Radio Wires (Mar 26, 2011)

Rock 105's Ashlee Debuts Her Friday Parody. Hear it here.

John Maffei TV/Radio Sports: TUBE TALK: CBS' tourney coverage provides four-most entertainment. ARTICLE: CBS' partnership with Turner Sports was a desperate attempt to keep the NCAA tournament away from ESPN. It was also a rousing success last weekend.

Daily Beast: Katie Couric Leaving CBS Evening News?

BTW (Mar 25, 2011)

The San Diego Aztecs season ended yesterday at 34-3 after losing to U Conn. Way to go players. Thanks for a fun season.

Can We Get Some New Radio Station Formats? (Mar 25, 2011)

Take XTRA Sports 1360. After some four years, they're still trying to sell this format that has virtually no listeners? Yes, AM radio is dying a slow death in this age of so many new choices to listen to such as satellite, iPods, portable mp3 players, and HD Radio on the FM band.

KGB FM's playlist remains stale and boring. Listened on Monday at work. Same old crap they played last year, and the year before, and the year before that, and etc. I guess there's nobody that cares about today's rock and roll music there. KGB will rape your ears aurally with the "hard rock" sounds of Fleetwood Mac, Elton John, and Chicago, sounds popular 40 years ago. It's great to fall asleep to because the station is as exciting as watching a TV reality show.

Rock 105.3 has fallen into hard times. For exciting new hard rock, tune in to newnormalrock.com now. You'll hear so much new hard rock and numetal music that it will keep you working hard and alert. Too bad the programmers at Rock and KGB can't do rock radio right.

FM 94/9's alternative rock format is dull since they fired Mike Halloran. The station sounds like a bore now. Mikey is a right wing wacko preaching all of his bullcrap. They hardly play any good new music anymore. 91X is at least playing some good new music every now and then.

KPRI 102.1's AAA format is so 1990s. Same formula they had since 1996. Basically bland.

Channel 933 and Z90 has improved since last year by playing more power pop dance hits, but C89.5 and Energy 98 playing pure dance are still far better than these two.

New Country 95.7 needs something to top KSON since KSON threw Cliff off a cliff and now.

ESPN 1700, XX Sports 1090, and XTRA Sports 1360 are great stations to listen to when there's play by play sports on. At least 1700 breaks away from ESPN to air brokered financial programming in the middays instead of even more sports talk. XTRA and XX should do the same and air some non-sports-talk progrmaming to break up the monotony when there's nothing exciting in sports to talk about. San Diego is not Chicago. All we have are the Padres, Chargers, Aztecs football and basketball, USD football and basketball, and UCSD doesn't have any sports. Aside of community college and high school football and basketball, there's not much in major sports to talk about. We still don't have a major basketball or hockey team in town because the fans don't care for them. We have just one major baseball and football team. Something's gotta change.

KFMB 760 changed their talk lineup. It remains to be seen whether it can still compete with KOGO, or end up as another sub 1.0 rated AM station like KCBQ and others.

Magic 92.5 plays the same old R&B stuff all the time, but between that and KGB, this station plays better old songs, and gets good ratings. Find some good new R&B songs to play, the ones that don't talk about hoes, hunting for sex, and violence.

Jack FM's variety leaves a lot to be desired. Again, where's the real variety?

Walrus FM gets good ratings, ratings that Sophie 103.7 wish it could have if it did really switch to oldies instead of its pale imitation of Channel 933 format.

Can we get some really new formats in San Diego? Formats that are really new, play mostly new music (not 10 percent new music), and treats radio broadcasting as a Tiffany-level music outlet instead of just another station spewing the same 300 songs and old formats over and over again.

Survey Shows Consumers Interested In New Music, 57% Use Radio To Find It.

Got that radio stations? Play more good new music. That's what people want to hear.

As for old music? Listen to it on the Internet.

Radio Wires (Mar 25, 2011)

Gary Lycan: Power 106's Big Boy has lost size, gained listeners.

Randy Dotinga: NPR's funding comes at too great a cost.

KUSS names Cindy Spicegirl as PD.

Survey Shows Consumers Interested In New Music, 57% Use Radio To Find It.

Other Wires (Mar 25, 2011)

Know the Facts About the New Health Care Law. Note that this piece is sponsored by Consumers Union and may be biased. Reader discretion is advised. Take it with a grain of salt.

After firing Gilbert Gottfried, Aflac needs a new ôduck.ö GottfriedÆs ill-advised Tweets about the natural disaster in Japan cost him the long-running voiceover gig, and now Aflac is holding auditions in New York, L.A., Chicago, Las Vegas, Austin and Atlanta.

