RadioGazette

Sirius Disorder R.I.P.

2008-11-17T13:01:00.014-05:00

First of all, I have to say that I feel honored that this blog has been used as something of a gathering place for fellow Sirius Disorder junkies, as we stand together in mourning. Yes, the best radio channel on Sirius is now a memory. Damn. (My previous post on SD, "No Static at All", has turned into something of a public memorial - surprisingly so, I thought, until I realized that this aging post turns up 7th in Google search when one searches for SD!)

To me the epitome of what made Disorder such a genius channel was David Johansen's Mansion of Fun, which segued from salsa to opera to punk to bubblegum to field hollers and everything sounded fantastic. It was like the world's best iPod on shuffle, except there was a mad genius at the helm, a glam-rock Vincent Price-meets-Jean Shepherd.

Sirius Disorder, the station, is gone. In my previous post, I wrote "...a radio station that good has to be doomed... doesn't it?" I was right. Not that that was any great prediction - Nostradamus I'm not.

Second of all, I have been remiss is not maintaining this blog. Ummm. This blogging thing takes alot of work! Ummm. And I got a job promotion last year - thank God for that, in this economy, it's a blessing to be in the biz, bla bla bla - and my life has gotten so much more hectic. I know, excuses, excuses. I still listen to tons more of radio than I do watch TV, and I still think there's a goodly amount of good radio around that deserves to be known and celebrated. This blog needs to be, more than ever. And the messages we've been getting about the passge of Disorder just make that all the more obvious.

So it's been nagging me that I should make a new post, something about the passing Sirius Disorder, a uniquely sublime pleasure. And, this morning, I got an excuse: a Sirius XM press release. A bit of good news, that all is not lost, sorta: Meg Griffin's own show, now called Disorder, will debut on Monday December 1; it will air all afternoon, every weekday, on The Loft (SIRIUS channel 29, XM channel 50) between 12-6 pm ET. It will also air Sundays from 3- 6 pm ET.

That means The Loft will now feature Lou Reed’s New York Shuffle, Vin Scelsa’s Idiot’s Delight, Dave Marsh’s Kick Out the Jams, David Johansen’s Mansion of Fun, and Mixed Bag Radio with Pete Fornatale - joining other shows that sound pretty worthy (The Loft Sessions, In Spite Of All The Danger, Your Roots Are Showing, From The Living Room To The Loft).

So - it could be worse. No? (But I miss Ghosty!)

Small-Town AM Radio lives on

2007-12-30T11:56:00.000-05:00

Here's a cool New York Times article about an old-school AM 1000-watt radio station out on the East End of Long Island, WRIV - a station so hip, it doesn't even have it's own home page nor much of any kind of authorized presence on the Web! Whee! I found out about the story via a posting on the ever-lively New York Radio Message Board (the mecca of all Internet radio message boards) about "small-town stations" like this.

The posting refers to the ongoing debate at the NYRMB about such stations: are they viable anymore in this automated'n'consolidated era of radio? Are such stations just throwbacks, unprofitable labors of love, Don Quixote-like in their stubborn local focus, tiny ratings and aging audience?

The NYRMB debate mentioned is specifically about a local Nanuet station, WRCR 1300, of which I'm a fan; I especially like their Morning Drive Show, 6AM - 11AM weekdays with Steve Possell and Sophia Salis, who are both incredibly knowledgable and opinionated about Rockland County (what a concept! A broadcast station that cares a lot about its community!) I listen to them alot - OK, maybe not alot, sometimes - as I drive Route 59, doing errands and schlepping to work. Unfortunately, their signal bombs out shortly after I get onto the Palisades Parkway southbound.

Thinking about small-town stations very much brings me back to happy memories of my beloved hometown 500 watt AM station, Elizabeth New Jersey 's WJDM 1530. (Their swank headquarters, a floor up from the Woolworth's and Fabco Shoes on Broad Street and a half-a-block from the Union County Courthouse, can be seen above in a 70s/80s-era photo.) Sadly, this low-wattage-yet-lovable station is now gone, swallowed whole in a bewildering series of radio-biz moves: it first switched to the ill-fated Radio Aahs format in 1996, which got railroaded by Radio Disney, then it sorta morphed into WWRU, which is a Spanish station owned by Multicultural Radio Broadcasting that a) moved the JDM/RRU offices to Jersey City - or is it really 449 Broadway in Manhattan? - and b) moved its signal to the high-end-of-the-radio-dial frequency of 1660 with an increased signal of 10000 watts. Although the station is still called WJDM in Elizabeth? Is it the same Spanish-language programming heard on both 1530 and 1660? I can't quite figure it out... What I do know is that the local station, which played top 40 with a lot of local news, local talk and weather, is no longer with us.

Thanks to my mom, who worked at the courthouse at the time (for the Union County Board of Freeholders), I got to know WJDM's Dave Frankel, who also did news for the Elizabeth cable TV station that I volunteered at (Channel 12), and I got to hang out there a little bit - they had a Gates master control board that looked like this. They covered the Union County beat pretty well (again, what a concept - a station that cares about its local community). Also on the station for awhile was morning dj Art Rooney, who was better known as Looney Skip Rooney on the Uncle Floyd show, and for whom's Channel 12 black-and-white slapstick TV show I used to run a boom mike for...

10 Years of the New York Radio Message Board!

2007-12-06T13:07:00.000-05:00

A hearty congratulations go out to Allan Sniffen, who has been running the indispensible New York Radio Message Board for 10 years now! It all started when Allan, a Westchester-based obsessive radio fan (and dentist; Opie and Anthony dubbed him "The Radio Dentist", a name I'm not sure he likes) started a message board as an add-on to his phenomenal WABC Musicradio 77 site. The board, originally an innocent place for ruminations on playlists and other 77-nostalgia-stuff, became the essential hang-out and discussion place for the New York radio "scene". Read the board religiously, like I do - it's addictive! - and you'll gain a pretty good sense of the state of radio now, in all it's goodness, badness and ugliness.

I think Allan can go overboard in his defenses of the status quo of the radio industry; his regular cry of "follow the money!", explaining away the constant, crappy brain-dead/bottom-line business decisions that insure crappy commercial radio, is certainly realistic - but it's also depressing as hell and further-discussion-squelching. And his disdain for satellite radio seems like it will never go away. But the guy works tirelessly at providing a steady and safe place for the intelligent discussion of radio, and his opinions are often spot-on, like his current critiques of the Imus show. (He posted today that there was nothing he disagreed with with this John Mainelli column, and I'd have to say I agree with the both of them.)

Allan also has a regular podcast with groovy top-40 jingles, an insistent delivery and a pithy summation of his take on the radio scene. (Wish I could still get it via the iTunes store.) He's a good guy - pun semi-intended - and has been encouraging to me about this very blog, which I'd like to start posting in again. Allan, rock on!

WNYC's new Morning Show, in embryonic form

2007-06-22T08:25:00.000-04:00

Here's a link to the Bryant Park Project, which is the "code name" for the new WNYC show that's being developed.

Actually, I'm not entirely certain if the show is designed for WNYC or if it's an actually NPR show (i.e. national, or at least heard in other towns besides New York). Whatever it is, the blog states the show is being thought out and sort-of tested out at the moment, and I am hoping for the best. Maybe they'll link to my blog. Maybe I can help with the show as an interactive blogger or something. We'll see.

Meanwhile, I am looking forward to this weekend's Radio Lab, which airs today at 3 PM on 93.9 FM and 2 PM on AM 820 (the best radio station in the world), and then again this Sunday at 6PM on 93.9 FM. Just the name alone turns me on: Radio Lab. Mmmmm.

WABC Rewinds on Memorial Day!

2007-05-25T15:36:00.000-04:00

Thankfully taking a break from all the rightie rhetoric, this Monday May 28th - Memorial Day - WABC (770 AM) presents "WABC Rewound" for the 8th straight year. From 6 am to 6pm, the station presents old airchecks from its storied past... here's the schedule:

6AM – Ross & Wilson, Ron Lundy, Johnny Donovan from 1981
7AM - Top 100 of '67 Part 1 – Bruce Morrow/Chuck Leonard
8AM - Harry Harrison from 1976
9AM – Dan Ingram composite from 1966 & 1978
10AM – Roby Young from 1968
11AM - George Michael from 1974 Part 1
NOON - Top 100 of '67 Part 2 - Chuck Leonard/Charlie Greer
1PM - George Michael from 1974 Part 2
2PM - Dan Ingram from 1973
3PM - Dan Ingram from 1975 Part 1
4PM - Dan Ingram from 1975 Part 2
5PM – Bruce Morrow/Chuck Leonard from 1974

After 6pm on Monday, Mark Simone presents a talk show to wrap up the day's events. (Although there's something kinda depressing about Mark Simone... he does dj the great Saturday night oldies show... but I can't stand his right-wing hoo-ha.)

(Which is not to say I'm anti-right wing radio - I like it when it's done well, or at least entertainingly.)

Anyways, you can hear a Johnny Donovan preview of the special here (on Real Audio) or here (in mp3). I will most definitely be recording this on my Radio YourWay!

Speaking of WABC's storied past, it was almost exactly 25 years ago that the station switched over from Top 40 radio to all-talk. If you miss the station like I do, you MUST check out Allan Sniffen's amazingly great tribute site!

80% chance that the merger won't happen

2007-05-25T14:10:00.001-04:00

Things aren't looking swell for the XM Sirius merger, I'm afraid to say.

I want the merger to happen. There's plenty of stuff on XM that I'd love to have access to (like this). A single service where the best of both services is offered would be ideal, and would help satellite radio compete against it's real competitors - i.e. not each other, but terrestrial radio and iPods. Keeping the companies battling each other for that early-adaptor audience just hurts the medium, at a time when the medium is struggling to stay afloat.

OK, I can't stand it

2007-05-24T15:14:00.000-04:00

There's just so much going on right now. Artie Lange announced he is going to take a 6-month break off of the Howard Stern show in January. Free-FM is switching back to "K-Rock" at 5 o'clock today, with Opie and Anthony still on in the mornings (but for how long?) Several "shock jock" personalities have been chased off the airwaves because of inopportune statements. XM and Sirius are trying to merge - not too successfully at the moment, it seems.

Meanwhile, I am the proud owner of both a Sirius Stilletto and a Radio YourWay - two groovy gadgets that serve as "Radio TiVos". So I can listen to all kindsa radio on my schedule. And fast forward past the stuff I don't like.

For various reasons, I'm a radio nut. So I'm gonna start up this blog again.

"Come Back, Mr. DJ...."

2006-11-26T10:13:00.000-05:00

A nice article from Forbes.com about an increasingly endangered species: the "Disc Jockey". One sadly typical sign o' the times is that Clear Channel 's been getting rid of many of it's New York DJs (WLTW'S Bill Buchner and JJ Kennedy, for instance: JJ's evening show, which always did just fine in the ratings, has been replaced by the syndicated Delilah, who has to be heard to be believed... oy!)

Yes!

2006-06-15T13:15:00.000-04:00

Now this is pretty cool: click on this link to go to YES.net, and then pop in the call letters of a radio station - any radio station you can think of in the U.S. - and you'll find out what song that station is playing right now (!!), as well as it's Top 10 or Top 100. F'rinstance, Z100's current top 10 - at this exact moment, as I write this, June 15 2006 at 1:19 pm, is:

1. Fort Minor, “Where’d You Go”
2. Shakira, “Hips Don’t Lie”
3. Nick Lachey, “What’s Left of Me”
4. Panic! At the Disco, “I Write Sins Not Tragedies”
5. Cassie, “Me & U”
6. Nelly Furtado, “Promiscuous”
7. Ashley Parker Angel, “Let U Go”
8. Chamillionaire, “Ridin'”
9. The Fray, “Over My Head”
10. Rihanna, “Unfaithful”

Compare and contrast to the always-tasteful WFUV, which seems to be having an Elvis C./Allen T. moment:

1. Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint, “River In Reverse”
2. Mason Jennings, “Be Here Now”
3. Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint, “Tears”
4. Alejandro Escovedo, “Arizona”
5. Bruce Springsteen, “Jacob’s Ladder”
6. Paul Simon, “Outrageous”
7. Beth Orton, “Heartland Truckstop”
8. Mark Knopfler & Emmylou Harris, “This Is Us”
9. Josh Ritter, “Wolves”
10. Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint, “On The Way Down”

And then compare and contrast to the the crazy, lovable and irascible folks at 'FMU!

1. Andy Williams, "Can't Get Used to Losing You"
2. Celtic Frost, "Progeny"
3. Queen, "Liar"
4. Outkast, "Pink & Blue"
5. Led Zeppelin, "Out On The Tiles"
6. Nortec Collective, "Olvidela Compa"
7. The Flirtations, "Nothing But A Heartache"
8. Manu Dibango, "Ceddo End Title"
9. VHS or Beta, "Solid Gold"
10. Boom Bap Project, "Sho Shot"

Impressive!

John Batchelor: To Love, Hate, or Both?

2006-06-14T11:13:00.000-04:00

Maybe I should turn my blog into a NY Radio Message Board fanpage. I'm greatly enjoying the current discussions about The Dumbing Down Of Radio and Broadway Bill Lee's Challenge and various thoughts about the non-viability of HD Radio. (Although "enjoying" might not be the right word - sometimes - OK, often - the topics can be depressing. But this is the kind of stuff that intrigues me... am I weird?)

Meanwhile, the Board inspired me to write about one of my favorite radio shows - The John Batchelor Show, which airs on 770 WABC every weeknight from 10 PM to 1 AM. (The next few paragraphs of this post were originally written for the Board.) I am a regular listener partially because there's nothing else interesting on the radio at that time of night - sometimes I'm in the mood for Lionel, often I'm not - and because I'm almost always in the car at that time, driving home to Harrington Park on my never-ending commute. And the weirdness of John's show is appropriate for my usual frame of mind at that time of night ("Well? How Did I Get Here?")

I have a love/hate relationship with this show, but - I do listen to it quite a bit, and will sorely miss it if it disappears. I find John's broadcast odd, yet compelling. There's no other place on the radio - hell, in the media in general - that maintains that we're-still-in-the-middle-of-9/11 vibe that John's show has. (I mean, the show still signs off with Kate Smith singing "God Bless America"!) While I do not share John's relentless trust in and love of the wisdom of his regulars (Malcolm Hoenlein? John Loftus? Who are these mooks?), there's something both frightening yet endearingly cheesy about the show - very old-fashioned, as if Walter Winchell had come back to life, dropped the gossip, and went full-hog on international paranoia.

John's doomy music beds (cribbed from movie soundtracks) go on faaaaar too long; John is cluelessly in love with his own voice and with his fave big words, foreign capitols and pet phrases ("news cycle"... "why don't you give us a timeline"... etc.) - he parrots stuff designed to make him sound like he has insider information, but he comes off more like an excited, naive, and right-wing amateur, if not an Inspector Clouseau.

Yet I find his flamboyant voice and paranoid tone fun and reassuring to listen to as I'm dropping off to sleep. It's an Art Bell-like pleasure; voices like that are a reminder of the weird old America we live in.

And I also think he may be doing a service by keeping 9/11 alive, and by relentlessly bringing up the dangers of the big scary ol' world, because it IS scary and big, and much of it is up to no good, in terms of the eternal vigilance this society needs to (possibly) survive into this century...

David Hinckley writes...

2006-06-12T10:26:00.000-04:00

Here's another example of why David Hinckley rules; a lively Monday-morning column that sums up the of-the-moment NY Radio News, relying (as well he should) on the always-happening New York Radio Message Board. Today he writes about the unseemly firing of KTU's Broadway Bill Lee, not to mention "The Conversation", a three-week series about New York City on 820 WNYC-AM that kicks off tonight at 8. I'll be listening...

(In case you're wondering, I am gently dipping my toe back into the waters of producing this darn blog. Posts for the time being are pretty much going to be short and linking to other pages... but that's... OK.)

Lee Abrams speaks

2006-06-11T10:30:00.000-04:00

He is one of the most notorius figures in modern radio history. He created the radio format known as AOR (album-oriented rock) back in the early '70s, which sort of decimated the era of the individualist/free-form radio jock, helping to create "cookie-cutter" radio from coast-to-coast.

Anyways, here's a pretty cool interview with Lee Abrams, who's now at XM. It's a good round-up of the state of terrestrial radio vs. satellite (of course he favors one side over the other)...

Turn On Your Radio, Baby, I'm Gone (for a bit)

2006-04-07T10:48:00.000-04:00

Hey gang. If it hasn't been too painfully obvious yet, I have put this blog on hiatus until further notice: another pressing personal project is keeping me too busy at the moment to do this lovely website/idea justice. If you want me to get back to work on this sooner rather than later, drop me a note at arack1@yahoo.com, and let's talk!

