Radio Wires (Mar 5, 2011)

The New Republic: The Decline of Glenn Beck -- Glenn Beck's ratings and reputation are in steep decline: His show has lost more than one million viewers over the course of the past year, falling from an average of 2.9 million in January 2010 to 1.8 million in January 2011. He now ranks fifth among Fox's six weekday talk hosts, trailing lesser-known personalities like Shepard Smith and Bret Baier. Beck's three-hour radio show has been dropped in several major cities, including New York and Philadelphia, and has seen a ratings decline in most other markets -- The Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol has criticized Beck's "rants about the caliphate taking over the Middle East." Conservative Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin called Beck a "ranting extremist," and former Bush administration staffer Pete Wehner wrote for Commentary's website, "If conservatism were ever to hitch its wagon to this self-described rodeo clown, it would collapse as a movement." What happened?

iNetRadio.com Adds Niche Formats. Internet radio site INETRADIO.COM had added what it describes as a "unique selection of music channels that have become scarce on the traditional radio dial." They include Big Band Standards, 50's Rock, Beautiful Music, Blues and both Traditional and Smooth Jazz. "While these formats may not garner enough support in a given broadcast area, they have a significant following throughout the U.S. and around the world,"

The Los Angeles Dodgers Move Their Spanish Broadcasts to KTNQ.

Multichannel News: FCC Votes Unanimously To Launch Retrans Rulemaking. The FCC voted unanimously to propose several changes to its retransmission- consent oversight rules meant to better clarify what bargaining in good faith means, as well as possibly eliminating the syndicated exclusivity and nonduplication rules to give cable operators an alternative source of station programming.

Copyright Office Launches Inquiry Into Phasing Out Compulsory Carriage Licenses.

FCC Retrans Proposal Includes Elimination of Non-Dupe Rule. The Federal Communications Commission this week approved a proposal to reform retransmission rules. The five commissioners voted unanimously in favor of a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking "to consider possible amendments" to current rules governing how TV stations and cable operators hammer out carriage agreements. Among other things, the commission proposes to do away with the network non-duplication and syndication exclusivity rules. This would allow cable operators to carry an out-of-market TV station should an in-market affiliate pull its signal in a retransmission stand-off. Currently, stations can assert non-duplication rights by sending notifications to cable operators within 60 days of a network affiliate agreement. Read more at the link.

Radio Wires (Mar 4, 2011)

John Maffei: Channel 4 ends 12-year agreement to televise CIF title games. For a dozen years, Cox Communications' Channel 4 and the CIF San Diego Section have had a partnership that was beneficial to both sides.

Gary Lycan: Reba Toney was surprised to find out in late February that she's suddenly out of a job as morning co-host on contemporary Christian music station KFSH 95.9 FM "The Fish," but she's wasting no time in finding other streams to swim in + Gary Owens, a long-time personality on KFWB and KMPC, has a long list of credits, but is best known as the announcer on TV's "Laugh-In." You can see Owens in "Best of Laugh-In," 9 p.m. Monday (March 7) on KOCE 50.

Tom Taylor: Rick Dees does a great warmup job for Ken Lowe û and even works in a Ryan Seacrest joke. Rick includes a bit about the South (Nashville) being more friendly than L.A. and observes that you can say almost anything in the South, using the magic phrase, and folks wonÆt take it the wrong way. Like û ôSheÆs gained so much weight, bless her heart.ö Rick reeled in the audience with a tale about supposedly coming to NashvilleÆs Vanderbilt medical facility to have his colonoscopy, and looking at the ôblockageö they found on the video screen. He said the doc kept magnifying the image until they could identify it û and impishly said ôit was Ryan Seacrest.ö Seacrest replaced Dees on Clear ChannelÆs KIIS-FM in Los Angeles, after many years of DeesÆ supremacy in mornings.

Cox South San Diego Reshuffles Its Lineup (Mar 3, 2011)

QAM channel 83.10 has appearred. It's the new location for the TV Guide channel. It's channel 112 on the converter box.

To save electricity costs, we have to do without converter box rentals, which the last time I used one two years ago, added some $30-50 more per month in electric bills, so it's much cheaper to watch TV with a direct cable or antenna hookup, the way it used to be in the good old days of cable TV.

The 10 News channel has disappearred. Probably need a converter box rental to see it again. Ain't gonna happen!

The electronic program guide is on the TV Guide channel 120 as well as the Paid Programming channel 18.

Still no sign of XHDTV's HD channel 49. I can't get its digital channel over the air at all. Also, Cox 118, home of C-SPAN 1, isn't in clear QAM. Neither is digital Cox 74, one of the 4SD channels.

Cox 99 is showing where TV Guide channel moved to. No new channel named yet.

Channel 129 is now the home for KBEH 63 from Los Angeles. Anybody can explain to me why we need this channel?

It says that the NGC channel is on 70, according to the electronic program guide. Must be digital. Can't get it. Not in the clear QAM either.

With my cable bill for basic and expanded going up to some $60 a month, I expect Cox to give us far more basic channels and HD versions of every channel we're paying for in the expanded lineup without a converter box rental. C'mon, Cox. Stop being greedy and give us better service or it's the highway to Dish Network for me.

Radio Wires (Mar 3, 2011)

Randy Dotinga: Low Power Stations Get a Boost. And so, it's come to pass that it's now easier to get into the radio business. That is, if your goal is to reach a small number of listeners in a small area through a 100-watt station. You'll still need tens of millions of dollars if you'd like to buy a powerful radio station and send your messages (and commercials) to hundreds of thousands or millions of people. But a low-powered station can be yours for much less, and the federal government just lifted restrictions that made it challenging to get one.

