Wiremania (Jan 28, 2012)

Radio Wires

Radio Insight: Comedy Comes To Dallas and “Phoenix”.

Sports Wires

TV COLUMN: HBO documentary on Namath up to usual standard

Sports Business Daily: NBC Sports Network Sees Jump In NHL Viewership As It Increases Game Broadcasts.

Tech Wires

Why 4K TV's are Stupid

How Windows 8 Could Change Your Life – Or Not

TV Wires

Monty Python Members Team Up for Sci-Fi Spoof

NY Daily News: Radio host and soon-to-be “America’s Got Talent” judge Howard Stern will help David Letterman celebrate his 30th anniversary on the air on the Feb. 1 telecast of CBS’ “Late Show”.

Consumer Wires

Chicken Nuggets: How Bad Are They?

Health Insurance Deductibles Doubled in 7 Years, Study Finds

Misc Wires

Amazingly Colorful Homes

UCSD Guardian: Padres and Fox In New Deal? (Jan 27, 2012)

USCD Guardian, written by Javier Armstrong

The San Diego Padres and Fox Regional Sports Networks are planning to announce a deal for a new sports network — Fox Sports San Diego — that will broadcast the 2012 Padres season. Fox Sports San Diego may also cut deals with UCSD, San Diego State, USD, Cal State San Marcos and Point Loma Nazarene. The deal will also give the Padres partial ownership of the network.

The long-term TV deal with Fox Sports is expected to pay the Padres roughly $17 to $22 million per season. The team will receive advertising dollars from the network in exchange for allowing Fox Sports San Diego to broadcast its games exclusively.

Fox Sports Network has hired Senior Vice President of Fox Sports Ohio Henry Ford as president and general manager of the new network. It is currently in talks with the COX Communications Channel 4 studios — outside Petco Park — to use the station facilities.

The team’s previous deal with Cox Communications Channel 4 paid the Padres $11 million per season. Channel 4 San Diego, the Padres’ TV home for the past 15 seasons, confirmed April 21, 2011 that it would not retain the rights to broadcast Padres games in 2012.

Fox Sports San Diego will broadcast through all cable, satellite and telecommunication providers so that the games will be available to a wider audience. The Padres are expected to benefit from the broadcasting revenue earned through the larger audience. Prior to this deal, the Padres HAD been broadcasting through Cox Communication’s Channel 4, which was made available to Cox and Time Warner subscribers, leaving DirectTV, AT&T U-verse and Dish Network without Padres coverage for most of the season.

The network will broadcast other Southern California teams, such as the Los Angeles Clippers and the Anaheim Mighty Ducks, which are normally shown on Fox Sports Prime Ticket. Fox Sports Prime Ticket, a Los Angeles-based Regional Sports Network, can only be viewed in San Diego through AT&T U-verse and Time Warner Cable.

Fox Sports Network is the largest RSN provider in the nation; it broadcasts 66 of the 81 U.S. professional sports teams in MLB, NBA and NHL as well as many college and high school sports teams.

The network is also expected to have interest in the San Diego County Office of Education section sports.

(article taken from Yahoo search cache as the site is down).

Wiremania (Jan 27, 2012)

Radio Wires

Orange County Register: Geraldo Rivera begins his new KABC 790 AM talk show at 10 a.m. Monday. One of his future guests will be actor-comedy talent Cheech Marin.

Radio Insights: Pandora vs. Local Radio: Second is the First Loser.

Motley Fool: Sirius XM Radio knows that the dashboard is getting competitive. It's no longer about overcoming the threat of commercial-saddled terrestrial radio or the limitations of what's in a driver's portable media player or CD case.

Mt. Wilson/L.A. Launches Country Classic Format Online, HD-3. MT. WILSON FM BROADCASTERS, INC., is launching a GO COUNTRY CLASSICS (60s,70s,80s,early 90s) format as a complement to Country KKGO (GO COUNTRY)/LOS ANGELES.

Something funny happening in Dallas radio. Landing its largest market to date, the 24/7 Comedy Network will launch on KKLF, Dallas (1700) beginning February 1, according to the Dallas Observer. Cumulus Media has placed the station in a trust because its Citadel acquisition put it over the ownership limits in the Big D. The CHR-style comedy feed is making a big ratings splash for Cumulus in Kansas City.