Meanwhile, I hope the Harry Nillson estate doesn't mind if I quote one of my favorite songs of his:

I don't know where life's goin'
But soon it will be gone
I hope the wind that's blowin'
Helps me carry on
Turn on your radio baby
Baby, listen to my song
And turn on your night light baby
Baby I'm gone

What to listen to this weekend (a best-of)

2006-03-17T10:56:00.000-05:00

OK, I've been lax lately. (More like gone.) Getting my Sirius radio broke and my car broken into/iPod stolen - is God telling me something? Anyway, I will be back - I promise - better than ever, but first let me propose to you a weekend full of wonderful radio listening, as I present a specially-chosen best-of my weekend radio recommendations... enjoy - and Happy St. Patricks Day!

Tomorrow (Saturday) at 1:30 PM, tune into WQXR 96.3, grab a comfortable (preferably plush) seat, and take in Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky's Mazeppa as part of the 75th Anniversary season (!!) of the longest-running classical music radio series in the world - The Metropolitan Opera's International Radio Broadcast. Tomorrow's show features conductor Valery Gergiev leading a cast featuring Olga Guryakova as Maria, Larissa Diadkova as Lyubov, Oleg Balashov as Andrei, Nikolai Putlin as Mazeppa, and Paata Burchuladze as Kotschubey in this kick-ass adaptation of Pushkin’s tragic poem Poltava. And don't miss the Opera Quiz during the second intermission!
Straight from the horse's mouth... and then from the donkey's! Saturday at 2:50 pm on C-SPAN Radio, take a break from Mazeppa to listen to President George W. Bush's Weekly Radio Address... which is then immediately followed up by a response by a representative of the Democratic Party. C-SPAN Radio can be heard on both XM and Sirius satellite radio, and can also be heard on the Internet via RealAudio or Windows Media Player.
Bob Edwards, the erudite and calm-voiced former host of NPR's "Morning Edition" (who was rudely pushed out of the gig in 2004 for sounding "too old", and was dissed for being not willing to "embarass himself" enough in Sarah Vowell's 1995 book Radio On), can now be heard again - unembarrassed as ever - on the airwaves of WNYC-FM 93.9 tomorrow (Saturday) at 4 PM. (It's actually his regular XM Weekend show that's being brought to terrestrial radio via PRI.)
As I've mentioned before, you can indulge in the glorious sound of classic pop on AM Radio every Saturday Night by tuning in Saturday Night Oldies with Mark Simone on 770 WABC between 6-10 pm (Dan Ingram's guest spot a couple of weekends ago was awesome)... or if you crave more of a pre-WWII vibe, don't miss Danny Stiles' incredible Big Band Sounds show on WNYC-AM 820 AM between 8 and 10pm.
More Saturday night nostalgia (and I'm not even gonna mention A Prairie Home Companion* here!): Do you remember the deejay Paco? I do. From the early, classic days of WKTU? No? Then you weren't living in the NY metropolitan area in 1978-1980. 'Cause back then, 'KTU was a MONSTER. KTU was IT. (Yo.) It ruled New York's airwaves, because it played DISCO DISCO DISCO nonstop. Anyway: if you miss that era (and I do, said the blog writer semi-embarrassedly), you'll be delighted to hear the legendary Paco - a very cool dj with a kind, fatherly, and still-heavily-Spanish-accented voice - bringing it all home every Saturday night on WNEW 102.7 between 7 and 10 pm. Tomorrow, he's going to be doing his warm-hearted and nostalgic show from the POSH Ultra Lounge in the Garden City Hotel in Long Island (disco's home turf). Whoop whoop!
I've found WABC 770's Sunday morning program Religion On the Line, which is the station's longest-running show (!) and can be heard between 7 and 10 am every Sunday, to be thoughtful, gentle and reassuring... that's probably because it's hosted by two pleasantly-voiced religious guys who get along incredibly well, Father Paul Keenan (Director of the NY Archdiocese's Radio Ministry) and Rabbi Joseph Potasnik.
Tomorrow (Sunday) at 10AM on WNYC-FM 93.9, you can hear On The Media, the consistently excellent NPR show on the weekly goings-on of news media; then, right after OTM, you'll not want to miss the always-witty and fun Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me - the closest thing to an old-school radio quiz show you'll currently find on the air - in its new-ish timeslot of Sundays from 11am-noon. You can count on this weekend's broadcast to have a mention or three of Jessica Simpson's "snubbing" of George W. (I wonder if the President will address this dis in his Presidential Radio Address?) This show can also be heard, in a more timely fashion, Saturday at 1 PM on the AM side of WNYC - 820 AM.
Although they don't play nearly as much classic salsa as they used to (and too much reggaetron!), Polito Vega's Sunday afternoon institution, Salsa con Polito, still plays much great stuff - the kind of intoxicating stuff you hear booming out from the streets on New York City weekends - between 12 Noon and 8pm on La Mega 97.9. (Click here for a cool article about the history of Latin music on American radio.)
Sunday at Noon: Arthur's back! After leaving WOR in a huff in 1996 after the station hired right-wing "hate-mongerer" Bob Grant - who had himself just been fired from WABC - Arthur Frommer returned three weeks ago to WOR 710 for his weekly program The Travel Show, which airs from 12-2pm. This return has surely happened because Grant recently has been let go from the station, leaving the coast clear for Arthur's comeback. Frommer's show is low-key yet wonderful, full of sane and smart travel advice, with a nice Sunday in New York vibe, featuring more than a few amazing travel bargains... making me think more of the abundance of life, and of how I forget there's a lot of great opportunities out there, opportunities to live a reasonably good and adventurous and occasionally relaxing life, opportunities I've ignored year after year... but not anymore, if I listen to Arthur closely enough!
Speaking of the abundance of life: in the second hour of Arthur's show, during his commercial breaks, start tuning over to nearby WABC 770 to catch The Dave Ramsey Show, which can be heard every Sunday between 1 and 4 pm. It took me a little while to get used to, but I now think that Dave's show is a great companion of Arthur's, in that it can help you afford the nirvana-like vacations Arthur presents. Dave spreads an encouraging but no-nonsense gospel of fiscal responsibility, and talks to caller after caller about resolving credit card debt and getting on with life in an adult manner... maybe with a bit of a red-state vibe, but hey... that's OK sometimes too. It's like DA without all the meetings!
The classic This American Life now airs Sundays from 4-5pm; this week's theme is "Superpowers". Dry, articulate humor rules! (This show can also be heard on the AM side on Saturday at 11 AM.)
Now, I can't tell you much about the other new-time-slotted WNYC-FM program, The No Show, hosted by Steve Post (which now can be heard Sundays from 6-7pm). Why? Because I haven't heard it yet, sorry. (I don't know this weekend's topic either.) But WNYC's website intriguingly states that "...it was during overnights on WBAI during the 1970’s that Post’s acid wit, droll presentation and dead-of-night, anti-establishment tirades earned him a strong cult following amongst New York radio aficionados." Sounds very cool. I will listen and report back... soon!

* speaking of APHC, click here for a preview of the new Robert Altman movie... cool!

Running Down the Devil...

2006-03-10T09:34:00.000-05:00

Sorry about the slowness of new posts. The last couple of weeks have been a personal challenge, to be sure.

Anyway, click here for crazy David Lee Roth news. I'd advise tuning into the show now, because it's actually rather entertaining these days, with all the on-air agita. There is much speculation on the New York Radio Message Board that Dave will shortly be replaced by Opie and Anthony, which will be quite the thing, as those guys are currently on XM Radio.

As for me, I've been listening alot to Star and Buc Wild - I think the show's quite compelling and that Star is quite a talent, certainly the only guy currently on the air with Stern-like talents (i.e. a daddy-figure with a cynical outlook and "shocking" opinions.) I will post more in-depth stuff about that show shortly. I hope.

Ornette all day tomorrow... and all day Friday: Bix!

2006-03-08T09:05:00.000-05:00

It's been a long-standing tradition at WKCR 89.9 to celebrate the birthdays of jazz greats by dedicating their entire broadcast day to the playing of their music; that is why, starting at midnight tonight and through all day tomorrow (Thursday), 'KCR will be playing nothing but Ornette Coleman (left, born March 9, 1930) for 24 hours; and then on Friday, again starting at midnight, Columbia U's station plays nothin' but Bix Beiderbecke (right, born March 10, 1903, died August 7, 1931). And the amazing Phil Schaap, whose knowledge and love of jazz is truly staggering, will preside over much of these days (usually from somewhere in the morning into the afternoon), providing info and trivia and alternate takes and wisdom and all the astonishingly detailed Phil Schaap-stuff he usually provides. WKCR is the only station that could and would do this, and god bless 'em - their Ray Baretto day, for instance, was wonderful and eye-opening. (Question: Ornette has recorded dozens of albums, but how much recorded Bix is out there? Not much... so I'm curious as to how his day will play out.)

Sarah Vowell's "Radio On": a book review, in pieces

2006-03-07T12:05:00.000-05:00

I am in the process of reading Sarah Vowell's 1996 book Radio On, and I'll be reviewing it as I continue to read it (I'm on page 69). For starters, what this book is - a year-long diary of radio-listening, with commentaries on different stations and shows heard from across the country - is very very close to what I'd like to blog to be like. Plus this, from her intro:

"While American magazines and newspapers employ armies of critics to dissect the content and influence of television, movies, art, and music, radio is rarely covered. Its presence is intimated with skeletal listings that can't begin to hint at the medium's diversity. Glancing at the 'Radio Highlights' section of any metropolitan daily, you'd think that all we hear is Puccini or public policy - Rush Limbaugh was never born and Kurt Cobain never died."

(Note: Sarah talks about Kurt Cobain in this book. A lot. Too much, actually. Yeah, it was written the year after he died, and he was talented and important and his suicide was a shame, but she quotes him, mourns him, idolizes him, tries to be his Lester Bangs. Unfortunately, I've read far too much about poor ol' Kurdt so far, and I fear there's lots more about him to come.)

But I also very much like this pull quote that Sarah got from Susan Douglas's* Where The Girls Are:

"If enough people think studying the media is a waste of time, then the media themselves can seem less influential than they really are. Then they get off the hook for doing what they do best: promoting a white, upper-middle-class, male view of the world that urges the rest of us to sit passively on our sofas and fantasize about consumer goods while they handle the important stuff, like the economy, the ernvironment, or child care."

Umm. I think she's got a point - does that make me a feminazi? (uh oh) - especially in regards to the dangers of under-thinking about the media, especially radio, a medium so influential yet barely thought about, a medium that works on its listeners is such a semi-conscious, under-the-skin, poorly understood way.

So far, I have to say that I'm finding much of Sarah's commentary underwhelming and adolescent, although she has a healthy mistrust of NPR (funny that she's beome such a goddess of public radio since the book's publication). I can definitely say this: this book would work MUCH better as a blog. Still, I'm very glad she wrote it - there's much about it I find fascinating and valuable, especially as a wanna-be radio critic.

* author of the indispensible Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination

Yo La Tengo; Woe La iPod

2006-03-06T15:25:00.000-05:00

Oy... sorry I haven't been posting as much (as much as I was, and as much as I want to). Did I mention that somebody broke into my car last week to steal my iPod??!! (sob) A mere couple of days after I got the iPod to work with RadioTime??! The last week has made my never-ending commute even more hellish and exhausting. So: again, I apologize. It's a month or so into my blog's short life, and the two most important pieces of electronic equipment that I was relying on and being wildly inspired by - my Sirius radio and my iPod - are now gone or broken. Aaargh. I really want to get the Radio YourWay as a stopgap measure, but I simply can't afford it at the moment. Maybe after I get my tax refund?

Anyway... I would like to promote Yo La Tengo's annual covers-for-pledges throwdown on WFMU 91.1. It's gonna happen tomorrow (Tuesday) at 8 pm on Tom Scharpling's show, and the band will play - or attempt to play - any request. Which is quite cool, and I would be more psyched about it if I wasn't so depressed. (Poor me.)

Troubles for Air America?

2006-03-05T14:58:00.000-05:00

According to this right-wing radio blogger, Air America may soon have its programming off of WLIB 1190 (a station owned by Inner City Broadcasting that leases its air time to the network). This would not be a good thing, though there's a chance the programming could shift to WSNR 620, a station that's probably up for sale from its owner, The Sporting News. But WSNR's signal is not as good as WLIB's.

More show-shifting at WNYC, starting tomorrow...

2006-03-05T14:47:00.000-05:00

As discussed in a previous post, there is more "show-shifting" going on at WNYC, this time on the AM side - 820 on your dial - starting tomorrow, as of Monday March 6:

The BBC World Service will be simulcast on both the FM and AM stations from 9-10am weekday mornings. (Right now, "News and Notes with Ed Gordon" is heard during this timeslot.) If you're not familiar with the Service, it's a rather excellent source of international news, with smart and deep reportage, always presented in clipped, well-trained English tones. Here's an interesting guide on how to properly write news copy for the Beeb, and an informal behind-the-scenes look at the radio newsroom. (You can also hear plenty of BBC World Service on WNYE 91.5 FM, one of New York's more under-rated radio treasures.)
An intriguing and web-friendly PRI show named Open Source, produced by WGBH radio in Boston, makes its New York debut tomorrow (Monday) night at 9pm. It sounds darn intriguing: according to this how-it-works page, a show idea is posted on the show's blog, the idea is discussed via the magic of the Web by you and me and whoever else registers with the show, then the idea and the show and its guest-bookings gets discussed and whatnot, and at some point a show gets aired which we've all "produced". How modern! Check out the website for archived shows, podcasting links, an explanation from the producer, etc. I'll be listening... (Open Source will air Mondays through Thurdsays at 9-10pm on 820 AM; on Friday nights, you'll hear The Tavis Smiley Show in that slot.)
The show that's currently being heard at 9am weekdays, NPR's News and Notes with Ed Gordon, will be moving as of tomorrow (Monday) to the 10-11pm weeknight slot. It's a good show, one that - according to the NPR's PR - "shines a light on some of the most important topics and concerns of interest to African Americans today". (For what it's worth, I rarely think of the show as African-American-centric while listening.) I'm not sure what this move "means" - is this a dis? - especially regarding the fact that its an NPR show that's based in New York City; who knows what kind of behind-the-scenes machinations may be happening here? Is 10 pm a better or worse timeslot for such a thoughtful and worthy show?

What to Listen to this Weekend...

2006-03-03T10:41:00.000-05:00

Of course, you should be listening to WFMU 91.1 all weekend - they are in full-fledged Marathon mode, and the station tends to present the most-entertaining and least-annoying pledge drives I've ever heard. Plus all the deejays will have co-hosts, to make things even more... entertaining, I guess. Plus there's all that swag! Of particular interest will be Station Manager Ken Freedman's mid-Marathon "State of the Station talk and listener phone in" Saturday (tomorrow) at 9 AM. He'll be talking about various station developments - technical, program-related and financial. Call in questions at 201-536-9368 from 9:30-10:00 am, or they can e-mail questions ahead of time at ken@wfmu.org.
Tomorrow (Saturday) night at 10 pm on Air America WLIB 1190: Part 2 of David Bender's fascinating chat with Gore Vidal on Politically Direct. (Meanwhile, feel free to compare and contrast with yesterday's Leonard Lopate segment with Gore's old nemesis Norman Mailer, which you can listen to and/or download here.)
I've found WABC 770's Sunday morning program Religion On the Line, which is the station's longest-running show (!) and can be heard between 7 and 10 am every Sunday, to be thoughtful, gentle and reassuring... that's probably because it's hosted by two pleasantly-voiced religious guys who get along incredibly well, Father Paul Keenan (Director of the NY Archdiocese's Radio Ministry) and Rabbi Joseph Potasnik.
Sunday at Noon: Arthur's back! After leaving WOR in a huff in 1996 after the station hired right-wing "hate-mongerer" Bob Grant - who had himself just been fired from WABC - Arthur Frommer has returned to WOR 710 for his weekly program The Travel Show, which airs from 12-2pm. This return has surely happened because Grant recently has been let go from the station, leaving the coast clear for Arthur's comeback. Frommer's show is about "...travel with respect; an opportunity for learning that impacts your mind in a way like no other, from a cost-conciousness point of view." OK, then!
Elvis! One of my all-time fave songwriters will be Kurt Anderson's guest tomorrow (Sunday) evening at 7pm on WNYC-AM 820 on the always-fine and diverse Studio 360. Plus a chat with Paul Haggis (writer/director of the Oscar-nominated Crash) and a story about how the love of Maurice Ravel's Bolero lead a near-deaf man to the forefront of neurosurgery: bionic hearing.

Satellite vs. Terrestrial: the thawing of this cold war is already well underway

2006-03-02T13:34:00.000-05:00

"Could this signal a thawing of the Cold War between satellite and terrestrial radio?" writes Ken Tucker in this Billboard Radio Monitor article. He's writing about the fact that, for the first time, a terrestrial radio station - Cincinatti's WLW 700 - will have their signal rebroadcast on XM satellite radio. The station has a rich history, so it's kinda cool to hear a "heritage" station via such modern technology, plus it's always fascinating (to me at least) to hear local radio from exotic places... and Cincinatti is exotic, in a way. (For those of you without XM Radio - and that number includes me - you can hear WLW's signal over the good 'ol Internet here.)

