People are outraged. People are sad. People are in shock. People are now, finally, speaking up over the execution of one of America’s former great and “heritage” stations, KGO-AM in San Francisco. Why now? What happened last week to KGO has been happening to radio stations, personalities, talk hosts, support personnel and news staffs for…
Translation: If you’re going down, you might as well go down in a memorable way. Donald Trump sure is memorable and the same could have been said about talk radio some 20 years ago. Conservative talk radio and the Republican party are connected, once again trying to energize their common “base.” Each are equally disconnected…
February 2016 marks the 20th anniversary of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. There are no planned celebrations. No parades. No planned parties. You’d think someone, somewhere would have popped open a bottle of Dom Perignon by now. But, nothing. Not even from those who lined their pockets and are clearly to blame for tearing the…
AM radio, the senior broadcast band, no longer has the luxury of time to correct its problems, if those problems can be corrected at all. This week there’s an assembly of “radio people” in Atlanta. The annual NAB/RAB Fall Radio Show, where station owners get to have free drinks on the vendors gathered trying to…
A number of people seem to be “excited” about Rush Limbaugh’s new radio homes in Indianapolis and Boston. I just don’t believe Rush is. In Indianapolis, the heritage news/talk radio station is WIBC. Most radio geeks, me included, remember the bigger than life top-of-the-hour ID voiced by Chuck Riley. “Radio Indiana. (sfx) W-I-B-C Indianapolis.” …
Mark Twain, the legendary American writer and humorist said, “Buy land, they’re not making anymore.” History has shown the wealthiest in the world today and throughout history gained significant wealth by acquiring land. The world’s royalty have wealth because of large land holdings. Many commoners today and in history gained and held their wealth through…
Sometime in late 2005 or early 2006, I held a staff meeting with the programming staff at 700WLW in Cincinnati. The purpose was to start laying out longterm plans for what radio, talk radio and media would be 10 years in the future. The first iPhone hadn’t been sold yet, YouTube had only been live…
As we lead up to the first anniversary of my infamous blog which pointed out issues with the so-called “fixes” proposed to help the struggling AM band, fixes that would simply increase interference on AM, I thought I’d lead into my anniversary celebration week with a quick snap shot of where we are with licensed…
I learned very early on in radio, the people you pass on the way up are the same people you pass on the way down. So when you’re above them you better not pee on them and call it a gentle spring rain. “Despite all the spin and propaganda it was my decision to fire…
I am one of the last believers in AM radio. I love the AM medium. I truly believe as long as the signal is good, great content will overcome the band’s technical limitations. Outside of just a few years, I spent the majority of my career on AM. There was some career failure, but…
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