Biz Wires

Nintendo predicts first annual loss, lowers earnings forecast

Misc Wires

Shock Over 10th U.S. President’s Grandsons Still Living

Earth like it's never been seen before

Wiremania (Jan 26, 2012)

Radio Wires

Pandora keeps getting bigger in Atlanta among 18 to 34 year olds

Los Angeles Times: Public radio station KPCC hired former Los Angeles Times Editor Russ Stanton as vice president of content, responsible for the station's broadcasts, website and live events

Exclusive Holiday PPM Analysis: New York, Los Angeles And Chicago

Tech Wires

With SOPA And PIPA Dead, Is A New Offering Called OPEN The Answer?

Google's new privacy policy: The good, bad, scary

How the new European data law will affect U.S. companies

TV Wires

An Antenna-Connected Cable Set-Top Still Won't Fly

Sports Wires

NBA lockout? What NBA lockout? Ratings are way up over last year, never mind the missed games

Wiremania (Jan 25, 2012)

Radio Wires

Los Angeles Times: While the end of the "Idol" phenomenon might not be in sight, Ryan Seacrest is savvy enough to be planning a soft landing elsewhere. And "Today" would seem to be on the itinerary if he can manage it. He has signaled his interest in luring other newsmakers on to the radio, including the presidential hopefuls.

The Kane Show Takes Over Mornings At WFLZ

Myke Julius joins Urban AC XHRM/San Diego replacing Kevin "Slow Jammin'" James.

TV Wires

Univision to Have English Captioning, Will Expand to More Channels.

Indians Sue Jay Leno for Religious Joke

Sports Wires

Journal Times: Jim Irwin, 77, who was the radio voice of the Green Bay Packers from 1969 to 1998, has died.

NFL Football Scores Big on Radio

Longtime Philadelphia Sportscaster Andy Musser Dies At 74

Tech Wires

Facebook forces Timeline; tips to hide users' past. Facebook forces users to switch to Timeline, making their pasts more visible.

USA Today: Some file-sharing sites drop the sharing - Caution is spreading among popular file-sharing services known for letting users circulate pirated Hollywood content.

Google Changing Privacy And User Tracking Policy

The death of online piracy: the end of the Internet as we know it

Misc Wires

CBS News: Spectacular solar storm reaches Earth.

Wiremania (Jan 24, 2012)

Radio Wires

Business Wire: Clear Channel Media and Entertainment will add college radio stations to the New iHeartRadio, its free, industry-leading digital radio service beginning later this month.

Research Director: Throughout our history, new competitors have attempted to attract the radio listener. Before these on-line-only music companies, satellite radio was going to destroy our industry. Clearly it has not. We do not want to diminish the potential of these new services.

Radio Ink: Kassof Study Concludes Too Little is Known About HD Radio

Biz Wires

Follow The Media: Global recorded music sales fell about 9% in 2010 after falling 7% in 2009. OK, so digital sales are up 6% - but that's not enough. The problem, again, is piracy. Of all content producers, the music industry faced the digital revolution first. It has been the proverbial canary in the mineshaft. Music executives responded by fighting the Web, consumers and everybody else. The result is unsurprising.

TV Wires

FOX Launching Spanish Language Channel. News Corp., RCN TV Team Up For Spanish-Language B'Cast Net New Corp. and Columbian broadcaster RCN Television are teaming up to create a U.S. Spanish-language Broadcast station to be called MundoFox. Why This Matters: News Corp. is looking to challenge the U.S. Spanish-language dominance of NBCUniversal's Telemundo and Univision. The company is currently finalizing deals in top Hispanic markets and the company expects MundoFox to be carried on stations covering 75% of U.S. households by its launch in the fall. MundoFox plans to be carried on stations covering 75 percent of U.S. households and is finalizing deals in top Hispanic markets across the country, the partners said.