Speaking as a radio nostalgist, I especially liked this paragraph from the story:

"For the first time in 67 years, we are truly 'the nation's station' again," Clear Channel/Cincinnati director of AM operations Darryl Parks said in a statement. That slogan was used early in the station’s life when it was it was licensed to broadcast at 500,000 watts and its signal reached across the U.S. “Now through the power of satellite technology, 700WLW has a farther reach than ever before,” Parks added. "

500,000 watts! Dude! (Meanwhile, for more of a "WTF" reaction, go here.)

But, beyond this, there is more deal-making going on than you might think between Satellite and terrestrial radio. For instance, Bob Edward's XM-produced weekend show is now syndicated on "regular" public radio (WNYC-FM now has the show at 4pm Saturdays), and much of PRI and NPR's output can of course be heard on Sirius; many if not most of ABC Radio's, Fox News Talk's and ESPN Radio's shows are just as available on both XM and Sirius as they are "on the airwaves"; and Westwood One/CBS Radio provides much of Sirius's NFL Coverage (including the Super Bowl), not to mention all of their local traffic reports (via Metro Traffic).

My point? There may be a "big war" publicly going on between the technologies, but the terrestrial radio industry is not dumb; they're also frantically looking for ways to cooperate with, if not co-opt, XM and Sirius. And you know that Clear Channel is a major investor in XM, right?

The Arbitron ratings are in, and...

2006-02-28T15:00:00.000-05:00

Where have all of Howard's listeners gone? Well, for one thing, they haven't gone back to 92.3 FM, according to the Arbitron ratings, which have just come out for the very end of 2005 and very beginning of 2006; here's the New York Post's and the Daily News's wrap-up of the ratings news, and that news is none too good for David Lee Roth (who's "on vaction" this week, though rumor has it the show is being heavily re-tooled at an off-site location)*.

The stations that had the biggest post-Howard morning increases early this year included La Mega 97.9 (the rowdy and risque "El Vacilon" continues to thrive; check out their movie trailer for an, umm, "taste" of the show), Q104.3'S Jim Kerr classic-rock morning show (brava, Shelli Sonstein!), WKTU's Baltazar & Goumba Johnny (folks love those "80's at 8", no doubt) and New York's only morning-drive sports-talkers, 1050 WEPN's Mike & Mike, who I have never ever listened to and will only do so out of blogger-ly duty.

Of course, many of Howard's listeners simply went to Sirius. How big of an effect that will have on the NY terrestrial radio marketplace still has to be seen, though it is apparently true that the radios are still quite hard to come by at local electronics stores.

The New York Radio Message Board is absolutely the very best place for post-game analysis on this subject, just as long as you don't mind the satellite radio-bashing. Some of the big topics at the board include:

how JACK FM is tanking (yay!), and what Infinity/CBS (the station's owners) should do about it;
how The New Mix 102.7 is tanking (awww...), and what Infinity/CBS (the station's owners) should do about it. Should they switch formats and take on New York's overall #1 station Lite FM directly? and;
how WBAI's fund drive is tanking, and what the station's owners (not Infinity/CBS, thank God) should do about it. I dunno, maybe by making the station a bit more... listenable?

* I still say Give Dave A Chance.

Pledge money to WFMU!

2006-02-28T14:38:00.000-05:00

Pledge money to WFMU! And go here to listen to the station itself.

What's It All About, Alec?

2006-02-28T14:01:00.001-05:00

An apology to my reader(s) for the lack of activity lately.

I have two excuses: first, I've been busy as hell. With life. And with being away from computers for long stretches. (Although that is not necessarily a bad thing.) Keeping up this blog to the extent I want to is going to be plenty demanding, and, umm, sorta never-ending. Which is a scary thought.

Secondly, I have a lot of great ideas and projects and stories in the works for the blog, and for its big-brother website I hope to launch in... let's say... early 2007. But these ideas and projects are going to take some seriously work - listening, cataloguing, critiquing, more listening, designing, thinking, even more listening, and writing writing writing. It's a worthwhile, fun project, and I love doing it, but am definitely getting up to speed at the moment, very much so, and beg your indulgence while that happens.

Meanwhile, I finally got my RadioShark, which - in combination with RadioTime and my cranky ol' iPod (which I have to replace the battery of, ugh) - PLUS the advent of radio's reluctant-yet-inevitable embrace of podcasting - will allow me (and you) to listen to radio in a pretty much unprecedented way: when we want it, where we want it, with shows and songs ready for listening and fast-forwarding and acquiring and deleting. It's the TiVo experience for radio; in other words, it's a major revolution/moving-forward for the phenomena of radio-listening, which is what I want this blog to be about.

So, in the meantime, please pledge some money to one of the greatest radio stations ever, WFMU, and stay tuned.

What to listen to this weekend: Bob's Back!

2006-02-24T11:04:00.000-05:00

Start your weekend off right by listening to the afore-mentioned Country Music Festival on WKCR. Yes, yes, it's the old stuff - the genius stuff - not the new Nashville crap. And it's on right now. OK, maybe not all the new Nashville stuff is crap, but get yer radio turned on and tune it to 89.9 FM fast. C'mon, you may be missing out on some Lefty Frizell, Tammy Wynette or Townes Van Zandt* as we speak!
It's the final weekend (sigh) for Tonight in Torino, the excellently-produced Winter Olympics 2006 show that airs its last three shows tonight, tomorrow and Sunday on WFAN 660 from 11PM to 1AM. It's fast, smart, and a great way to get a larger sense of what's going on at the games than the USA-centric NBC stuff.
Tomorrow (Saturday) at 1:30 PM, tune into WQXR 96.3, grab a comfortable (preferably plush) seat, and take in Saint-Saëns' gorgeous Samson et Dalila as part of the 75th Anniversary season (!!) of the longest-running classical music radio series in the world - The Metropolitan Opera's International Radio Broadcast. Tomorrow's broadcast features Emmanuel Villaume, Olga Borodina and Plácido Domingo, plus an intermission chat with big-time opera fan Rufus Wainwright.
He's back! Bob Edwards, the erudite and calm-voiced former host of NPR's "Morning Edition" (who was rudely pushed out of the gig in 2004 for sounding "too old"), can now be heard again on the airwaves of WNYC-FM 93.9 starting tomorrow (Saturday) at 4 PM. (It's actually his regular XM Weekend show that's being brought to terrestrial radio via PRI.)
Do you remember the deejay Paco? From the early, classic days of WKTU? No? Then you weren't living in the NY metropolitan area in 1978-1980. 'Cause back then, 'KTU was a MONSTER. KTU was IT. (Yo.) It ruled New York's airwaves, because it played DISCO DISCO DISCO nonstop. Anyway: if you miss that era (and I do, said the blog writer semi-embarrassedly), you'll be delighted to hear the legendary Paco - a very cool dj with a kind, fatherly, and still-heavily-Spanish-accented voice - bringing it all home every Saturday night on WNEW 102.7 between 7 and 10 pm. Tomorrow, he's going to be doing his warm-hearted and nostalgic show from the POSH Ultra Lounge in the Garden City Hotel in Long Island (disco's home turf), with minor disco diva Alicia performing live at 10:30. Whoop whoop!
Bob Edward's new placement on the Saturday afternoon WNYC-FM shedule has brought with it a bit of show shifting (not to be confused with shape shifting), which gives me an opportunity to encourage you to check out three excellent programs** at their new times. First, the always-witty and fun Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me - the closest thing to an old-school radio quiz show you'll currently find on the air - will now air Sundays from 11am-noon. You can count on this weekend's broadcast to find the lighter side of the Dubai/US Ports-boondoggle. (This show can also be heard on the AM side of WNYC - 820 AM - on Saturday at 1 PM.)
Secondly: the classic This American Life now airs Sundays from 4-5pm; this week's theme is "Cat and Mouse", and you'll hear a story about "pissed off patriots" (they call themselves the Minutemen) who are staking out illegal immigrants trying to cross the border... plus a brand new story from David Sedaris. Dry, articulate humor rules! (This show can also be heard on the AM side on Saturday at 11 AM.)
Now, I can't tell you much about the third newly-moved WNYC-FM program, The No Show, hosted by Steve Post (which now can be heard Sundays from 6-7pm). Why? Because I haven't heard it yet, sorry. (I don't know this weekend's topic either.) But WNYC's website intriguingly states that "...it was during overnights on WBAI during the 1970’s that Post’s acid wit, droll presentation and dead-of-night, anti-establishment tirades earned him a strong cult following amongst New York radio aficionados." Sounds very cool. I will listen and report back...

* who, by the way, is the subject of a new film documentary that I wanted to see that played at the Angelika for like a week in December, then disappeared - but the DVD is due out next month...

** or at least potentially excellent

I bought this radio, and you should too!

2006-02-23T16:30:00.000-05:00

How, my loyal reader(s), are you currently listening to radio? (You are listening, aren't you?) If you don't have a working radio, or are bored/underwhelmed with what you have, and if you have even just a touch of radio geekiness within you - just a tad! - I would very much like to recommend this adorable little radio. I got it a few days ago, and I'm head-over-heels in love...

It's called the Grundig Mini World 100 PE, it can fit in your pocket, and is currently being discounted at Radio Shack stores for $20 plus tax; here are reviews (admittedly radio geek reviews, but still useful). First, it gets AM reception really well. In Manhattan, I can easily hear Danny Stiles' fantastic 8-10 pm weeknight show from Paterson's WPAT 930, and WWRL 1600's oft-wimpy signal comes in like a champ wherever you are. And FM reception is not only strong as well, but sounds great through the headphones - basslines sound especially dope yet crisp (I was actually able to figure out an extra McCartney lick in "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" I'd never noticed before). The radio even has a little loudspeaker, so you can bring it to the beach - or you can pretend to be one of those weird guys in Yankees caps listening to baseball and talk radio on New York City streetbenches. (Or maybe you don't have to pretend...)

Plus: it gets shortwave. Shortwave! It's not what SWL-ers would call a "serious" reciever - it has an analog tuning dial, after all - but it's surprisingly good. I was very pleased to hear Radio Havana booming into a New York apartment at 14th and Ave B, with nice fidelity even! (through the headphones, of course). It's fine for pulling in BBC World Service and Radio Canada and weird American shortwave stuff too. Just grab a copy of the essential Passport to World Band Radio 2006 (much of which is available online, as PDF files, here - check out the "Getting Started" chapter), and you're good to go.

Anyway, do people even buy "radios" anymore, in this era of satellite this and HD that and iPods and podcasts and TiVos and TV-on-cellphones, etc.? (There's something increasingly quaint about buying a radio at Radio Shack.) No matter - this is an lovable little radio, very fun and very cheap, and it sounds great and pulls in stations great and even gets freakin' shortwave. What's not to like?

WKCR goes Classic Country! (for the weekend)

2006-02-23T13:15:00.000-05:00

Here's another example - of which there will be many - of how I (and this blog) are deeply indebted to David Hinckley of the NY Daily News. Starting at noon tomorrow - and running through the whole weekend - WKCR 89.9 celebrates their annual Country Music Festival, which this year salutes the 50th Anniversary of the so-called Million Dollar Quartet (seen above right - from left, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash harmonizing together at a Sun Studios session on December 4, 1956).

I'm not on WKCR's PR list - yet - so I didn't know, until this morning, that this great weekend is coming up. So, I'm just tellin' ya, any fan of NY Radio should check the Daily News's TV & Radio page daily for David's radio news and recommendations. Anyway, this is what's coming up on 89.9, starting tomorrow:

TOMORROW (Friday)
Noon-2 p.m.: Blue yodels
2-3:30 p.m.: George Jones & Tammy Wynette
3:30-5 p.m.: Maddox Brothers & Rose
5-6:45 p.m.: Million Dollar sessions
9 p.m.-3 a.m.: Vassar Clements, John Herald, Jimmy Martin

SATURDAY
3-6 a.m.: Country rock
6-8 a.m.: Hillbilly boogie
8-10 a.m.: Rockabilly
10 a.m.-noon: Cliff Carlisle
Noon-5 p.m.: Sun Records
5-6:45 p.m.: Lefty Frizzell
9 p.m.-1 a.m.: Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, Tom Russell

SUNDAY
1-3 a.m.: Gram Parsons & Emmylou Harris
3-6 a.m.: June Carter & Johnny Cash
6-8 a.m.: Wing
8-10 a.m.: Country gospel
10 a.m.-noon: Moonshine
Noon-2 p.m.: Tennessee Border
2-4 p.m.: Delmore Brothers & Wayne Raney
4-5:30 p.m.: Million Dollar sessions
5:30-9:30 p.m.: Million Dollar performers
9:30-11 p.m.: Songs of Billy Sherrill
11 p.m.-2 a.m.: Hank Williams

HD Radio promotion goes into overdrive: a mistake

2006-02-23T12:16:00.000-05:00

This is a mistake. If you've been listening to commercial radio lately, you've probably begun to hear quite a few ads promoting HD Radio. Here's a Red Herring article about how the terrestrial radio industry is pushing the technology, and its burgeoning number of new stations, via lots and lots of dedicated air time.

BUT: still there's only one home model (which is getting tepid reviews) and a handful of car models that can recieve HD radio. And they currently cost at least $300. And the programming I've heard on the internet streams available for the NY HD stations (check out this previous post) is less than amazing; two of the "deep cuts" on Q104.3's HD station included Yes's "Roundabout" and Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here", two songs that get played the crap out of on regular ol' Q104.3 already. I thought "Classic Lite" was pleasant enough, but please. Hey radio: don't start pushing this stuff so hard yet and getting the audience simply confused and/or immediately disappointed in the programming and/or frustrated by the expense of the technology. This is the sound of terrestrial radio clutching at straws...

Read about, and listen to, HD Radio!

2006-02-22T14:30:00.000-05:00

I've been putting off writing a heavy-duty post about HD Radio, but while that's in, umm, "production", here's a great LA Times piece about it (great in that it sums up alot of the issues about it neatly in one place) that you should read while I get around to writing a longer post. And here's links to audio streams of 6 of the city's HD stations! Check out:

Free FM's KROCK2 (modern rock - i.e., what K-Rock used to play)
Z100's New Music HD2 (an more adventurous and diverse version of Z100's hits format)
Jack FM's WCBS-FM HD2 (a return of the old 'CBS FM! But without the DJs, sadly...)
WKTU'S New York Country (the city's first country station in a long while)
WAXQ's Deep Classics (a "deep cuts" version of Q104.3)
WLTW 's Classic Lite (more of an oldie take on "lite music", also discussed here)

Clear Channel: Less Commercials, Mo' Money

2006-02-22T10:26:00.000-05:00

Good ol' monolith Clear Channel is reporting higher radio earnings for the first time in a couple of years, and is attributing that fact to the success of their "Less Is More" strategy - that is, their radio stations are actually playing less commercials. And, umm, that's good. That's certainly part of terrestrial radio's strategy against the onslaught of satellite, and it's a smart idea that needs to be widely imitated, SOON. For instance: the 6 to 7 am hour on Curtis and Kuby's WABC 770 show has no commercials, which frees up the hosts quite a bit, gives the discussion some momentum, and makes for a more freewheeling and entertaining hour, if you find Curtis and Kuby entertaining (which I do, to an extent). Of course, the pair are campaigning hard to pick up some of Howard's former listeners - there are C&K billboards all over town stating "No Stern? No Problem" - so the show's low commercial "load" may not be part of a larger strategy, more of a "let's get listeners now, then drag in back all the ads" kinda thing. (WABC is owned by Disney, but is getting sold to Citadel; some folks at the NY Radio Message Board are hopeful the transfer will lead to improved programming at the station, but I wouldn't get my hopes up too high.)

Clear Channel owns 6 of New York's radio stations, including some of the most successful ones (4 of the city's top 10, according to this list), but I wish they owned WCBS or WINS, two stations that play so many commercials that they're unlistenable for more than a couple of minutes at a time. I'm sure those station's managers have research that shows that their listeners only tune in for short periods, usually to catch some traffic or weather or a couple of headlines. So the station thinks they have to stuff their hours with spots. But I'd argue they'd get lengthier "listens", and more loyal and upscale listeners, if they'd cut down on the ads in a significant way, and let their anchors have a bit of breathing room. I'd certainly listen, it'd be great to be able to listen to local radio news for a decent length of time; both stations have a local, sarcastic, tabloid NYC flavor that the chilly NPR types at WNYC lack.

Teens sure dig the Classic Rock

2006-02-21T15:40:00.000-05:00

Here's an intriguing Rolling Stone article about teenagers discovering, and helping keep alive, the genre of "Classic Rock", which New York's Q104.3* plays pretty much non-stop. My favorite factoid was this one:

"According to the market-research firm NPD, kids ages thirteen to seventeen bought twenty percent of all Floyd and Zeppelin albums sold from 2002 to 2005, and seventeen percent of Hendrix and Queen discs but accounted for just three percent of Creedence Clearwater Revival sales, six percent of Rolling Stones sales and a paltry one percent of Cat Stevens sales."

(What? What? What's wrong with Cat Stevens, you young people of today? Other than the supporting-the-death-of-Rushdie thing, of course, which was unfortunate, and anyway he's now claiming he was misquoted. Anyway, give me the Cat-man, whose first four albums are incredibly pretty and inventive, anyday over Pink Floyd. Yecccccchhh. I hearby declare a fatwa on Pink Floyd. Well, a fatwa on post-'71 Pink Floyd, the early stuff is pretty dope. OK, only kidding. About the fatwa.)

