Amazon.com Widgets I need a good laugh about once every twenty minutes, especially these days. So I listen to Onion Radio News. “A giant 6-year old devastates a local ant community!” announces ORN’s hard nosed reporter, Doyle Redland. “Ant-hill scouts reported today that a mammalian destructo-beast some ten thousand ant-links in height smashed a nearby […]
Author Archive | Matthew Lasar
Radio Survivor’s top radio shows – Matthew’s #5: Joe Frank, Work-in-Progress
I forget when I first started listening to Joe Frank. The other problem is that his half-hour to hour long programs are so weird that one can’t trust one’s memory about them. I mean, I think I remember an episode about a hysterical waiter who, after a long tirade, vomits on his patrons, a furious […]
Websites catching up to radio as first weather news source for British
Looks like websites are slowly taking the lead as the primary source for weather news in the United Kingdom, just slightly below radio and TV as the goto place.
KPFA raises $130,000 for Haitian relief
America’s longest running listener supported non-commercial radio station, KPFA-FM in Berkeley, raised a lot of cash on Wednesday for victims of Haiti’s horrific series of earthquakes. “In this economy, we would expect a normal day of fundraising to bring in about $45,000. For our Haiti fundraiser we set a goal of $100,000” said KPFA General […]
Clear Channel offers contextual advertising for radio, but where's the context?
Clear Channel has announced what the commercial radio giant calls a major step forward for radio advertising: technology that can “automatically and reliably insert any length of audio spot immediately after specific programming or commercial spots based entirely on content.” In blogoland that’s called “contextual,” or sometimes “semantic” advertising. Google Adsense and various Amazon widgets, […]
Stitcher adds gay Bay Area public affairs show to its lineup
The Stitcher mobile radio service is adding another gay oriented radio show to its schedule: Out in the Bay, a regular program on National Public Radio affiliate KALW-FM in San Francisco (91.7 FM). Out in the Bay is hosted and produced by Eric Jansen and Marilyn Pittman, both of whom have tons of radio experience […]
Slacker radio goes to Canada
Slacker says it’s firing up its mobile radio service for Canada. Hey Canadians, what other services do you have up there? Send us your comments.
FCC will let public radio raise money for Haitian relief
The Federal Communications Commission normally bars Noncommercial Educational Radio (NCE) stations from using the airwaves to raise money for any cause besides their own operation. But the FCC granted waivers from this rule following the 9/11 terrorist attacks and Hurricane Katrina, and now it’s doing the same for stations that want to raise relief cash […]
British Ofcom dings West Midlands AM station for "blurring" ad with content
The British government released its decision today to sanction an Asian community oriented AM radio station for not keeping its advertising and content sufficiently separate. West Midlands area Radio XL (“the best in Asian music 1296 AM”) presented a 40 second office space availability spot “seamlessly as programming,” ruled the United Kindgom’s Office of Communications (Ofcom). […]
Crossover bands hit FCC with net neutrality letters
The Future of Music Coalition has a small boatload of classy crossover music groups sending letters to the Federal Communications Commission in support of tougher net neutrality rules. They include R.E.M., the woodwind quintet Imani Winds, and the Kronos Quartet. Here’s an excerpt from Kronos Artistic Administrator Sidney Chen’s letter to the FCC: “From the […]