Deadline: Cox Cable Introduces Lower Priced Tier. Cable and satellite companies including Comcast and Time Warner Cable say they have to do something to keep cash-strapped customers from cutting the cord. Cox says that soon all of its markets will offer its TV Economy service tier for about $35 a month, far less than the conventional TV Essential expanded basic package that runs as much as $60. What will it have? Standard definition and HD versions of local broadcasters, shopping channels, C-SPAN, and superstations (WGN and TBS) in addition to a lineup with AMC, Animal Planet, BET, Cartoon Network, CNN, Comedy Central, Discovery, Disney Channel, E!, Food, Fox Nets, Galavision, History Channel, Lifetime, MSNBC, Nickelodeon, TV Guide, TruTV, The Weather Channel, TV Land, and USA. What it won't have? ABC Family, A&E, Bravo, CNBC, ESPN, ESPN2, FX, HGTV, HLN, MTV, regional sports, SyFy, Speed, Spike, TNT, TLC, The Travel Channel, and VH1.

Tech Wires

Yahoo Finance: Pandora Records Local Radio Market Growth -- Full Year 2011 Data Reveals Massive Audience and Time Spent Listening Increases in Top Local Radio Markets

Market Wire: Raditaz has introduced the future of Internet radio, delivering over 14M tracks from the cloud to the web, and to iOS and Android devices. Raditaz is a radical evolution of the Pandora model, with more than 14M songs in its catalog, better discovery, unlimited skips, and location awareness at the heart of the application.

ZD Net: One consequence of a shift away from the traditional PC towards devices such as tablets and smartphones is that the people will need fewer PCs. And PC makers better be prepared, because the entire industry is heading for a collapse

AFP Wire: Global radio experts have approved radio standards that are to usher in a new mobile phone operating system to replace third generation or 3G technology, the International Telecommunication Union announced on Friday.

Officials seize $42 million in MegaUpload assets

MegaUpload embroiled in criminal copyright case (images)

TV technologies that you'll want next

Alert: Spammers actively harvesting emails from Twitter in real-time

TechRepublic: The 10 dumbest tech predictions for 2012

Anonymous attacks major websites CBS, Universal Music, and Vivendi, among others, were brought down by Anonymous DDoS attacks over the weekend. Is Facebook next?

Microsoft Windows 3.x is where it all started for most of us

YouTube Crosses 4 Billion Video Streams a Day

New gesture, voice technology may make remote controls obsolete

SOPA On The Ropes. Smith Appears to Strike Flag on Controversial Bill, Though Not on Antipiracy Effort

Sports Wires

USA Today: NFL TV ratings: Fox scores big with Giants-49ers. AFC Title Game Highest Rated In 18 Years, NFC Game Top Rated In 17 Years The faceoff between the New York Giants and San Francisco 49ers gave Fox a big victory on Sunday with an 18.7 rating/40 share in adults 18-49. An average 50 million people watched Fox throughout the night. Why This Matters: In a year when it was looking like there would be no football at all given the labor strife earlier this year, gridiron action has captivated viewers giving networks boffo ratings all season. Even so, the female-skewed Once Upon a Time on ABC held its own against the NFL and experienced a slight dip in its ratings over the previous week.

Multichannel News: League Nets Try to Get More Out of Games. Channels Fill Between-Contest Roster With Documentaries, Talk Shows

Multichannel News: Red Bull Media House Unveils 'Signature Series' with NBC Sports Group. Franchise Debuts Jan. 21 on Broadcast Network with Ice Cross Downhill World Championship

Epix Sets Heavyweight Boxing Championship Telecasts. Champs Povetkin, Klitschko Brothers To Fight On Consecutive Weekends

Sportsman Channel Crosses 31 Million Subscriber Threshold. Launches, Uprgrades Continue For InterMedia Partners' Property.

Universal Sports Network on the Circuit With Alpine Ski World Cup

Consumer Wires

11 Habits That Will Help You Live to 100

Could This Popular Supplement Be Making You Fat?

6 Diet Mistakes That Make You Fat

10 Things You Should Rent Instead of Buy

5 Social Security Changes Coming in 2012

Science Wires

Sun Blasts Radiation Storm Toward Earth

Strongest solar storm since 2005 hitting Earth

Misc Wires

What Men Want in a Relationship

What Women Want in a Relationship

Video optical illusion wins by a head

Mayan 'prophecy' just one of many. Some fear the end of the world this year, but history is full of failed doomsday forecasts.

The Lunar New Year: Enter the Dragon