Anyway, I know about this phenomena first hand, and it's not just because I've already turned my 10-year-old daughter Julia into nearly as big a Beatle-head as me. (1) When I was spending some time at the Guitar Center on 14th Street last December (buying a lovely bass amp which may or may not have been an excessive purchase, but I love the damn thing), I ended up advising a kid who was no older than 13 on what kind of a bass he should buy. I asked him what kind of music he listened to, and he said "Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin". (I told him to get a Precision "Squier".) (2) And when I played bass with Bubble while performing The White Album and Revolver in front of an outdoor crowd in Hoboken last summer, there were these two kids - both about 12 or 13 - staring at us worshipfully from the side of the stage the entire show ... like they were soaking every note in. No Death Cab for Cutie for them! (3) Likewise, when I took my nephew James to his first rock concert a while ago, it was to see Neil Young and Crazy Horse. James survived the show, and (though no longer a "teen") is still a big-time classic rock fan... as a matter of fact, he and I continue to have vehement arguments about - you guessed it - Pink Floyd. He thinks they're much more important to the History Of Rock than Devo, which I strongly disagree with... but I digress.

Speaking of the Floyd: if you're a fan of the '79 album The Wall, you may want to tune into Q104.3 tomorrow (Wednesday) night at 11:30 PM to hear Rockline (a perennial syndicated rock call-in show). Tomorrow's show will actually be a compilation of previous Rockline interviews with Roger Waters, David Gilmour and Nick Mason about the making of the album, the 1982 movie, and the 1990 Berlin live performance in front of over 250,000 people. Did the album have secret messages? Does the end segue into the beginning? What movie does this one sync up with? Find out tomorrow night...

* Speaking of Q104.3, here's a fascinating - or tragic, depending on your point of view - article about how the station is programmed. Three acts that come with both big positives and negatives for the programmers: Bob Dylan, Rush, and The Grateful Dead. (It all has to do with the vocals, no?) And while Elton John and Billy Joel are considered "Classic Rock" in New York, in Chicago they're "Adult Contemporary". Interesting!

A Blast from the Past: Payola!! (Uh-Oh.)

2006-02-21T13:04:00.000-05:00

Here's an ABC Primetime story and an AP report about Elliot Spitzer's new and ever-widening Payola investigation (payola being the act of having record companies pay radio stations to play the records they want to have become hits).

As you may know, this issue rears up its ugly head every few years or so, originally when Alan Freed's career was destroyed by a House Oversight Subcommittee investigation that started in 1959. (Dick Clark emerged from the same investigation pretty much unscathed - I wonder why?) Last Saturday, the Discovery Times channel aired an excellent documentary - 1998's "Rock 'N' Roll Invaders: The AM Radio DJs" - which had a fascinating interview with former WTAM Cleveland DJ Joe Finan, who was implicated alongside of Freed and Clark at the time. He reminisced about a '59 Miami Beach radio DJ convention, the one that started up the whole scandal, that he recalled as a blur of "booze, bribes and broads" - which is actually the working title of his memoir. Good times, my friends, good times.

Anyway, this is an old/new story, but Mr. Spitzer is promising that this investigation will be the biggest one yet. (According to AP: "The practice appears to be have been underway in its current form since the mid- to late 1990s, said Terryl Brown Clemons, assistant deputy attorney in charge of the payola investigation. She said the practice was found across the spectrum of music, from Top 40 to urban to rock.") Already, the bands/performers Jennifer Lopez, Franz Ferdinand, Good Charlotte, Jessica Simpson, Switchfoot, Michelle Branch, John Mayer, Celine Dion, R.E.M. (no!), Maroon 5, and Gretchen Wilson have been implicated - well, at least their songs have. (In the ABC News story, the band Semisonic comes clean that their hit "Closing Time" happened because of the practice. But then again, they're a band with its hit in the past, so they've nothing to lose.) The bands won't catch the blame - I don't think they should (should they?) - the evil guys in the suits will. Or will they get off like Dick Clark?

(Speaking of evil guys in suits, the webzine Salon has done an excellent job of covering not just payola, but the more important and depressing story of the Clear-Channel-ization of American radio and live music performance. "Why Does Radio Suck?", indeed.)

Radio Rookies on WNYC's Morning Edition this week

2006-02-21T11:23:00.000-05:00

The good news is that WNYC is airing one of its "Radio Rookies" weeks this week on Morning Edition - which means you can hear New York City teens trying their hand at producing radio documentaries, with always fascinating results. Tomorrow - Wednesday - you can hear 16-year-old Wen Ou (left), who first moved to the United States from China in 2001, talk about living in Elmhurst with her Mom, and how she wishes she had appreciated her relatives (whom she barely remembers) more when she was still living with them. Thursday morning, you can hear Yesica Balderrama, who's 15, wondering if she and her friends are Internet addicts. And on Friday, Edward Llanos (now 17) revisits the time he was diagnosed with Aplastic Anemia, at the age of 12. According to WNYC's publicity:

"Once he fully recovered, he didn’t look back. Now a healthy high school senior, Edward assumes that everyone around him has moved on, too. But when he decides to revisit this part of his past, he discovers that his each of his family members experienced his illness in ways he didn’t (or couldn’t) recognize at the time – and some effects still linger."

This is cool stuff, with authentic voices from the city's young - voices you don't get to hear too often, with the help of mentors who know how to produce good radio.

The bad news is that I didn't get around to telling you this until almost the middle of the week, and that WNYC doesn't exactly tell you when, during Morning Edition, these pieces will air.

But the good news is that you can hear all these week's stories here, via the wonders of RealAudio and mp3. Plus you can check out more stories from past "Radio Rookies" weeks here. This, my friends, is compelling, intelligent radio - the kind of stuff I wanted to tell you about when I started this here blog. Listen.

My broken-Sirius-radio: an update

2006-02-20T13:36:00.000-05:00

I wrote earlier about the fact my Sirius Starmate Replay radio had gone bust, and promised updates: I knew it was gonna take me awhile to deal with customer service - I just knew - so I made sure I had a day where'd I'd have some free time - today.

Ugh.

I just spent the last 1 1/2-to-2 hours on the phone, a time in which I got hung up on twice, and got three different numbers for warranty service, only one of which worked. I finally got a helpful guy who informed me that while I was talking to the wrong department, he'd credit me for a free month. Which was nice, although I should note I've already been without service for 5 days.

When I finally got the right number, a woman quickly told me that "the computer system was down", and that someone would have to call me back to talk about my issue.

An hour later, I got a call back. I have to send my old unit to Sirius, in Florida. Them in 2 to 4 weeks, I will get a new unit back.

Oh, great.

Now I'm gonna call Sirius to put my subscription on hold.

The upside - for me, and for this blog - is that I'll be less distracted by the many many choices I have of stations to listen to. I can get down to some pretty specific New York City AM & FM radio listening... which I plan to write about. Stay tuned.

Ray Barretto lives!

2006-02-20T10:11:00.000-05:00

Ray Barretto - one of the most prolific and influential percussionists and bandleaders in the history of Afro-Cuban music - may have passed away last week, but his fine fine playing lives (and dances) on, as New York City radio remembers his life and music. You can hear it all day today, till 1 AM tomorrow morning, on WKCR 89.9... plus a 2002 concert from NJPAC will be replayed tomorrow (Tuesday) night on WBGO 88.3 at 9 pm. I'm listening to KCR now, and it's GREAT. They're letting his albums just play... hear the vinyl crackling! This is the kind of music Polito used to showcase all Sunday afternoons on La Mega 97.9 - and he did play a fair share of Ray yesterday - but now he doesn't play the "classic" stuff nearly enough, for my taste...

Howard's Bully Pulpit

2006-02-19T12:30:00.000-05:00

George Carlin was the subject of a New York Times story not too long ago, and the subject of Howard Stern came up. "I like Howard," George said. "I like his mind. I like his spirit. I am not a big fan of the stuff he does. He knows that. I think he picks on underdogs."

That observation - "I think he picks on underdogs" - has stayed with me. He's got a point.

You see, growing up, in schoolyard society, I was a kid easily laughed at, a kid who cried easily. I was bullied. I was an underdog. Which is why I wonder about my Howard fandom.

After I started listening to Howard, I tried to put my finger on just what his appeal was. My thought was that the sound of his show, reassuring in its way, is the sound of a bunch of high school guys (or college guys) killing time, ragging on each other, waiting for class bell to ring - waiting for that moment when one has to trudge to class (or the office) and act all grown up.

Those kids laughed and felt liberated in those moments before "class", but the humor was mean - especially when it came to girls (who were held in awe and/or in contempt). And the humor was even meaner when it came to underdogs. Which, umm, I was one of. I wonder if I would have been held in contempt by Howard and his real high school friends if I had gone to Roosevelt or South Side High - although Howard takes great pains to point out that he was a loser-outsider too at that point in his life.

There are times when I automatically turn the Stern show "off", and one of those times is during the Captain Janks-type calls, or during the recorded interviews when a hapless celebrity gets peppered with "naughty" questions. Why? Because the surprised celebrity/anchorman/person, at the time of the recorded interview or call, doesn't know he or she's now an object of laughter, someone not privvy to the joke they've now become the butt of - in that sense, a laughed-at underdog. Those hapless folks haven't had the chance to choose to be a part of the joke. If one chooses to be on Howard's show, then great, welcome, prepare to be harassed or bugged with extremely personal questions. If one haven't yet had a chance to agree to be on the show, then... well, that person should be leaft alone. Ambushing them isn't funny, even if Howard thinks you're a blowhard or full of yourself or whatever. In my opinion.

Another sense of Howard picking on the "underdog" is probably the way George was thinking of, when Howard chats with Beetlejuice or Jeff the Drunk or Gary the Retard. Certainly most of the members of Howard's "wack pack" (who are more often than not mentally disabled) are real underdogs. Now, Howard and his partisans would argue that these people are "in on the joke", know what they're there for, and are getting much more publicity or attention or money than they normally would if they were left alone. One also might argue that Howard is laughing with these wack-packers... although that argument feels... weak.

Perhaps more interesting/confusing is Howard's ongoing relationship with Daniel Carver. Is Howard giving publicity and airtime to a hate-mongerer? Or is he, by allowing Daniel (who is a loon) froth at the mouth, and ttherby dig his own grave? Is it a "hoot" to hear Daniel?

I feel like I am posing more questions here than providing answers... (I also have to admit I am posting this from a 14th-street laundromat in Manhattan, and am running out of time before I get logged off!) But I would love to hear from you about this. And I am trying to think this issue through. What do you think? Am I a hypocrite for being an (former?) underdog that "laughs at" other Howard underdogs? Discuss. (Please.)

Welcome Daily News Readers!

2006-02-18T13:32:00.000-05:00

Great. The weekend I get a bad cold, need lots of rest and am pretty much away from a computer, I get mentioned by my hero David Hinckley in today's Daily News. So I rushed out to my friend Rob's place (thanks Rob!) so I can make a quick post to say: hello! And welcome to The NYC Radio Gazette, which I hope continues to grow as a home for fans of intelligent New York (and satellite) radio.

So: take a look around!

What to listen to this President's Day weekend

2006-02-18T13:04:00.000-05:00

Straight from the horse's mouth... and then from the donkey's! Today at 2:50 pm on C-SPAN Radio, listen to President George W. Bush's Weekly Radio Address... which is then immediately followed up by a response by a representative of the Democratic Party. C-SPAN Radio can be heard on both XM and Sirius satellite radio, and can also be heard on the Internet via RealAudio or Windows Media Player. (What better way to be a good citizen, and/or get into the President's Day spirit?)
At 4pm today (Saturday), this will start getting veeeerrry scary, boys and girls, as the "The Cool Ghoul" - the amazing and spooky Zacherley - sits in for the first hour of Pete Fornatele's "Mix Bag" show, on WFUV 90.7. (Click here for a great bio of Zach, who was a horror-movie host on Channels 9 & 11 well into the mid-'60s, until he switched over to the role of being one of FM's pioneering rock dee-jays.)
No, Meryl Streep and Lindsay Lohan (above) aren't guesting on tonight's A Prairie Home Companion, which you can hear on WNYC at 6 PM (live, on 93.9 FM) and tomorrow (Sunday) at 11 AM (replayed, on 820 AM). The publicity still seen above is from the new Robert Altman movie (!) "A Prairie Home Companion", which just got its world debut at the Berlin Film Festival, where it's getting rave reviews. Guesting this weekend from the live broadcast from Milwaukee, Wisconsin are slightly less famous but no less compelling entertainers, including the 100 year-old Milwaukee Mandolin Orchestra.
Do me, and yourself, a favor: if you're going to donate money to WBAI 99.5 during their current membership drive - and you should - call in during Sunday night's The Golden Age of Radio, which is heard 7-9 PM. (That way, the station will know it should continue to air Max's always-fine programming, which also includes the super-early-Tuesday mornings Mass Backwards show, which always plays Jean Shepherd at 5:15 am... but you knew that already, didn't you? You didn't?)) Schmid plays fantastic "Old-Time Radio" shows (vintage broadcasts from the '30s, '40s, and '50s). And - if you pledge $75 or more -you can get some of these tapes (yes, tapes - an appropriately aging format for ancient shows) of classic radio series and shows, including Suspense, Escape, and Agnes Moorhead's incredible tour de force "Sorry Wrong Number". Yeah!
Tomorrow (Sunday) night on WAXQ 104.3 at 10: one of the best songwriters ever, Ray Davies, guests on Little Steven's Underground Garage, probably to promote his amazing new album Other People's Lives (click here for samples)... but Steve will probably get him to spill about his unspeakably brilliant garage-rock-trailblazing early Kinks days. (Let's thank Ray for the days... those endless days, those sacred days he gave us...)

Why all the fund drives are happening NOW

2006-02-18T10:45:00.000-05:00

I asked Ken Freedman, the station director of the great WFMU 91.1, why they're about to start up their membership drive, at the exact same time WBAI is having theirs, and just after WBGO and WNYC just finished theirs. Why, oh why do these listener-supported stations - all worthy causes - have their necessary yet brain-deadening appeals at practically the same time?

Ken, very thoughtfully, responded thusly: "Basically, all the public radio stations are avoiding the same things, which is why we all end up having our fundraisers at the same time. We all need to avoid the major Christian and Jewish holidays so that rules out April, some of October and most of November and December. We also need to avoid January since that is when the Christmas bills come due. We also need to avoid April 15th, so that rules out April. And we need to avoid the summer, since many people leave town to go on vacation."

Oh. So that's why. OK. Interesting.

My Sirius Radio Broke.

2006-02-18T10:34:00.000-05:00

It did. It broke. A day or two ago. It just lights up - I see the Sirius logo, with the doggie - on the display, and then nothing happens. Ugh. I'll have to call customer support. I'll report back on how that goes. (At least that gives me an excuse to concentrate on NYC AM & FM more.)

I also feel like crap. I caught a cold yesterday. Plus getting on the Internet will be iffy this weekend, off and on. Sorry to whine. I promise not to do this too much.

(Sniff.)

Jake E. Lee on Power 105.1: Weird.

2006-02-17T12:19:00.000-05:00

This morning, on the city's top-rated Star and Buc Wild show on Power 105.1, a story was read about how Ozzy Osbourne's house in Hollywood was being sold. That promptly inspired Star to start rhapsodising on the guitar-playing skills of Jake E. Lee, perhaps the most uncelebrated of Ozzy's post-Sabbath guitarists, as he proceeded to play most of Ozzy's 1986's #10 hit single "Shot In the Dark" - which is rarely heard on any station, much less a hip-hop one. He even argued that Jake was superior to Randy Rhodes and Zakk Wylde (who, according to Star, "can't write a song worth a damn"). Not the kind of thing you'd expect to hear on the city's most happening "urban" morning show. Cool, though.

The Olympics on Radio? Strangely enough, it works

2006-02-15T12:12:00.000-05:00

One doesn't think of the Olympics - a grand and colorful spectacle that NBC* is covering the hell out of (and doing a pretty good job of, by the way) - as "good radio". Yet I have to say that Tonight in Torino, the 2 hour nightly recap being heard nightly at 11 PM on WFAN 660 during the games, is doing a great job. It's an exciting and fast-paced show, the hosts (John Tautges and Rich Ackerman) are obviously having a great time, and - free of the need for "compelling visuals" or all that "up-close-and-personal" crap - the games come alive in your brain. The show not only features great, smart commentary, but even replays the day's radio "play-by-plays" of skiing events, figure skating, etc., and I'll be damned to say I find it compelling, entertaining stuff. (Hear clips for yourself at Westwood One's website.)

An admission here: I'm not much of a sports fan. OK, I'm not a sports fan. So I almost never listen to sports radio. I can tell you precious little about Mike and the Mad Dog, although I'm certain they're brilliant at what they do. Much of my sports radio listening over the last couple of years happened by accident, when I was driving in my car (on what I like to call my "never-ending commute"), trying to get the traffic report on WCBS 880, and finding that - to my chagrin - I was listening to a goddamn Yankee game.

