afford when advertising sales were tanking. Unfortunately, the contesting that is coming back is national in scope. That is -- listeners in 35 markets are competing for the same prizes. In the CBS example, $250,000 in prizes.

The Wires (Apr 29, 2010)

Salem goes mobile. By next month 71 of Salem's radio stations will have both iPhone and BlackBerry mobile applications under a just-announced deal with AirKast. Salem says 57 stations will have mobile apps immediately.

Radio-info: CBS revives "national contesting" with a $250,000 campaign in 35 markets. The contest is customized to the needs of each station, so that at Chicago's country US 99 WUSN it's called "Money Machine", and at oldies KOOL-FM, Phoenix it's the "Quarter Million Moola Giveaway" cued by the Cash Cow "Moo", and at Atlanta's urban V103 it's $10,000 daily in "Luda Cash" - celebrity-hosted by hip-hop's Ludacris. The extensive rules on the US99 site make it very clear that contestants "will be competing with listeners from up to 60 stations in up to 35 radio markets across the U.S." In the early days of national contesting by large companies, the rules weren't always so transparent, leading to confusion. CBS began running the Spring $1,000-a-call weekday contest on Monday, April 12 and will wind it up on Friday, May 14. Several years ago, both CBS and Clear Channel engaged in heavy-duty national contesting, and now there's a new rationale -

Easy access to Internet radio comes to the home TV screen, if you've got Verizon's fiber-to-the-home FiOS. Verizon wants to cooperate with the integration of various forms of media - unlike some other cable/video providers, who "see the Internet as something of a threat", says TVStrategies analyst Steven Hawley in The Hollywood Reporter. Not only can you search for hundreds of Internet radio stations on the TV screen, you can even use a Motorola Droid or HTC Imagio smart phone as a remote control. The Internet radio feature uses Clear Channel's iHeartRadio application as a menu provider and center for search. Though for many subscribers, the new ability to bring up and search YouTube on their bedroom flat-screen may beckon more than tuning in a radio station on a TV set. The added capabilities for FiOS come through the Media Manager utility, which was formerly available only to Verizon customers who subscribe to the Tivo-like DVR service. Now Media Manager can be accessed by anybody who subscribes to Verizon's HD-delivery service on FiOS.

Randy Dotinga: Now hear this: That ain't right. ARTICLE: Let's get this straight from the beginning

Inside Music Media: About the only media company that cannot be robbed blind by cyberpirates is Apple. Think about it. It's damn hard to pirate anything from the iTunes store -- songs, apps, books, software. That is because Apple locked down the exit doors of the Internet and made it virtually impossible for people to steal from Steve Jobs. Not so with record labels whose only security is when they sell songs through iTunes and other protected sites.

The Wires (Apr 28, 2010)

Hear 2.0: Words are important. In fact, words are all-important. Whether we're talking about "classic rock" or "death panels" or "too big to fail," the way we talk about things has much to do with how the public's opinions on those things take shape. Two phrases are often used in association with the additional fees that would be leveled against radio stations to pay for performance rights. They are "performance tax" and "radio tax." Both are great terms - if you're the music industry - and horrible terms - if you're the broadcaster.

The Wires (Apr 27, 2010)

TMZ (which stands for TMZ): Howard Stern's former right hand man -- Jackie "The Joke Man" Martling -- doesn't think the King of All Media will ever leave his radio show -- as long as Howard can breathe

Washington Post: Commentary: Don't tread on radio for record labels' problems -- It's unfortunate that the Internet has destroyed the business model of the record labels. No longer are music fans buying an entire album of songs to get the one track they enjoy. Instead, for a mere 99 cents or $1.29, they can download a single song through iTunes. Record label revenues have been cut in half over the past decade as a result. But that is not the fault of radio, which continues to build and nurture the careers of countless artists through free radio airplay. The record label claim that this legislation is about "fairness to artists" is dubious

Ventura County Star: Silver Strand's Phil Hendrie hosts a unique radio show on which fake guests tangle with real callers

New York Times: Just 19 commercial classical stations remain on the air nationwide, by one count, down from about 50 in the early 1990s. But as ad-supported programmers also decide that the classical format is no longer practical, the music has started to find a new savior. And, to the surprise of many, it is public broadcasting.

Gary Lycan: It's really no surprise to see contemporary hits (or Top 40) KIIS/102.7 FM No. 1 in the new ratings released April 20, but AMP Radio 97.1 FM grabs the headline because it's No. 5 overall ranking gave it the first 4.0 share since the summer of 1992 when 97.1 was KLSX and the home of Howard Stern.