Limbaugh continues to bleed advertisers, Media Matters appeals directly to his listeners
On Sunday the Wisconsin-based bath fixture company Kohler announced that it had pulled all of its advertising from the Rush Limbaugh show. This comes almost a month into the fallout from Limbaugh’s on air attack of Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke, whom he called a “slut,” amongst other names, for voicing her support for private […]
Did Ralph the Talking Computer do a Mike Daisey on Harry Shearer?
Following a monologue on the latest developments in Afghanistan and Iran, Harry Shearer had his semi-regular guest, Ralph the Talking Computer, on the March 25 edition of his podcast: Le Show. Looks like Harry thought that he and Ralph needed to talk about journalistic integrity (the chat starts around 10 minutes into the program). One […]
Falling, falling cats, and Radiolab Season 8, Episode 3
A remarkable moment in the annals of cats brought me to an excellent episode of Radiolab this week. First the cat story. US News and World Report says that Sugar the Cat, a resident of a high rise apartment in Boston, decided to trip the light fantastic on Wednesday. The fluffy white feline stumbled from […]
Reactions to the FCC’s LPFM ruling
I was talking with my pal John Anderson earlier today about how relatively muted the reaction is to the FCC’s LPFM decision on Monday. We did get a statement from Prometheus Radio Project pretty quickly. But even today, three days later, there’s only a handful of hits on a google news search. Perhaps the news […]
Progressives scratch heads over Pacifica radio hire of Jackson Lewis
The KPFA Worker website says that the Pacifica Foundation has retained the law firm of Jackson Lewis to manage some of its legal affairs. The foundation owns listener supported station KPFA in Berkeley, and four similar non-commercial stations in Los Angeles, New York, Washington, D.C. and Houston. “We see the entry of Jackson Lewis as […]
FCC acts to preserve space for new low power community radio stations
A couple days ahead of its March open meeting, on Monday the Federal Communications Commission released a two orders addressing the implementation of the Local Community Radio Act to bring more low-power FM community radio stations to the nation’s airwaves [press release PDF]. Most significantly, the FCC has decided to prioritize the establishment of LPFM […]
WASU Wins 2012 mtvU College Radio Woodie Award
At SXSW last week mtvU held its Woodie Awards, recognizing artists popular with the college audience. The College Radio Woodie Award was given to FM radio station WASU at Appalachian State University (Boone, North Carolina) based on results of online voting. According to the WASU website, “MTV called to say out of all the college […]
Jazz radio history: L.A. Theater Works does Dinah Washington
Interesting jazz radio stuff all around the ‘Net this weekend: First, L.A. Theater Works has a great radio portrait of Dinah Washington. Starts out with Washington famously refusing to leave the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas in 1959 (she didn’t have a white escort), and moves on from there: “Miss Washington, if you choose to […]
This American Life: excerpts from the Mike Daisey program retraction
As everybody on the blogosphere now knows, This American Life has retracted its radio version of Mike Daisey’s dramatic recreation of his visit to an Apple iPhone factory in China. “Daisey lied to me and to This American Life producer Brian Reed during the fact checking we did on the story, before it was broadcast,” […]
The FBI’s radio files: a quick guide
If you are a radio history buff like me, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s records vault website is a treasure trove of fun stuff. Over the years, the FBI has kept track of various radio celebrities (often for dubious reasons), and also monitored radio broadcasts on a regular basis. Obviously everything in these files should […]