And yet (after of course yelling at the radio and at WCBS's betrayal of its mission to be an around-the-clock news station) I'd find myself listening to the games... envisioning, if you will ,the game and the ballpark in my mind... and loving it.

I'd like to quote Susan J. Douglas here from her book Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination, which is - hands down - the single best book on radio I've ever read. She talks about how and why sports (specifically, baseball) on radio works - or at least worked in its heydey:

"Today, on television, there are cameras everywhere to provide every view, from the wide-angle establishing shot of the ballpark to the closeup of the pitcher's face. There is instant replay. There are endless visual displays of statistical information. On radio, the announcer had to provide all of this, from the weather conditions and mood of the crowd to the play-by-play and instant replay. It required great observational skills, a sharp memory, and, during lulls, changeovers or rain delays, the ability to tell stories... This mattered because [the announcer] was the listener's only source of information; the listener was utterly dependent on him for everything as he or she imagines the game - what kind of pitch was thrown, what the count was, how the batter swung, where the ball went in the field, who caught it and how, and whether someone was safe or out. The listener had to work, too, imagining the width, height, depth of the ballpark, the configuration of the bleachers, the trajectory of the ball. When an announcer described an outfielder going 'back, back, back, back,' the listener zoomed in on the ball, its motion, its arc."

Radio puts your brain to work - a delightful kind of work - in a way TV never does.

* admission: the company I work for

This morning at 10 on WNYC: Were We Misled?

2006-02-15T00:00:00.000-05:00

The live debate I was mentioning last week - "Were We Misled? A Debate on Pre-War Intelligence”, which took place at the New York Society for Ethical Culture last Wednesday night - will be aired on Brian Lehrer's show this morning on WNYC-AM (820) and FM (93.9) between 10 AM and Noon. (If you're reading this after the fact, click on Brian's link above to listen via RealPlayer and/or mp3.) The guests of the event included Christopher Hitchens, David Corn, Bob Graham and Ruth Wedgwood, a neo-con replacement for neo-con Bruce Jackson, who was a no-show. (Perhaps he blew off the debate because, as David Corn himself notes in his blog, "the event took place on the West Side of Manhattan, a rather liberal spot, and we were before a crowd of 800 or so people who clearly were not Weekly Standard subscribers.")

I plan on recording the show so I can hear it later, and I hope to hear more than just the Upper West Side hooting described here... but this writeup in spiked: politics (a London-based political magazine) gives a rather discouraged review of the evening. Perhaps it'll all sound more coherent and less blustering with some savvy editing. One can hope. I like Brian's show - a lot - but inviting such partisan types to yell at each other in front of an inevitably partisan crowd... does that make fresh, open political insight possible? And/or does it make "good radio"?

Howard. Let's talk.

2006-02-14T06:54:00.000-05:00

Last week, I was talking with a friend of mine, a guy I think highly of, a guy I find highly intelligent. I was telling him about my new blog, and mentioned that I was a Howard Stern fan. He was taken aback. "Don't you realize Howard hates women?" he told me.

I don't think Howard hates women. But I certainly have mixed feelings about him, and feel worried, whenever I hear from someone whose opinion I really respect, when I hear that they think Howard's a misogynist, or evil, or whatever. I know many of my friends disapprove of (hate?) Howard for any number of reasons. Do you? Tell me. Please add a comment at the bottom of this post.

I had been thinking about starting this blog for a couple of years, but the thing that finally motivated me to actually do it was my getting a Sirius radio for Christmas, and how I dug all the different stations on it after I got the thing working. But what motivated me to get a Sirius radio in the first place was: Howard. Of whom I am a fan. With mixed feelings. I have a couple of "big stories" I have "in the works" for The NYC Radio Gazette about Howard and his stations and his status, but in the back of my mind I worry: will such coverage turn off my intended audience - whom I have defined as "people in need of intelligent radio"?

What do you think? Tell me. I will post more Howard thoughts in the days ahead. But I'd love to hear what you have to say.

WQXR - showin' us some loooove

2006-02-14T05:10:00.000-05:00

WQXR 96.3 is gonna help us get all gooey and romantic this Valentine's Day by playing "love songs... nothing but love songs" between 9AM and 7PM today.

To quote the station, we'll be hearing "operatic arias, duets, and orchestral repertoire relating to amorous themes, including selections from the Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, and Berlioz versions of Romeo and Juliet; Bernstein’s West Side Story; Dvorák Romances; duets from La Bohème and Madama Butterfly; Fauré’s Pelleas et Melisande; Berlioz’s Béatrice et Bénédict; Strauss’s Don Juan; Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice; and the Prelude and Liebestod from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde." Sweet!

Then, tonight at 9, WQXR presents its nationally syndicated program, The New York Philharmonic This Week, which has been described as "the most ambitious orchestra series currently on American radio". The broadcasts aren't live, but are pretty current (while the orchestra is in its season, of course). Tonight's show, recorded in early February, features conductor and pianist Jeffrey Kahane with Mozart's Piano Concertos in G Major (K. 453) and D minor (K. 466), plus the Sinfonia concertante in E-flat Major, K. 364. What's especially neat is that you can go here for an amazingly useful guide to tonight's show - with audio clips, video clips and exquisitely detailed PDF notes about each piece. Very cool!

It's not about radio, but it is about music, and I would really like you to click on the link below.

2006-02-13T12:05:00.000-05:00

OK, first off, please check out the other part of my life, my musical side, at my MySpace homepage. (My my.) I've put up a few original songs, which you can listen to and/or download, plus there's a bio of my "musical career", as it were. Plus: pictures! And lots and lots of friends... my friends! (They like me, they really like me!)

Secondly, I'm sorry to go off-message (re: radio) here, but hey, it's a blog, right? Free-wheeling, post-modern, blah blah blah? Plus it's early enough in The NYC Radio Gazette's life that I don't have a big audience who would feel peeved or misled or something about me posting something that's not directly about radio, right? Anyway, these songs should have been on the radio... hell, they should've been massive hits, and it's just so typical of the lame radio programmers of my generation that they ignored my genius... Bastards.

OK, I'll shut up now. More exciting radio posts to come. (Plus it was a busy weekend, with the snow and everything.... hey, why am I being defensive? As if anybody's reading this.) Meanwhile, if you're interested, check out the quirky/catchy tunes and the page and find out a bit more about me, OK? OK.

The Big Broadcast on the Moon - tomorrow night

2006-02-11T13:36:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow (Sunday) night's a full moon, and Rich Conaty's The Big Broadcast - which you can hear on Sunday nights between 8 pm and midnight on the great WFUV 90.7 - salutes that wonderful fact by playing "One Hundred One Moon Songs Part I". (Part II airs next week. No, the full moon'll be gone, but that night will be a celebration of Nicholas Copernicus's birthday*. From the earliest recorded Moon-themed song Rich could find - Billy Murray's "By the Light of the Silvery Moon", from 1909 - to the latest song he's planning on playing, a 1940 record of Rosemary Calvin's "How High the Moon" (Rich doesn't play much music that dates from WWII or later), you will hear... well... peerless American pop. About the moon.

There are two nice new write-ups about Rich's always-worthy show - this mention in David Hinckley's column and this nice write up by the New York Observer's Terry Golway - but I disagree with Mr. Golway's statement "if there’s a radio program like Mr. Conaty’s in the New York market, I’ve yet to hear it." Dude - just tune to WNYC-AM tonight, or any Saturday night, to catch Danny Stiles' Big Band Sounds show, between 8 and 10 pm, on WNYC-AM 820.

* “All right,” Rich told The New York Observer, “he’s more of a sun guy, but he certainly saw the moon”.

What to listen to this weekend...

2006-02-10T13:52:00.000-05:00

Last night at 7:35 pm on WLIB 1190 Air America, REM's Michael Stipe chatted with Janeane Garofolo on "The Majority Report". (You could have even seen the show as a webcast if you signed up for Air America Radio Premium. Did he look like this?)
As I've mentioned before, you can indulge in the glorious sound of classic pop on AM Radio on a Saturday Night by tuning in Saturday Night Oldies with Mark Simone on 770 WABC between 6-10 pm... or if you crave more of a pre-WWII vibe, don't miss Danny Stiles' incredible Big Band Sounds show on WNYC-AM 820 AM between 8 and 10pm.
Too bad all that great oldies radio tonight (Saturday) has to compete against Vin Scelsa's Idiot's Delight (between 8 PM and Midnight on WFUV 90.7), because Vin (who I've also raved about here before) has on as his guest Ken Emerson, author of Always Magic in the Air: The Bomp and Brilliance of the Brill Building Era – the story of great pop songwriting teams such as Goffin &amp; King, Bacharach & David, Mann & Weil, Leiber & Stoller, et al, and their early '60s home on Broadway and 49th. As a Burt Bacharach expert - fiend? - I will not be missing this. (I'm ashamed to admit I haven't devoured the book already...)
Tonight between 11PM and 1AM on WFAN 660, tune in to the second night of Tonight in Torino, Westwood One's 2-hour nightly recap of what's happening at the 2006 Winter Olympics, hosted by John Tautges and Rich Ackerman. (I plan on doing more of a write-up on Olympic radio coverage shortly... stay tuned. One doesn't think of WFAN fans as being all that interested in the Olympics... but maybe I'm wrong?)
Tomorrow (Sunday) at 10AM on WNYC-FM 93.9, you can hear On The Media, the consistently excellent NPR show on the weekly goings-on of news media; this weekend, host Brooke Gladstone is in Jerusalem, reporting on the Arab-Israeli conflict; one of the things she looks at is how the words used to report the ongoing crisis ("wall" or "barrier"? "Seperation" or "security"?) reveal worlds about the political viewpoint of whoever's doing the reporting.
Although they don't play nearly as much classic salsa as they used to (and too much reggaetron!), Polito Vega's Sunday afternoon institution, Salsa con Polito, still plays much great stuff - the kind of intoxicating stuff you hear booming out from the streets on New York City weekends - between 12 Noon and 8pm on La Mega 97.9. (Click here for a cool article about the history of Latin music on American radio.)

Satellite Wars: will Oprah kick Howard's ass?

2006-02-10T12:39:00.000-05:00

As you may have heard - the way this woman makes news, it's amazing - Oprah Winfrey has signed a $55 million, 3-year deal with XM Radio. While Business Week sees this as a potential knockout blow for Sirius because "Oprah's marketing appeal far exceeds Sirius's radio jock Howard Stern", Rick Munarriz of The Motley Fool points out:

"Sure, Oprah is great. According to Nielsen, her TV talk show attracts nearly 50 million viewers a week. That's more than the audience that Stern was commanding on terrestrial radio. But there's an important distinction here, in that Stern's radio show replaced his popular show on Viacom. Oprah has no plans to give up her prime TV gig. Folks who need an Oprah fix will still be able to check her out for free on the tube every weekday."

The use of the word "fix" is right on the money, because the issue here is about junkie-dom. Howard's hardcore fans are Howard-junkies; Oprah's hardcore fans are Oprah-junkies. Howard removed himself from terrestrial radio, so the only way his junkies can get their fix is to buy a Sirius radio. Oprah has no intention to leave television, and will actually only be on XM's air for a half-hour a week (which is why Oprah's many friends will be there to fill in the rest of all that airtime). Howard - despite his denials - promoted Sirius relentlessly on his FM radio show since his deal was announced; it's not certain how much Oprah will mention XM in upcoming months, although even a handful of mentions by her can do wonders for any company's product. (Look at Random House's "A Million Little Pieces"! Oops.)

To me, Oprah's new radio channel - filled with "topics such as current events, self improvement, health, nutrition, fitness and home" - will be an awful lot like Martha Stewart's channel on Sirius, and will be as fascinating (which is: not very. Then again, I'm not in the demographic.). Now Martha is certainly important and promotable for Sirius, and Oprah is definitely important for XM, a far bigger star than Martha. (A far bigger star than anybody at this point, it seems.) But I think the deal has more to do with corporate posturing and promotability* than it has to do with a bloody battling for audience.

Now - if Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity removed themselves from terrestrial radio and went to XM, that would be a fight. But those guys don't have the FCC-punching-bag impetus that Howard did.

* don't get me wrong, that's very very important stuff at this point for satellite radio.

Microsoft's "Smart Car Radio" - a Radio Tivo?

2006-02-10T10:44:00.000-05:00

There's not much info there yet, but here's a fascinating* Endgadget story about how Microsoft has just been granted a patent (applied for in 2002) for what's called a "smart car radio". In other words, it'd be a "Radio TiVo" for your car or computer that would allow you - quoting Endgadget - "to record music and filter out 'undesirable audio content (e.g., advertisements and unwanted news).'" As a huge fan of "Radio TiVo"-type technology - the Radio Shark, Radio YourWay and RadioTime are all out there already, at varying levels of coolness - I am excited about this thing, though worried about the Microsoftization of this incredibly important innovation for my fave medium.

What's interesting here is that a TV TiVo don't exactly "filter out" TV ads - they allow you to fast-forward past them, sure, but the big TV business doesn't let TiVo install a simple method to completely "edit out" commercials (though there are workarounds for some of the older models that'll help you jump past 'em in 30 second increments). If Microsoft's Smart Car Radio lets you zip past ads... what's the ad-based radio industry gonna do?

When I first got a TiVo in 2000, I was blown away. The best way I found to describe it is in terms of grades: it transforms a C+ medium (the vast wasteland that's still firmly in place) into an A- medium. In other words, by finding and then recording great shows, the kind of stuff I (or you) want to watch, a TiVo takes out the time-wasting/brain-deadening quality that much of the electronic media has had since the beginning. A TiVo, if you use it well, gives you the good stuff, as you define what "the good stuff" is. A Radio TiVo would do the same, I think, I hope. Unless Microsoft finds a way to completely ruin the concept.

A big part of why I've become such a Sirius enthusiast is because the model I have, the Starmate Replay, records up to 44 minutes of whatever channel you're listening to. Do I want to hear a cool/bizarro BBC Radio One song again? I rewind and replay. Did Howard really say that? I rewind and replay. And, if I'm a few minutes or more behind what's "live" (admittedly a hard concept to grasp until you actually start using this stuff), I can zip past the commercials on those stations that have 'em. Post-Sirius, when I now listen to "regular" radio, I now have that weird/frustrating experience that all TiVo owners report at some point - that desire to rewind to re-hear what you've just heard, or that desire to zoom past the commercials, or that desire to just pause the damn thing, and then you realize you can't, and you're bumming.

* to me, anyway

All we are saying is...give Dave a chance...maybe

2006-02-09T09:50:00.000-05:00

Listening to David Lee Roth this morning on 92.3 FREE FM, he had on Billy Altman - legendary rock critic and a former editor of Creem, the best rock magazine ever, R.I.P. - talking about last night's Grammies. It was good radio, with both Billy and David intelligently and (fairly) humorously reviewing the previous evenings performers. David was too robotic in how he kept quickly bringing up different artist's names, as if he was reading the topics off a sheet and keeping the conversation too brisk, without allowing any particular line of conversation to develop, but I guess that's professionalism (of a kind) for a tightly formatted morning show.

Of course, David Lee talking about how well music stars pull off their "acts" is a comfort zone for him, a subject he's perfect for. I was a bit surprised that he nor Billy nor any of the callers brought up the brilliant old Dave quote that "all rock critics like Elvis Costello because all rock critics look like Elvis Costello." Maybe Dave's too polite, or maybe he's forgotten. Mr. Roth is a very smart guy, and has that jive-talking psuedo-Lord Buckley quality that a few other rock-star frontmen famously share, like Ted Nugent, Dee Snider* and Peter Wolf (all guys who do or have done radio, incidentally). I had a former brother-in-law with a similar gift of gab. It's the kind of patter that that semi-intelligent brother-in-laws or uncles or co-workers commonly use to cover up basic insecurities. It can be entertaining, at times.

But Dave also seems... I hate to say it... square. He sounds like a 50-year-old fairly-out-of-touch coddled former rock star. Now - there's nothing saying that a square 50-year-old fairly-out-of-touch coddled former rock star with a well-worn motormouth can't become a good morning radio show host. A metalhead friend of mine, a Dave partisan who's become a regular listener, says he's coming along fairly well and has an interesting take on things. And Howard himself has been saying that Roth deserves at least a year to get good at his gig. Yet the gig might not last that long, according to disgruntled 92.3 staffers. We'll see. I'm rooting for the coddled old bastard, for some reason.

* who had a touching reunion with Howard yesterday - details here - and may be getting a Howard-produced Sirius radio show of own soon. It's interesting how the King of All Media does alot of his radio-boss work on the air.