U.K. Study Claims Illegal Filesharing Didn't Kill The Music Business. Was file-sharing the cause of a collapse in the recording industry? ARS TECHNICA reports, "Economists say no." The report says, "a paper from the LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS argues that everything 'Big Content' says about file sharing is wrong. In fact, it suggests that file sharing is the future, and that revenue downturns can largely be explained by other forces."

All My Children Not Cancelled (Mar 24, 2011)

So there, but next year, it may not be so lucky. Tune in next year as we revisit the same question. Now on with our regular stuff.

San Diego Aztecs Make Sweet 16 (Mar 24, 2011)

SDN on the Town

Mon, Mar 28th  7:30am-9:30am  Hilton San Diego Bayfront Hotel

The San Diego Cesar E Chavez Commemoration Committee invites you to be a part of Cesar's legacy and join us for the 13th Annual Cesar E. Chavez Memorial Breakfast, which will be held at the San Diego Convention Center on March 28, 2011 from 7:30am-9:30am.

The Memorial Breakfast will highlight the winner of our 13th Annual High School Essay Contest and focus on the youth of San Diego and their commitment to the values of a great American hero.

For ticket information and to learn more about Cesar E. Chavez visit our website at http://sdchavez.org/

Radio Wires (Mar 23, 2011)

Stern sues Sirius XM. Fresh from signing a new contract with Sirius XM Radio, Howard Stern has filed suit filed in New York State Supreme Court against his employer. Stern's production company and agent Don Buchwald claim Sirius failed to pay stock awards they believe are due based on subscriber growth figures. The suit seeks unspecified damages. Stern is under contract with the satcaster through 2015.

Wireless Lobbies Ask FCC to Clear TV From Ch. 51

Radio Insights: A 13 year-old unknown can generate over 33 million YouTube views, but most radio station videos generate views in the hundreds. What does it say about the state of radio and radio morning shows? Can a song with over 33 million YouTube hits be the worst song ever? What if the song is also ranks 45th on iTunes?

AT&T/Verizon Merger (Mar 22, 2011)

AT&T agrees to buy T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom for $39 billion

Wall St. Journal. AT&T Buying T-Mobile

What AT&T-T-Mobile deal could mean for customers. AT&T Inc. has agreed to buy T-Mobile USA for $39 billion, but the deal isn't set to close until a year from now, and it will likely face tough regulatory scrutiny

AT&T Strikes $39 Billion Deal For T-Mobile. Telco Giant Says Union Will Help Resolve Spectrum Shortage In Some Markets

USA Today: AT&T To Buy T-Mobiles

AT&T buys T-Mobile - How do customers feel about that?

All My Children to Be Cancelled? (Updated Mar 22, 2011)

Michael Fairman Soaps: Insider Report: Is ABC about to cancel All My Children? So, what do you think of this possible move, should ABC decide to drop AMC? With OLTL consistently coming in under budget and with slightly better ratings, and clearly the better and more of a cult favorite type of show, and GH still the flagship show of the line-up, it would certainly appear the Pine Valley folks look to be the most troubled. Add to that, the fact they were given a new lease on life by moving to L.A. to lower production costs. If the worst case scenario were to happen, god forbid, and we would lose yet another soap, would you be in favor of saying adios to this one?

TV Week: 'All My Children' at Risk as ABC Appears Poised to Trim Its Lineup of Daytime Dramas.

TV Squad: 'All My Children': Will ABC Cancel the Long-Running Soap?

Pop Eater: AMC Face Cancellation?

New York Post: The End of "Children?"

Zap 2 It: Is AMC Really on Its Way Out? Citing low ratings (recent record lows in daytime's pivotal women 18-49 demographic), Deadline says "AMC" is the likely candidate for cancellation if the network opts to add a new talk show for fall 2011.

Examiner: Susan Lucci begins book tour March 29 for memoir All My Life.

Radio Wires (Mar 22, 2011)

Miami's Party 93.1 Now Streaming

Chicago Time Out: YouTube to inspire new generation of digital media artists at Columbia -- While the big, fat networks and other old-line media were scratching and clawing for their survival, here was an exciting new medium, being forged by the creative talents of artists from around the world and capturing the attention and loyalty of millions of viewers. The contrast between old and new -- and between the past and the future -- struck me as never before .

Radio Insights: Today, most morning shows are like television morning shows without pictures. A little chat, a little news, and the occasional funny story off the web. Is that any way to fire up an audience? Is that the sort of content that will keep people in their cars after they've gotten to work to see how things turn out? No. Absolutely not.

The Secret to Pandora's Unrivaled Internet Radio Success (Mike Agovino - Mashable)