Chicago’s WXRT celebrates 40 years serving up an increasingly rare format
It’s an increasingly rare thing to find a station that has maintained its format (and call letters) for more than a decade, nevermind 40 years. This week Chicago commercial rock station WXRT begins celebrating its fortieth year on air with something called “40 years in 40 days.” Starting Monday, each day the station is highlighting […]
KOZT’s Community-Oriented Approach to Commercial Radio
Over the weekend I was driving around Mendocino County sampling the radio options. A three hour drive north of San Francisco, the region is comprised of coastal towns, mountains, forests, and inland valleys. Mendocino itself is a big tourist destination, with its quaint New England-style inns, restaurants, and charming shops. Further south, Anderson Valley is […]
NPR: mostly white audience produces mostly white teen novels list
There’s controversy at NPR over the service’s latest 100 best-ever teen novels list. 75,220 NPR listeners voted for their favorite young adult novels. The list quickly drew fire for its lack of diversity. “Only two—yes, two—books on the list are written about main characters of color,” noted reading and English teacher Shaker Laurie in a […]
How the Eton Microlink Solar Powered American Red Cross stickered radio changed my life
A birthday present from my best friend, a ‘portable’ radio – the Eton Microlink FR160 Solar-powered radio, with emergency crank power and an American Red Cross sticker of approval – arrived in my life, six weeks ago and has become dear to me. Astonishingly I have found myself listening, more and more, even though I […]
Would you listen to an Apple version of Pandora?
The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple is “in talks” to obtain licenses for what amounts to a Pandora-like streaming music service. All Things Digital says it’s true, or as ATD’s Peter Kafka puts it, “Industry sources I’ve talked to say that’s correct.” I’m sympathetic to this reader comment on the WSJ piece: “Oh great. […]
Glenn Beck: not even Jesus could save me from American Airlines
As talk radio listeners know, Glenn Beck has been on a tirade against American Airlines for two days now (here and here). Beck says an AA staffer was rude to him on first class: “My flight attendant nearly — merely barked the word ‘breakfast’ when he came to me. When others were politely asked if […]
Hole in the bucket? SEC charges radio host with offering “misleading” financial advice
San Diego based radio investment guy Ray Lucia faces Security and Exchange Commission charges that his seminars left attendees with a “false sense of comfort” about his “Buckets of Money” retirement strategy. The SEC complaint Order questions whether Lucia’s schemes are properly “backtested,” which the agency defines as “the process of evaluating a strategy, theory, […]
Bad citizen Pinkett: should Notre Dame radio have suspended him?
I have to admit that the following observation, offered by Notre Dame radio analyst Allen Pinkett, got my attention. “I’ve always felt like, to have a successful team, you gotta have a few bad citizens on the team,” the former star running back told The McNeil and Spiegel Show last week: “I mean, that’s how Ohio […]
One year in, how I learned to like Spotify – a follow-up review.
I can barely believe that it’s been over a year since I wrote my first review of Spotify, which itself came a month after the service debuted in the US. At the time I was most critical of the relative rarity of free Spotify accounts, in addition to a monthly limit of 10 listening hours […]
Android versus Apple iOS: which makes better radio?
As the great patent war between Samsung and Apple continues, I’ve started wondering which mobile operating system is better for radio listening: Apple’s iOS, which runs the iPhone and iPad, or the various Android flavors featured on Samsung devices and many other mobile phones. My tentative answer is that it is a bit of a […]