Bette, talkin' with the 'Cuz, today at 5 on Sirius 103

2006-02-08T10:42:00.000-05:00

I once had the chance to meet Cousin Brucie. It was about 10 years ago, at the Tower Records on Broadway, down near NYU, and "the 'Cuz" was standing near the doorway, cheerily chatting with folks. I wanted to go up to him and say something, but I didn't know what to say - frankly, I was star-struck. I've met a few fairly famous people, but Brucie... I mean, he was part of my childhood. He was - is - a God. A goofy God, certainly a cheerful God, but a God nonetheless. (Murray the K was apparently in full swing when I was a kiddie, doing his "fifth Beatle" bit with the submarine racing and everything, but I don't remember him at all. I guess my older sisters Maggie and Cathie weren't WMCA Good Guys fans. Cousin Brucie was IT.)

Years later, Les Marshak - one of the best voice-over guys I ever had the pleasure to work with, a super nice guy and one of Brucie's closest friends - told me I should've gone over to him to say hello. He told me he likes and appreciates fans... and when you hear the guy, his niceness and genuineness indeed seems real. So, if I ever get a chance again, I will try to muster up the courage.

Meanwhile, today at 5, you can hear Cousin Brucie, cheerful as ever, on his "Talkin' with the Cuz" show on Sirius Stars channel 103 - chatting with Bette Midler, who's promoting her new album of Peggy Lee covers. Bette credits Cousin Brucie for "breaking" her first record, "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy," in 1972. (Remember that one? That was in the heydey of '30s retro, when art deco was becoming a big deal, and when a record like Norman "Hurricane" Smith's "Oh Babe, What Would You Say?" could become a number one hit. That was when I started getting interested in the '30s, in the whole era of depression-era New York - which I still envision in my mind as a Hopper-esque "Nighthawks" nightscape, and the rise of the first "Golden Age of Radio"... I think I was trying to find a way to connect to my father... but I digress. Sorry.) (But aren't such digressions what blogs are for? But I digress further. Oh, never mind.)

Meanwhile, here's a complete, classic WABC Cousin Brucie aircheck from September 9, 1968.

Presenting "Mr. Rhythm" - today at 1 on WFMU

2006-02-08T09:50:00.000-05:00

Today (Wednesday the 8th) from 1 to 2 pm on WFMU 91.1, session drummer Sam Ulano – aka “Mr. Rhythm” – is Irwin’s guest. At age 86, he still happily plays weddings and bar mitzvahs, but there’s a bit more to him than that. Sam’s played and recorded with the top names in jazz and pop; he made regular appearances on the Steve Allen and Ernie Kovacs shows, and gigged with Moondog and Public Image Limited (sitting in on their infamous 1981 "riot show" at the old Ritz); he’s written over 2500 (?!) instruction books, and even recorded a series called "Drum's Fairy Tales" in which he plays wild percussion solos while simultaneously reciting hepcat Mother Goose; in a word, Sam is cool. Listen in as the man brings recordings and recollections about a lifetime behind the drum kit to WFMU's Jersey City studios. (Speaking of longevity, Irwin - described by Robert Christgau as "a tedious ideologue with a hustle", which Irwin seems to think of as some sort of badge of honor - is himself a bit of an old-timer!)

Tonight - a live taping of the Brian Lehrer Show: Were We Misled? A Debate on Pre-War Intelligence

2006-02-08T09:07:00.000-05:00

Brian Lehrer hosts an excellent morning 2-hout talk/call-in show on WNYC every morning; during the subway strike his coverage was unparalleled, with great guests (not the usual suspects), many calls from the subway workers themselves, callers reporting on how their neighborhoods were holding up... every media outlet was going crazy on the story, but Brian's show - by a wide margin - gave a complete, sane, and smart round-up of every day's madness. And the show also felt more authentically New York - more connected to the streets - than anything else out there. You can hear his show every weekday morning on WNYC-AM and FM between 10 and 12 noon (although he's only on FM this morning - the AM side is offering "gavel-to-gavel" the Senate's Wartime Executive Power/NSA Surveillance Authority hearing. Amidst requests for pledges, by the way. Have you given them money yet?)

Tonight at 7pm, Brian will be hosting a live public forum entitled “Were We Misled? A Debate on Pre-War Intelligence,” at the New York Society for Ethical Culture (2 West 64th Street at Central Park West). Admission is free - first-come, first-served - and the panel features Christopher Hitchens, former Florida senator and 2004 presidential candidate Bob Graham, David Corn (editor of The Nation) and Bruce Jackson, co-founder of the neo-con think tank The Project for a New American Century. Fair and balanced? Yep. (Brian hosts the most genuinely fair-and-balanced talk show I've ever heard.)

Look here for suggested readings for the event; the show itself will be heard on Wednesday February 15th at 10am.

And So It Goes: RIP Reuven Frank

2006-02-07T13:06:00.000-05:00

Yes, this is primarily a radio blog, but - as an NBC Historian - I would be remiss not to mourn the passing of Reuven Frank, who was a president of NBC News, and an incredibly important guy in broadcast news history.

I am a bit too young to remember Huntley and Brinkley's nightly show - Reuven was responsible not only for the innovative telecast, but for their pairing - but I do remember the seemingly nightly mentions of dead American boys from Vietnam. And I certainly remember "Good night, David..." "Good night, Chet" - although Reuven later pooh-poohed that particular innovation, despite it becoming a major catch-phrase (as he was quoted in Jeff Kisseloff's fine oral history of television The Box, one of the most fun and readable broadcast history books ever published).

Kansas City Star writer Aaron Barnhart hails Reuven for the great 1980's night-owl classic NBC News Overnight, but I most treasure the even-more-infrequently remembered Weekend, a monthly (!) NBC newsmagazine that ran Saturday nights at 11:30 PM, alternating with the earliest days of Saturday Night Live, hosted by Linda Ellerby and Lloyd Dobbins. I believe this was the show where Linda coined her famous "...and so it goes" tag, and I also believe the show presented the first-ever USA footage of the Sex Pistols in a (worried) news report... overall, the show it was smart, funny, irreverent - if a news show could ever be called "sexy", "Weekend" was it. (Am I saying this just because I had a thing for the young Linda Ellerbee? Ummm...)

Reuven was a throwback, a profoundly thoughtful, innovative and decent man in the TV business, a rapidly vanishing breed. (Boy, do I sound like an old fart, or what?) In searching for a way to tie this posting to the subject of radio, I found this anecdote at the end of the AP/Washington Post obit, about how Reuven - then working at NBC Radio - was considering a job at the just-starting Camel News Caravan, TV's first news show of note:

Though understandably reluctant to make the switch, he wangled a $20 a week raise (to $110). Then he asked his new employer why no one from NBC Radio had seized this TV news writing opportunity.

As Mr. Frank recalled in his 1991 memoir, 'Out of Thin Air,' the answer he received was simple: Nobody in radio "who is worth a damn thinks (television) is going to last."

Miss WCBS-FM? Try "Classic Lite"

2006-02-07T06:20:00.000-05:00

If you happened to listen to 106.7 LiteFM last weekend, you might have been mildly surprised to hear songs that mildly deviated from the station's usual playlist. (WLTW LiteFM's the kind of station where mildness is king - a gameplan that's firmly placed them at the top of the ratings heap, New York's most popular and successful station by a long shot.)

So last weekend the Celine Dion, Michael Bublé and Kelly Clarkson got put on the back burner, and songs like Jim Croce's "Operator", the Beatles' "Please Please Me" and Steam's goofy yet mysteriously haunting "Na Na Hey Hey (Kiss Him Goodbye)" were put in rotation... because the station was having a Classic Lite Weekend. "We got a great response," program director Jim Ryan told the Daily News's David Hinckley. "People really love those old Simon & Garfunkel and Neil Diamond songs that we don't get to play very often on Lite."

The stunt - which apparently got such a great response it will be repeated monthly - was actually devised to publicize Classic Lite, the new HD2 (high-definition) radio station that you can hear as an Internet audio stream here. A recommendation: if your office was the kind of place where the late lamented WCBS-FM was heard, "Classic Lite" will be a perfect replacement. Right now I'm hearing Dionne Warwick's "Alfie" (sigh), and in the last hour or so I've heard such guilty pleasures as the Carpenters' "We've Only Just Begun", Aretha's "Spanish Harlem", Chicago's "Just You 'N' Me", A Taste of Honey's 'Boogie Oogie Oogie", Creedence's "Proud Mary", and (gulp) Andy Gibb's "I Just Want to Be Your Everything".

I like it. OK, so I'm a cheeseball.

Rodney on the 'ROQ in New Yawk!

2006-02-06T14:08:00.000-05:00

KROQ - the legendary Los Angeles rock station - can now be heard streaming live over the Internet. Go to their home page, click on the "Q Stream" button, and: there.

Which means we New Yorkers can finally hear Rodney On The Roq - Rodney Bingenheimer's famed and influential show, running since 1976 - for ourselves, Monday mornings at the somewhat early hour of 3 am ET. (Of course, because I have RadioTime, I can have the streamed show recorded onto my computer while I sleep, then have it in my iPod by the time I have to head to work the next morning. Nyah nyah.)

Rodney, who was Davy Jones' stand-in on The Monkees, has led quite the interesting life, helped countless bands get heard, and has even had a movie made about him. Which I'll get around to seeing soon, I suppose.

Interesting to note that the number one song on KROQ at the moment is Matisyahu's "King Without A Crown" - an catchy number performed by a hasidic rapper. Oy, those kids of today!

Dance, Dance, Dance! (Yowsah Yowsah Yowsah)

2006-02-06T11:12:00.000-05:00

Felix Hernandez has the BEST classic soul radio show. EVER. (Editor's note: Am I doling out too many superlatives too early in my lil' blog's history? Perhaps. But maybe that's because I want to write about the stuff that excites me the most right off the bat. So sue me.)

Anyway, you can hear - wait, let me restate that, you MUST hear - Felix Hernandez's Rhythm Revue, the BEST classic soul radio show EVER, on Saturdays between 10am and 2pm on WBGO-FM 88.3* (sans commercials) and on WRKS-FM 98.7 (avec commercials). The fact you can hear Felix play this kind of music on a Saturday and a Sunday makes NYC weekend life worth living, quite frankly. (I've heard the show described as "perfect car-washing music". Which is right on the money, but it's alot more than that too. It's kinda like defining Thin Lizzy's "The Boys Are Back In Town" as perfect pinball-playing music. Of course, but... there's so much more to it!)

And Felix - god bless 'im - is always taking his show to the stage, deejaying his blissfully fun dance parties late into a weekend night. The music is soulful and danceable and perfect, and the audience - a "gorgeous mosaic" (to quote former mayor Dinkins) of all ages and races - is in heaven. He's got two shows coming up this weekend: at the Celebrate Brooklyn Winter Souljam Dance Party at the Brooklyn Lyceum on Friday Saturday 10 and his Valentine's Dance at Roseland on Saturday February 11. (Click on the links for details.)

* (WBGO, which is a very very fine classic jazz/NPR station out of Newark NJ, is holding their fund-raising drive at the moment. Why they're doing it at the exact time as WNYC, I'll never know. Anyway, they deserve your donations too.)

Oh, so you don't care about the Super Bowl?! Well.

2006-02-05T15:28:00.000-05:00

Ok, if you're gonna be like that, maybe you'd like to listen to WNYC tonight instead of the Super Bowl. (Although it is time for the fund-raising drive, so consider yourself warned. Hey, give money to them, lots, OK?) The evening starts off at 6, on both the AM (820 Khz) and FM (93.9 Mhz) sides, with the always-brilliant (if sometimes twee) This American Life: tonight's show is about "stories that take place on the edge of civilization, just out of sight." Then, at 7 on the FM station*, there's David Garland's Spinning on Air, tonight featuring Mi & L'au (pictured above), two musicians who make sad, floating, and lovely music. They'll sing and play their songs, and talk about guitars reverberating over lakes, cabin fever, and the Halloween night they met.

At 8, David Garland's music blissfully continues, while - on the AM side - you can hear two straightforwardly-named KCRW shows about show-biz: New York Times writer Elvis Mitchell's The Treatment and Variety writer Claude Brodesser's The Business. Then, at 9, flip on over to the FM side (is this getting confusing enough for you?) 'cause you do not want to miss Tom Brokaw - Tom Brokaw! - on the monthly show Mad About Music, where he "reveals his emotional side to host Gilbert Kaplan and the power music plays in his life – from Bach cantatas in the cockpit flying cross country, to Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man, Mozart’s Requiem and the American classic 'Shenandoah,' that touches his Missouri River roots and has been picked to be played at his funeral." So there you go. (Have you ever thought about the music to be played at your funeral? As for me, I hope somebody plays "Buckaroo" by Buck Owens and his Buckaroos... at the right moment, of course. Hopefully after everybody starts to walk towards the refreshment table.)

*(On the AM side at 7, there's a replay of yesterday's Studio 360, which will talk about the Super-Bowl-unfriendly subject of Psychoanalysis. "From Freudian slips to videogames to The Sopranos," says the show's website, "we’ll look at Sigmund Freud’s long shadow on our culture". Hmm. Speaking of psychoanalysis, you might need some after listening to Joe Frank's staggeringly weird and innovative show at 11, also on 820 AM.)

The New Golden Age of Radio? Yep.

2006-02-05T13:21:00.000-05:00

Here's an article from the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune declaring we're in "The New Golden Age of Radio".

I agree - but not just because of satellite radio. We're entering a new Golden Age for several reasons: (a) satellite radio, yeah, but also (b) the exploding new world of podcasting, (c) the fact that the "terrestrial radio" industry is attempting to compete with these new technologies with new ideas, (d) the fact that "terrestrial radio" is cooperating with these new technologies, and (e) the advent of the "Radio TiVo".

I'd say these are very interesting and stimulating Radio Days indeed - which is why I've started this blog.

Turn off the TV and LISTEN to the Super Bowl!!

2006-02-05T10:04:00.000-05:00

A Radical Suggestion for This Most American Of All Religious Holidays: why not turn the damned TV off tonight and LISTEN to the Super Bowl on the radio?? There are so many cool ways to do it! Consider:

- tune in old-school-style by catching the official CBS Radio-Westwood One network radio broadcast at WFAN 660 AM today, starting at 4 PM, with the classic, reassuring and post-scandalous voice of Marv Albert at the helm, with the help of Boomer Esiason, John Dockery, Jim Gray, and Bonnie Bernstein.

- you can listen via the Internet to Sirius Satellite Radio's NFL Radio Channel - hearable today for free via RealAudio - with all the pre-game action you could possibly shake a stick at, leading into a simulcast of the official CBS Radio broadcast tonight.

- Go to NFL.com's Field Pass and request a seven-day free trial. All set? Now you're ready to listen to the game in a myriad of wondrous ways! As long as your computer has RealAudio, you can hear:

the Pittsburgh Steelers hometown radio coverage
the Seatle Seahawks hometown radio coverage
the direct press box audio from the game
the Ford Field announcer (interesting!)
BBC Radio (hear the game described with a clipped upper-crust English accent!)
Canal + Spain (the game in Spanish!)
TV 2 Denmark (in Danish!)
NTV + Russia (in Russian!)
BeTV (in French!)
SMG (Chinese Mandarin!)
NTV Japan (in Japanese!)

(PS - I did suggest turning off your TV tonight, but it might be fun to listen to the Danish or Mandarin feed while you're watching the telecast, no?)

- for you Sirius subscribers, you can hear all of the above international feeds, plus the already-discussed NFL Channel, as part of the company's mad crazy radio coverage.

- last but not least for you Sirius subscribers (especially for those of you who don't give a crap about the Super Bowl itself): you can celebrate the day by listening to any number of goofy Sirius programming "stunts". Three of my favorites:

In tribute to the Rolling Stones halftime show, the Sirius Blues station (Channel 74) will have its Fantasy Halftime Show, speculating on which tunes the band will play during halftime in Detroit -and spinning the ones they should - at 6pm ET tonight.
SIRIUS Pops (Channel 86) launches the Sousa Bowl at 8 pm ET, during which Sousa' s classic compositions will be performed by the top US university marching bands, while Symphony Hall's (Channel 80) Super Bowl Battle will offer alternating selections by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, starting at 6:30 pm ET.
Jam On's (Channel 17) The Phish Bowl will feature hosts Jonathan Schwartz and Adam Foley pitting their favorite Phish concerts against each other, while Andy Bernstein, author of the Phish book "The Pharmer's Almanac Vol. 1-4", referees. To replicate the four quarters of a football game, both hosts will present four songs from their chosen Phish concert to support their argument as to which is the "greatest Phish concert", starting at 7 pm ET. (Yes, this is waaaay geeky.)

Radio News You Can't Use - or Can You?

2006-02-02T14:27:00.001-05:00

I'm loving WFMU's Beware of the Blog* - as a matter of fact, I'm adding it as a "permalink" on the right side of the page. That's where I discovered Adventures in Amplitude Modulation, which I frothed about yesterday.

Today I'm totally digging Liz B's "Radio News You Can't Use", which is so chock-full of the kind of stuff I want this blog to be about that I'm including as many links as I can find:

February 2, 2006
January 5, 2006
December 1, 2005
November 1, 2005
October 4, 2005
September 1, 2005
August 2, 2006
July 2, 2005
June 2, 2005

Liz B's Tuesday 9am-12 Noon WFMU show, described as "fist-pumping, air-drumming freeform mayhem", is archived here. You make me dizzy, Miss Liz B.!