Chuck Harder: Months of my time and discussions with several constitutional lawyers have brought up many reasons that Performance Rights is Illegal and un-constitutional. I think all would agree that a brain surgeon or heart surgeon has skills beyond playing a musical instrument. Yet they do not get paid royalties after the patient lives, nor does their estate collect royalties for all operations done by the Surgeon after he or she dies. Elvis is a rich man. Dead, but still rich. The Fourteenth Amendment tells us NOT to set up any special classes of people. Yet that is what is happening with PRA.

Premiere's 'Jesus Christ Show' Reaches 50-Affiliate Mark.

Other Wires (Mar 3, 2011)

Verizon Looks To End iPhone's Unlimited Data Plan. Your audience may have grabbed an iPHONE to listen to you online when it became available on VERIZON WIRELESS (NET NEWS 2/10), but CNET reports "unlimited data plans will no longer be available from the new iPHONE carrier."

Bing surpasses Yahoo! as second most popular search engine worldwide.

Radio Wires (Mar 2, 2011)

Tex Meyer relocates from Raleigh to San Diego, as GM for three BCA stations. He'll manage oldies "105.7 The Walrus" XHPRS, San Diego Padres flagship XEPRS (1090) and "1700 ESPN Radio" XEPE. Meyer leaves his gig running Raleigh's WKIX and WKIX-FM next week, to work for Broadcast Company of the Americas CEO Larry Patrick.

Tom Leykis launches a third stream on his IP Radio "New Normal" site - rock. Leykis ("LYE-kiss") sees a void for active rock in markets such as L.A. and New York and he's shooting for the 12-34 male demo with acts like Shinedown, Avenged Sevenfold, Hollywood Undead and Papa Roach. The Leykis dictate is - "no ballads, no female artists, no classic rock, nothing over two years old." Also "uncut and uncensored." He'll re-purpose the current Gary & Dino podcast from his New Normal Network as the "personality midday show" for New Normal Rock

Other Wires (Mar 2, 2011)

Radio Wires (Mar 1, 2011)

Pasadena Star News: Nationally syndicated radio hosts and scholars Dennis Prager, a Jew, and Hugh Hewitt, a Christian, hosted a talk Sunday on the topic of Judaism and Christianity hosted by talk radio station KRLA 870.

San Francisco Chronicle: "Radio is dying because it's inconvenient and limiting," Michael Robertson says. "The content is not interactive, and it's available on only a limited number of devices." The San Diego entrepreneur is taking the wraps off his newest startup, DAR.fm - short for digital audio recorder. It'll be a centralized Web-based "TiVo for radio." Users can go to DAR.fm to search through the programming schedules of about 600 music and talk-radio stations around the country and schedule the site to record up to four hours of any broadcast. The recordings are then deposited into a user's password-protected account that can be accessed from any PC, smart phone or Internet-connected radio.

The third 24/7 music stream from Tom Leykis' New Normal Music Internet service launches tomorrow (3/1) at noon ET/9 a.m. PT. Leykis says that "New Normal Rock" will "fill the Active Rock void or major markets such as Los Angeles and New York." The Gary & Dino Show, currently heard as a podcast will host middays. The station promises "No ballads, No Classic Rock [and] nothing over two years old." newnormalrock.com

Richard Wagoner: KKGO Celebrates 52 Years. All Under Same Owner. Freelance writer Richard Wagoner has penned a piece about the longevity and only 3 formats at KKGO. That's 2 more formats than ownership changes. "Last week marked a major accomplishment: the 52nd anniversary of the day KKGO (105.1 FM) went on the air. No, KKGO wasn't the first FM station to begin broadcasting in Los Angeles; that distinction belongs to KRTH, which began life in August, 1941 as K45LA. KKGO, which launched Feb. 18, 1959 is significant for another landmark reason: It has been owned and operated by the same person since Day One".

All Access: Thou Shalt NOT take photos from another website and post them on their website without permission.

Mexico Signs Off on HD Radio. The Federal Telecommunications Commission of Mexico has given final approval to iBiquity's In-Band On-Channel technology. Regulators say they're happy with how the HD Radio rollout has worked in other parts of the world. As in the U.S., it will be up to station owners if they want to make the switch to digital.

Dodgers Hall Of Famer, Former Expos Radio Voice Duke Snider Dead At 84. He joins Willie and Mickey in the great baseball diamond in the sky. Duke died on Feb 27. Duke Snider followed up a celebrated baseball playing career (centerfield and slugger for the Brooklyn Dodgers, then the Mets and Giants) with 14 years in the radio booth for the Montreal Expos. That was from 1973 to 1986 and during his time as a broadcaster, Snider was elected in 1980 to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Sorry to report that "The Duke of Flatbush" has died at 84.

Targeting YouTube Masses. Perhaps the closest thing you'll find to religious programming on popular video-streaming site Hulu is Dana Carvey's "Church Chat" spoof from Saturday Night Live earlier this month where, dressed in drag as the "Church Lady," he laments the "evil" spate of TV shows currently ruling the airwaves like MTV's 16 and Pregnant and Skins.

Boehner Says Vote To Invalidate Net Rules Could Come In March. House Speaker Says Chamber Will Act Because FCC Has Yet To 'Explain The Need For This Intrusion'. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Sunday the house will act as early as March on a proposal to invalidate the FCC's network neutrality rules. He said the FCC has not been able to give Congress "a straight answer" to "explain the need for this intrusion."

Other Wires (Mar 1, 2011)

With Windows Phone 7, Verizon becomes the carrier to rule them all. Verizon will soon get a Windows Phone 7 device and when it does it will become the only US carrier with smartphones running each of the major smartphone platforms, including iOS, WP7, Android, webOS, and BlackBerry.

What would YOU like to see in Windows 8?