* a nod, of course, to Burt Bacharach's fine 1958 "Tequila"-pastiche, "Beware of the Blob"

Adventures in Amplitude Modulation!!

2006-02-01T13:08:00.000-05:00

Just found this amazingly cool thread, called Adventures in Amplitude Modulation, at WFMU's BEWARE OF THE BLOG, about the art of AM and shortwave radio listening. This is MUST reading - OK, must reading for me - so up my alley it's insane. (The radio pictured here is a GE Superadio, which is the best currently available radio, bar none, for the romance and mystery of listening to AM radio, especially long-distance nighttime AM radio... sigh... which is a big part of why I love radio.)

Wednesday nights: the best worst talk show ever - Seven Second Delay

2006-02-01T10:57:00.002-05:00

Imagine a radio show where two hosts bring in their iPods and hook them into the control board. Imagine that one of the hosts is the station's perpetually exasperated program director, the other is an Ed Wynn soundalike and fairly successful comedy writer with self-esteem issues. The comedy writer (Andy Breckman, creator of Monk) claims his iPod - filled with Billy Joel, Beach Boys, James Taylor, and John Cougar Mellencamp - is PERFECT, the best iPod in the world, and that the station director's (WFMU'S Ken Freedman) iPod must be horrible because it contains "bad" music, i.e. the kind of free-form "hippie" music WFMU plays.

So the guys put their iPods on shuffle, then have callers review the first 10 seconds of each guy's songs, without telling the listeners who's iPod they're listening to, and the callers have to say which song is "better". After Andy's songs reach an early triumph with voters, the whole show ends up in a tie. Meanwhile, both hosts disparage the show, each other, and the listeners (well, Andy disparages the listeners, Ken shows them a fair amount of respect).

That was two weeks ago. The whole show was - I swear - incredibly funny. It almost always is.

So tonight (Wednesday) night, between 6 and 7 on WFMU (91.1 around the city and 90.1 in the Hudson Valley), I advise you to listen to Seven Second Delay. Call in, too. (Make sure to tell them you're a "first-time caller, long-time listener".) It's really really funny; here's a fine Slate piece on the show (which nominated it as a "Podcast of the Week"):

The show is a long series of efforts by Andy to come up with clever ideas for segments that involve listeners, many of which crash and burn. But they're usually very funny. (In one of Mike's favorites, Andy and Ken brought in their kids and made a Solomonic listener declare which one was the better father.) Breckman also shares Hollywood stories from time to time, and the show's "benediction" sounds more like a prayer you'd hear at church or synagogue in Beverly Hills:

Dear Lord
May My Show Succeed
And May The Shows of My Friends Fail
And Yet May I Still Be Perceived
As a Team Player
Amen.

You can hear archived shows here or here (as a podcast). You can also download the shows for free as an iTunes podcast. Listen.

RIP Dumont

2006-01-31T16:05:00.000-05:00

OK, this post isn't about Radio, but it is about New York City's fascinating broadcast history, which I adore: here's a cool Hollywood Reporter article about the 50th Anniversary (sorta) of the demise of the Dumont Network.

Dumont, in the very very early days of network television (late '40s-early '50s), was the "fourth network" - a true competitor to NBC and CBS - and was probably ahead of ABC-TV in terms of programming and technology, at least in the beginning. The network's amazing history (best known as being the place where Jackie Gleason debuted his most legendary characters, and where Captain Video patrolled the universe) has been written about in a couple of recent books. (This Reason Magazine review of one of the books points out how times haven't really changed all that much at the good 'ol FCC.)

Dumont's flagship affiliate in New York was Channel 5. A few years back, I was able to get into the channel's studios on on 205 East 67th street, and I looked up into the rafters - and could still see some Dumont logos spray-painted onto the lights!

Joey Reynolds - New York's one and only late-night alcohol-free cocktail party host and raconteur

2006-01-25T14:48:00.000-05:00

A nice David Hinckley story on the 10th anniversary of The Joey Reynolds Show, which airs every weeknight on WOR-AM 710 between 1 and 5am.

Joey has a long, rich history as a deejay from the "classic" era of Top 40: you can read about (and even listen to, in the book's enclosed CD) those days in the indispensibly fun Ben Fong-Torres book The Hits Just Keep on Coming: The History of Top 40 Radio. (You'll read that, back in the day, Joey was - gasp - anti-Beatles! But so was another radio hero of mine, Jean Shepherd. At least Jean was, that is, until he gained some respect for the Fabs after his fascinating '65 interview with them, which you should read. But I digress.)

Joey's night-owl show is wonderful - filled with stories upon stories, laughs between friends, cornball jokes, surprising insights, funny and fascinating chats with authors and singers and has-beens and wanna-bes and very very minor and occasionally major celebs. It sounds, and feels, very New York, old-school showbizzy, in an unforced way so unhip it's incredibly hip. (Consider him a more entertaining and less off-putting Joe Franklin.) Next to Art Bell's weekend show (who's thankfully returning in full force - more about him soon), it's the best late-night radio on the New York airwaves.

The "fizz" of a great segue

2006-01-25T14:10:00.001-05:00

Part of me wants Jack FM to go to hell, because they threw WCBS-FM off the air.

On the other hand, their iPod-on-shuffle playlist often leads to (in my opinion, of course, your mileage may vary) dazzling segues.

For instance, last Saturday, the station went from Nick Gilder's late '70s guilty pleasure "Hot Child in the City" into Nirvana's "All Apologies".

That's the kind of absurdist segue that I frickin' LOVE. You don't expect it. A deejay with "taste" wouldn't think of putting the two songs together. How dare taint poor ol' Kurt's '90s angst with pure & silly pop cheese?

Yet, when I heard that, I swear, it created a kind-of "fizz" in my brain. I love hearing unexpected songs slamming into each other, especially when differing genres get thrown into the mix, 'cause my brain craves such a surprise: it creates new synapses (or something like that).

Imagine a world where Nick G. and Kurt C. were treated as equals - in the sense they both created great sounding American pop soundscapes... imagine a world where rock hipsters and un-selfconcious pop fans rocked, side by side. Imagine a world where "cheesy pop" songs (like, say, the teen epic "More Than a Feeling", or "Behind Closed Doors") get the credit they often deserve - as works of art that often get to the heart of human emotion more perfectly than many other better-acclaimed artworks. Imagine a world that... OK, I'll shut up.

Speaking of Nirvana and '70s pop cheese, there's wonderful video of Kurt and the boys running through - quite non-ironically - a version of Terry Jacks' "Seasons in the Sun". Slate's James Sullivan writes:

Having switched roles—Kurt Cobain on drums, Dave Grohl on bass, Krist Novoselic on guitar—they exhibit a funereal seriousness that might reflect their lack of skills on unfamiliar instruments. It's more tempting, though, to believe that impossibly maudlin tune is hitting them right in the gut...

However we hear the song—as a heartbreaking suicide note or an unforgivably mawkish tug on our emotions—it remains lodged in the collective cranium. "Strange how potent cheap music is," Noel Coward once remarked. The secret of the enduring appeal of "Seasons in the Sun" is just that simple. How will we face our own final days—with grace, humility, a defensive sneer, or a loud guffaw? It's a sad song about death, and death gets us every time.

Why Radio is Better than TV Pt. 1

2006-01-23T16:15:00.000-05:00

NPR radio news is becoming the refuge for more and more TV journalists in search of a place to create good, solid broadcast journalism, says the Wall Street Journal. (This article is also viewable here in case the WSJ link disappears.)

Thursday on Leonard Lopate's show: Why People Die By Suicide

2006-01-23T13:26:00.000-05:00

This Thursday, on WNYC's consistently excellent and unapologetically bookish Leonard Lopate Show - which airs every weekday between 12 noon and 2pm on both AM 820 and 93.9 FM, and can also be heard via the Internet, if you click on the links on the station's home page - Leonard interviews Thomas Joiner on his new book Why People Die by Suicide.

Here's a fascinating excerpt, as a PDF file.

Meanwhile, the rest of this week's schedule in an unapologetically link-rich format:

TUESDAY
*Former CIA field commander Gary Berntsen with a behind-the-scenes account of tracking down Bin Laden (Jawbreaker)
*Jazz trumpeter Charles Tolliver
*Lisa Fugard and her new novel, Skinner’s Drift
*Jonathan Kaplan on his education as a war surgeon (Contact Wounds)

WEDNESDAY
*James Carville and Paul Begala on the future of the Democratic Party, and of America (Take It Back)
*Nick Laird and his novel, Utterly Monkey
*Marianne Legato on Why Men Never Remember and Women Never Forget
*Norah Vincent on her experiences living as a man (Self-Made Man)

THURSDAY
*The latest in the show's Underreported feature
*Bernard Henri-Levy on his experiences traveling in the footsteps of de Tocqueville (American Vertigo)
*New Yorker staff writer Alec Wilkinson and Thomas Joiner on Why People Die by Suicide

FRIDAY
*Dramaturg Oskar Eustis, artistic director of the Public Theater, and Rosie Perez on 50 years of the Public
*Darrin McMahon with a history of Happiness
*Film historian Roman Gubern and filmmaker Jordi Torrent (“East of the Compass”) on 100 years of Catalan Cinema
*All about suspension bridges for the weekly series, “Please Explain”
*Something from the WNYC Archives on “Past Present”

(PS to my early readers, if you're out there: I'm still experimenting with this blog. The above information would be best presented as part of a radio listings website, I know; I don't plan on reprinting the schedules like this too often. But... just trying things out at the moment, I suppose. Stay tuned.)

3 Questions for Bob Shannon

2006-01-20T10:42:00.000-05:00

All hail Bob Shannon, the CBS-FM deejay who abruptly lost his gig when the station changed to the Jack format (which is doing quite poorly in the ratings, serves 'em right). (OK, I'll admit I often like the "iPod-on-shuffle" playlist of Jack. But I wish that Infinity had "flipped" a less happening station - say, Mix 102.7 - to the format instead of CBS, which had such a great legacy and such a great amount of local goodwill. New York City without a station that'd play "On Broadway", "I Love How You Love Me" or "5 O'Clock World"? For shame.)

He is asked three questions by Time Out New York here.

Bob (a fellow Syracuse U. alumni, yay) was CBS-FM's greatest and funniest deejay, and co-wrote one of the great pop music trivia books of all time - Behind the Hits. (In honor of the late Wilson Pickett*, check out his entry on In The Midnight Hour, with the unforgettable story of how Jerry Wexler "danced" the groove in the studio.) Get this guy back on the air!!

*One of my all-time soul faves is "99 1/2 (Won't Do)", co-written by Wilson and Steve Cropper, who contributed perhaps the most brilliant guitar intro of all time. Got to have a hundred! Damn. Wilson always gave his all, was the epitome of soul, and will be greatly missed.

Q: What should I listen to tomorrow (Saturday) night? A: AM Radio Oldies on WABC and WNYC!

2006-01-20T08:25:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow night - and every Saturday night, for awhile at least - you have 2, two, TWO! great options for oldies (depending on your definition of "oldies") on the AM dial (which is the way to hear oldies, I'd say. At least it's the authentic way).

On WNYC-AM 820, between 8 and 10 pm Saturdays, you can hear Danny Stiles classily present his Big Band Sounds show. Danny plays music from the 20's through the '50s - not exclusively Big Band, mind you, just classic inventive American Tin Pan Alley pop you'll hear nowhere else. Danny's got an amazing collection of music (most of it on the original vinyl) and an incredible knowledge about the singers, the songs and the songwriters. There's nothing like driving around on a Saturday night, with Danny on the radio, pretending - for a moment - you're on your way to a glamorous nightclub, partying like it's 1939.

For oldies of a more recent vintage (i.e. stuff that I remember from my childhood) it warms the heart that 77 WABC is playing an oldies format on Saturday nights from 6-10 pm. Deejay Mark Simone plays old WABC soundchecks and jingles amidst the hits. There's even a Message Board dedicated to it. Rock on!

RadioTime - a TiVo for Radio?

2006-01-19T08:19:00.000-05:00

I am trying out a computer program called RadioTime. It is a wanna-be TiVo for radio, one of several options that are out there. (Last year I had the very cool if lo-fi Radio YourWay, but I misplaced the damn thing after a month of two, which SUCKED.)

As we speak, the RadioTime program is recording Air America's 7-9am offering, The Rachel Maddow Show*; after a quite complicated set-up last night, it was relatively easy to tell the thing to record the show. It's now making an mp3 recording of the RealAudio feed of WLIB, which it will then place into my iTunes library, so I can listen to the show on my iPod later today. Neat, huh? I'll let you know if it's worth it. I have it as a 10-day free trial; it costs $39 a year to subscribe.

(If I'm happy with it, I may spring for the RadioTime-plus-RadioShark option...)

* one of the shows recommended in that TONY article

On the AM and FM Dial: Life after Howard

2006-01-18T23:08:00.000-05:00

Here’s a handy David Hinckley round-up of the most recent NYC radio ratings "book". Guess who was number 1 at the end of 2006 - with the highest Arbitron numbers of any NYC radio station since 1995? Why, it was WLTW 106.7, with their noxious month-long all-Christmas song format! Wheee!

Speaking of handy articles, here’s a who-to-keeps-your-eyes-on piece from Time Out New York on some of the more interesting radio shows in the post-Howard radio landscape. TONY (next to the Daily News) does the best job of covering Radio news in the city.

As your intrepid radio reporter – OK, as your wanna-be intrepid radio reporter – I’m going to make an effort to hear all the radio shows discussed in that article, and report back to you on them. That’s my goal, to be able to listen to many of the radio shows one might be able to listen to on local AM, local FM or Sirius (plus the occasional podcast), and give them a write-up of some kind. Can I do this? Will I do this? And does anyone (sniff) care?

Sirius Disorder: No Static At All

2006-01-18T17:02:00.002-05:00

Meg Griffin's Sirius Disorder - Channel 24 on your Sirius Satellite radio dial - is so damn wonderful, I can't help thinking that somebody is going to yank it off the air at any second.

Any radio station that can play and mix up such astonishingly great and diverse music (from Conjunto Tipico Ladi's “Un Jibaro en Nueva York” to Debussy's "Danses Sacrée et Profane" to an absurdist cover of "Tighten Up" by the Yellow Magic Orchestra) sounds like it has to be at death's door.

Why? Because musical variety in a station's play list is "commercial suicide", and because "free form" radio has been dead for so long. (The great WFMU, of course, excepted. Though I prefer Sirius Disorder more cause the deejays there have less to prove than the usual 'FMU jock, who's usually trying too hard to play stuff that's WEIRD and "so bad it's good" and hipper-than-thou.)

It's been decades since music programmers like Lee Abrams* made sure that lowly commercial FM deejays would nevermore choose their own playlists. (Did you ever see the movie FM? Sundance has been showing it recently. It seems so quaint now - to think that the jocks of a commercial FM station would ever make a stand against corporate control. Those were different times, as Lou Reed would say.)

God Bless Meg Griffin and God Bless Sirius Disorder. Maybe I can get used to the fact that they exist. But a radio station that good has to be doomed... doesn't it?

* who, ironically enough, now programs XM, Sirius's competitor...

Mix 102.7: Music for Manicures

2006-01-18T14:48:00.000-05:00

Today I got a manicure! Umm. Well. Normally I don't get manicures - today was my second, the first was right before a job interview a year or two ago. But today they were offering them for free at CNBC's Global Headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, where there is some sort of CNBC Global celebration going on. (I also got a free shoe shine as part of that celebration. Cool.) I don't work for CNBC actually - I work for NBC Universal's Cable Networks, where I format TV shows for USA Network and the Sci Fi Channel on the second floor. Formatting TV shows means I get them ready to go on the air - I make sure they look OK, sound OK, are edited to an exact time length, etc. etc. Exciting stuff.

So I go and get my manicure, things are slow and behind schedule, there are many women milling about, I'm the only guy there, I'm embarassed. (Look, y'know, I am confident in my sexuality, but... getting your nails done seems like such a... girlie thing. One of the manicuristas assures me she does the nails of a garbageman every Friday, so his nails can look good for the weekend. OK. Umm.)

At some point I notice that, in the background, the sound of Mix 102.7, "New York's Classic Dance Mix", is gently wafting across the executive dining room. The manicure ladies have brought their own boom box with them! And the station's women-in-the-office-friendly "Mix" indeed provides a reassuring sound; we hear Prince ("When Doves Cry" - still a genius song, one of the ladies getting her nails done sings along with every word), and - and... I'm trying hard to remember the other songs, but, a hour or so later, I can't. I do remember there was a new-sounding cover of the O'Jays classic "I Love Music", sung by a female group. Looking at the station's current advertising banner, the artists pictured are: Madonna, Tina Turner, Cher, Prince, Jennifer Lopez. All incredibly famous and Oprah-ready women, with the exception of Prince, an incredibly famous and Oprah-ready guy very much comfortable with his femininity.

I get the feeling that the Mix 102.7 songs are not designed to be listened to in the same way I listen to, say, the music-nerd-friendly songs on my current favorite radio station in the world Sirius Disorder. The Mix songs are familiar, gently aggresive, upbeat, workmanlike (workwomanlike?). The songs sound right as the nice manicurist lady works on my nails. (A pleasure, by the way.) The songs sound just right as I chat with the ladies, playing my role as the bashful guy who's interupting this pleasant office girl ritual.

Some music radio stations - maybe most of commercial FM stations in New York, now that I think about it - play their songs because they "sound" right. It has to do with sound frequencies plus "vibe", and the body's reaction to those frequencies and "vibe". I can imagine music directors being able to choose whether new songs can fit in their playlist within seconds, just because it's not too hard to know if the song's "sound" is right, once you know what the intended audience is gonna be. Definitely Lite FM, for instance, or WPLJ - two other stations that are competing for the same audience that Mix 102.7 looks for.

Years ago, I used to work an occasional night shift, editing promos for USA Network in Jersey City; if you worked late enough, you could get a town car to drive you back to Manhattan (where I lived at the time). Always - always - those town cars would have their radios tuned to CD101.9. And I would sink back in those Lincoln Continental seat cushions and gaze sleepily at the walls of the Holland Tunnel, and damn if those "smooth jazz" songs didn't sound just right. Now: I am a hardcore rock snob, and I wouldn't want to be caught dead admitting that I enjoy the gooey pablum of CD101.9-type music.

But - in those moments of sleepiness after a hard night's work of tension and coffee - I swear to you, that gooey pablum sounded right. It was as if the frequencies of the songs were perfect. I could feel my brain and body relax, I could feel myself feel safe as I unwound, as the Lincoln Continental bounced comfortably across Houston.

Sometimes the sound is what matters (he typed with his newly-manicured fingers, strangely relaxed and at peace with the world.)

Diamond Dave: Satellite Marketing Tool?

2006-01-18T11:55:00.000-05:00

For the purposes of this here blog, I am still trying to get around to listening to more of David Lee Roth - I'm actually listening to Howard in the mornings (somebody's got to) - but for now here's a pretty scathing and detailed blog review of the show so far, with a cute headline: "Sirius Satellite and XM Radio’s Newest Marketing Tool: David Lee Roth".

Writes David Schultz: "In the absence of guests, well, to be fair, interesting guests, Roth must carry the show with his wit and charm. Instead, Roth falls back on stories of his recent exploits as a New York EMT and rehashes old grudges with Sammy Hagar and Eddie Van Halen. In 1985, when Roth oozed charisma, this might be interesting. In 2006, it's painful radio."

All We Need Is Radio Google

2006-01-17T12:52:00.000-05:00

(This blog is quite new, and I'm still sorta deciding what it's mission statement oughta be. So forgive me for thinking out loud here: should I be covering the Google-buys-dMarc story at all? Will that help my intended "readers" - if any show up - find and enjoy great new radio entertainment? Not really. But should I just relax and write about this interesting new-meets-old media story? 'Cause I am interested in the whole old-meets-new media thing. Hell, nobody's reading this anyway... yet. OK, here goes.)

What doesn't Google want to be? Do they want to be a big-ass media behemoth? Yep. Certainly they want to be a heavy-hitter in the radio industry, as they've just announced that they're buying a company named dMarc Broadcasting for $102 million up front. dMarc serves as an intermediary between radio stations and advertisers via their radio automation software. Google apparently wants to hook up advertisers with highly-directly local "spot-buying", using the same kind of technology and thinking that they use in their powerful "Adwords" program.

"They want to serve as an advertising aggregator where they can offer a multimedia advertising package to their customers that might otherwise go an ad agency," says Tim Ghriskey, chief investment officer of Solaris Capital, in The Street.

"Guess anyone still entertaining the notion of Google as a technology company versus a media company can put that to bed," writes Danny Sullivan on the SearchEngineWatch blog."Putting ads on radio isn't really a technology business. Nor is it central to that mission of organizing the world's information. Neither is putting ads into print or slapping them up all over the web, either."

(OK, I've decided why I wanted to write about this story. It's radio history in the making. Google is a giant mover and shaker in the media business, and quite possibly the most interesting growing-media-behemoth to watch at the moment. But will this affect your listening experience? I doubt it.)

PS - another interesting take here.

My other radio is a Sirius

2006-01-17T11:33:00.002-05:00

Cool. When I get my next Rolls, it'll already have Sirius in the dashboard - and a lifetime subscription. Howard's farted Also Sprach Zarathustra is going to sound so crisp and elegant in my nice new car!

XM Radio has had the edge in getting their equipment ready for cars, although it seems that Sirius's auto industry "partners" list is growing too. Yep, it's a race.

Vin & Shep: the soul brothers of New York Radio

2006-01-16T21:22:00.000-05:00

Although this post isn’t really about WNYC radio, I’ll start off by saying that I think that it’s the best radio station in New York – maybe the best public radio station in the country (especially on the AM side) –and that I listen to it a lot. A LOT. Because of that fact, I am a proud subscriber, with my checking account debited $10.83 a month (it’s pretty painless that way). And, because I give them all that dough, they give me my choice of a “free” gift every year – you know the drill, take your pick, an umbrella, tote bag, CDs, the usual stuff.

A few months ago, I opted for a copy of “Excelsior, You Fathead!”, the recently published biography on Jean Shepherd (1921-1999), written lovingly by Eugene B. Bergmann. Leonard Lopate did a show on the book, which is why I suppose it was offered as a WNYC premium. (You need Real Audio installed on your computer to hear many, if not most, of these these audio links.) Eugene sums up “Shep’s” appeal pretty succinctly in the interview: “He had this ability to talk to you as though you were the only one. It was as though he and you were carrying on a dialogue. He was a great conversationalist, except that he was the one doing the talking.”

Jean is probably best known today as the writer and narrator of the classic holiday movie ”A Christmas Story”. But his WOR-AM radio show, to me, is why he “matters”. Listen to him. You can catch him on WBAI every Tuesday morning at 5:15 am (!) on Max Schmid’s great “Mass Backwards” show. If you can’t get up that early – or don’t have a “Radio TiVo” hooked up just yet - take a listen to “A Day at the Races”, his broadcast of January 7, 1965, which is available (along with quite a few other shows) at the Mass Backwards website.

And – and! – if you know how to download podcasts via Apple’s iTunes, you can download archived Jean shows right to your iPod. Seriously. I mean, jeez, that’s great stuff. (I have plenty to say about podcasts – I love ‘em – I’ll get around to it. I swear. There’s so much to talk about…)

When I got the book – which I love, even though it jumps all over the place chronologically, which confuses this easily-confused reader - I noticed that Vin Scelsa is quoted on the back cover: “Ain’t no one else ever gonna come close to what the man accomplished… in the dark… with a microphone, a kazoo, and 50,000 watts!” Now Vin is a hero of mine – and once I started listening to him on his Sirius radio show last night, I realized that Vin is the spiritual inheritor of Jean Shepherd. Listening to Scelsa is the closest thing you’ll find to listening to Shepherd: they are both brilliant, soulful, only-in-New York genius radio monologists, inventive and funny and kind and obsessive and generously talented.

Listen to them – both. You need to.

My favorite Scelsa show, ever, took place sometime in mid to late June 1982, shortly after the writer John Cheever died. Vin spoke eloquently of the man, quoted from his books – now this was on a weeknight on a major commercial radio station, WNEW-FM, if you can believe it, seems impossible now – and ended up segueing into the Talking Heads’ “Once In a Lifetime”. With just a song, Vin brilliantly paralleled John Cheever and David Byrne’s brilliant portrayals of bewildering American suburbia (“And You May Tell Yourself/This Is Not My Beautiful House!/And You May Tell Yourself/This Is Not My Beautiful Wife!”) And: I got chills. I’ll never forget it.

Vin’s “Idiot’s Delight” can be heard on Saturday nights, between 8pm and midnight, on WFUV-FM; his shows are archived as Windows Media files here. You can also hear him on the FANTASTIC free-form Sirius station “Sirius Disorder” (Channel 24), which just may be my favorite music radio station ever, on Wednesdays and Thursdays between 12 noon and 2pm, with replays of the daytime shows on Sunday nights at 8pm and Thursday nights at 1am.

Howard vs. Diamond Dave

2006-01-16T17:31:00.000-05:00

Here's a New York Times "Critic's Notebook" comparing the radio debuts of Sirius's Howard Stern and 92.3 K-Rock's David Lee Roth. (Editor's note: I originally linked directly to this article, but as it's now a "Times Select" offering, I am reprinting the article in its entirety.)

January 12, 2006
Earnestly Pursuing the Gentle Art of Nastiness Behind a Radio Microphone
By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN

David Lee Roth's new morning radio show has made one thing clear: Howard Stern is one ingenious pervert.

It's not that Diamond Dave has been knocking Howard, whom he replaced on some several stations on Jan. 3 as Mr. Stern moved to satellite radio. In fact, Mr. Roth has been smarmy and collegial about the King of Difficult to Acquire New Media. But Mr. Roth makes the point about Mr. Stern's pervy ways by contrast with his own, since Mr. Roth's own efforts to come across as a dirty devil - boasting of girls girls girls and chugging Jack Daniel's - seem pitiful compared to even the slightest heavy-breathing utterance of Mr. Stern's.

Meanwhile, on Sirius Satellite Radio, where "The Howard Stern Show" started with some tech difficulties on Monday, Mr. Stern has turned in respectably true-to-form programs that display his maestro skills with his nasty-geek persona. So far, he hasn't departed much from the tone and structure of his old Infinity radio show; though on Sirius he's now free to say what he wants, he has resolved to curse sparingly. He's still panting after lesbians, pushing the subject of genital grooming and laughing at people like Pat O'Brien, the television host who was said to have left obscene voice-mail messages for an acquaintance. Mr. Stern also barrels into impolitic topics that the rest of us are afraid to broach: Yesterday he asked a gay radio personality whether his lisp was an affectation or a speech impediment.

Mr. Stern, as his fans know, is born for radio: his on-air character is an unwashed basement figure, best kept out of sight - a haggard masturbator and morbid misanthrope who must hang out with deformed and desperate men because he can hardly perform with women. The fact that the pinup girls who come on his show now seem to want to have sex with him is, in his telling, evidence only of the women's ambition and depravity.

The Stern character simply hates his guests and co-hosts as he hates himself; he's a mean little pornography-addicted freak whose self-loathing reverses itself only in fits of equally grotesque narcissism, as when he flashes his listeners with a dirty raincoat by disclosing disgusting secrets about himself. But his relentlessly loser style makes him seem honest, and wins him a privileged relationship with the truth; fans believe what he says - about everything from politics to back pain to etiquette. He has hewn his character brilliantly.

By contrast, Mr. Roth is a jaunty frontman - really, Mr. Stern's opposite. In his heyday singing with Van Halen, he was a red-blooded dude who bounced around, yelped the high notes and handily pulled the bikini chicks. There was nothing depressing about Diamond Dave's sexuality: it was happy, voracious, superficial. He postured with the best of the hard-rock studs, strutting around with his moussey hair and Spandex pants. Had Mr. Roth's big-dog persona met Mr. Stern's gamma-male one, they would not have partied together.

But on radio, the tables are turned. A doctor's son who worked recently as an emergency medical technician, Mr. Roth is far too square for the morning slot. His stories about his drunken antics of the late 1970's - or, worse, about the 50's in crazy Greenwich Village, where his uncle Manny owned the Café Wha? - ring obsolete. And he won't reveal much about his life now, refusing to answer even routine questions from fans about his love life. As a result, his sanctimony on subjects from drugs to plastic surgery to celebrity misdeeds, is unearned. If he won't say anything about himself but bland boasts about his glory days, why should he get to tell us what to do?

Finally, Mr. Roth's tenor, which is can be poignant and otherworldly on Van Halen songs like "Jamie's Crying," is surprisingly grating and banal when he's speaking. Listeners to regular radio will miss Mr. Stern's low, unerring, New York-inflected voice - and the depth of weirdness it unfailingly conveys.

I think the writer is pretty much on the money. I have tried listening to "Diamond" Dave a bit, and will try harder for the purposes of this blog (assuming I try to keep it going), but so far his show has been pretty bad, painful to listen to, a real slog. I wish Dave was doing what he was put on earth to do: fronting Van Halen.

I will say that Howard has taken pains not to attack Dave - he has said it takes at least a year for a new radio host to get into the swing of things. Of course, Howard being Howard, he also likes to say he "doesn't care" about what happens on FM radio anymore (although he mentioned on the first day on Sirius how much he misses "hitting the button" in his old K-Rock studio to being heard instantaneously by his many more millions of fans on the FM band).

Which is part of the fun of being a Stern fan: seeing through and psychoanalyzing the grotesque narcissism of a mean little pornography-addicted freak... our mean little pornography-addicted freak.

What's On? Essential NYC Radio Resources

2006-01-16T16:12:00.000-05:00

Before we go on much further, I wanted to post a few important links for fans (or aspiring fans) of New York City radio:

The New York Radio Guide
The New York Radio Message Board
The NY Daily News Entertainment pages (look for David Hinckley's column)

Firstly: the essential-est resource is the New York Radio Guide, which cheerfully presents itself as a one-stop shop for all things New York Radio. You’ll see news briefs on the main page, weekly highlights, plus – coolest of all – a “What’s On The Radio?” page. Go there, click on the time of day, and find out what’s going on on every NYC metro area frequency RIGHT NOW. Way cool. (If only the recommendations were guided and/or opinionated…)

Speaking of opinions: another fantastic site is the New York Radio Message Board. This won’t really appeal to the casual listener, but if you care (or come to care) about NYC radio and the business of NYC radio, this is the place to be. There’s a lot of “inside baseball” here, plus more than a little “radio-sucks-but-it-used-to-be-great”-ism, but I ain't gonna lie: I will lean heavily on this message board for news of the scene.

Speaking of nostalgia: it's no accident that the oft-grumpy New York Radio Message Board is hosted by the Musicradio 77 WABC nostalgia pages. This is an incredibly fun site that's dedicated to memorializing the good old days of WABC-AM, the quintessential classic Top 40 radio station. (Check out this Real Audio clip of the great Ron Lundy doing his thing on June 27, 1970.)

An interesting thing about radio fandom is that it's so rife with nostalgia... it seems that those who care more than a bit about the medium usually assume its best days are behind it. Hell, I feel that way sometimes. When I started to get interested in radio - in the mid-'70s, when there was an upsurge in appreciation of the "Golden Age of Radio" - I was fascinated by the great past too. (I now think that my interest with OTR - the hobby of Old-Time Radio - was, in part, a way I was trying to bond with my Dad, who lived through and loved that era. But more about that later.)

I don't know if I can posit that radio's best days are actually ahead of it (despite what Howard Stern's publicity machine says). Certainly the medium today is a lean mean money-making machine, leaner and meaner than ever, which makes creativity and imagination and passion often hard to come by on the airwaves. I certainly love, and will discuss frequently, the "good ol'' days" of Radio here. With that said, I hope this blog will help turn you on to great radio that's being made now, and show you that the medium - which is now being distributed via AM, FM, satellite, internet AND podcasts - is very much alive.

One final link: by far the best reporter of New York radio news is the New York Daily News's indefatigable David Hinckey: you can find his almost-daily columns in the paper's Entertainment section. Newsday, the Post and the Times also report on the radio scene, but more sporadically. David - a sharp, concise, and humane writer - is there, day after day, serving as the main and most reliable source of what's going on on the local airwaves. Thank God.

I Love Radio.

2006-01-16T02:28:00.000-05:00

I Love Radio.

Hola amigos. My name is Alec Cumming, and welcome to my new experiment, this here blog, which I am calling (for now at least) The Radio Gazette. The initial purpose for this blog is to revive an idea I had a couple of years ago - to create a sort-of Entertainment Weekly for Radio. There's alot of great radio out there, yet few ways to find out about it.

What inspired me to try this blog now is the happy fact I got a Christmas present of a Sirius Satellite Radio a couple of weeks ago - yes, I am a Howard Stern fan - and have fallen in love with the damn thing. Listening to the fascinating start-up of Howard 100, along with discovering dozens of other intriguing and cool and life-affirming radio channels, has gotten me thinking again about the medium, about how much I like it and think it has a future and a tremendous amount of value, and about how little it gets written about intelligently.

So this blog will initially talk alot about (a) Sirius Satellite radio programming and (b) over-the-airwaves radio programming one can hear in the New York City metroplitan area, although I think I will also talk about podcasts and Internet radio streams (which would be a neat way to have anybody listen in to these shows, not just New Yorkers). I hope to review and recommend radio shows that I like, ones that maybe you'll like too. If this lil' blog takes off, I will consider taking the radio recommendations and getting them onto a website of its own, to make the results easier to search and find. We'll see about that.

Meanwhile, I may write about other stuff - stuff that fascinates me - like the future of media, music-making and music-listening, being a single divorced dad, maybe even the occasional political opinion. Again, we'll see. A voice inside of me says "who the hell would want to read what a mook like me thinks" but then I remember it's fine, it's just a damn blog, read it if you'd like, I ain't charging.

And so it begins.