Tuesday, March 30, 2004
Cash for frienship
The anals of Cluetrain...
Interesting story of a guy who gets screwed by some company and takes the issue to a forum.
Thanks to Tony for the pointer.
So maybe there's hope
Some good news on religion-free local low-power radio:
Prometheus Commends FCC on Calvary Chapel Application Dismissals
Allows More Room For Local Low Power FM Broadcasters
The FCC recently dismissed dozens of Low Power FM radio applications from Calvary Chapel. The National Lawyers Guild Committee on Democratic Communications had filed numerous objections against these applicants, because they had filed for 151 low power frequencies around the country. Dozens of the applications for these channels had used the same identical 'statements of local educational program', making these applications look about as local as McDonald's or Walmart.
And here's more good news I missed when I read all those application approvals in the FCC daily digest:
On March 16th and March 19th, 2004, the FCC Audio Division has dismissed over 30 LPFM applications filed that have the name "Calvary Chapel" in them.
In a letter to the Calvary applicants by FCC Audio Bureau Chief Peter Doyle stated that even though the applications have satisifed the requirement that the local chapters of the national Calvary Chapel organization are incorporated in their own local area separately from the national organization with which it is affilliated, Doyle points out that "there is nothing in their statements of educational purpose to distinguish these applicants from other Calvary Chapel applicants who filed identical applications for LPFM stations, or national Calvary Chapel radio companies such as CSN International and Calvary Chapel of Twin Falls that own numerous full-service and FM translator stations throughout the country." Doyle continues, "Indeed, nothing in the educational purpose of the application references the community of license in any way or demonstrates 'a local purpose that can be distinguished from the purpose of the national organizatoin with which it is affiliated'", citing an application for another Calvary Chapel in South Dakota that "clearly established it's local presence and that it was a local entity separately incorporated and with a distinct local purpose readily distinguishable from that of any national organization".
Then who's the mother?
Nice interview with Marc Canter, "one of the founding fathers of multimedia."
He likes it
So he must be sober now
One of my regrets, back when I worked at WDBS, Duke's little commercial FM station, in the mid-'70s, was missing the legendary lecture that wasn't, by Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. It was good theater but short on content, since the doctor made his appearance nearly falling-down drunk and had to be led off the stage. Or something like that, I forget what.
Anyway, Dr. Thompson remembers the whole damn thing again, in his current ESPN column, sourcing the late George Plimpton:
He sat with me during the flight. He said he was trying to recover from a humiliating evening back in the States a few nights before when, lecturing at Duke University, he had been given the hook for being outlandishly drunk on Wild Turkey bourbon and making a fool of himself in front of a large and muttering audience. The representative who met him at the airport had offered him some hashish. He had taken it. Back in the motel, he felt the day begin to slip away. He poured himself a couple of shots of Wild Turkey. He kept his audience waiting for forty-five minutes. When he walked out with his glass in front of a large velvet curtain in the university auditorium, he got himself in a further state of belligerency with the crowd by starting off, "I'm very happy to be here at the alma mater of Richard Nixon."
Thompson also keeps this money on the Blue Devils in the Final Four.
Thanks to Big Rick for the link.
Under cover of blogness
I am wandering around the VON conference, stealth blogging, equipped with ipaq, tape deck, and brass balls. I Still haven't managed to secure a press pass, but after sidling past the obvious security, and whipping out that distracting tape deck anytime someone questions me, I made it into the unmarked press room just now...
Ahh, the hype, the glorious hype. I missed hearing hype this good....
Good stuff. Dig it.
Air where?
Air America, the "liberal radio network" goes live tomorrow on weak stations in the Bay Area, Los Angeles and Chicago, and a good-size station in New York.
Big Rick has some fun details about the San Francisco outlet (actually Berkeley, but it doesn't matter).
You can read my own take on the subject at the Linux Journal site tomorrow.
The lefties involved in this thing have done a terrific job of PR-ing the crap out of the project, which so far appears to consist of Al Franken and little else. We read about it in the papers, see stories about it on TV, hear about it on other radio networks (this morning on Marketplace, Marty Kaplan from the network talked about how their "content" was "going particularly well," even though they aren't on the air yet), and yet their Web presence is approximately nada. Clearly, they don't care about that.
The bill so far, according the the Marketplace story, is $30 million.
Talk about the rubber missing the road. Sheesh.
By the way, if any of ya'll have some inside poop about how to hear these guys on the Web, let us have it, okay? Thanks.
[Later...] WLIB, Air America's New York station, lets you listen live, supposedly. I can't get it to work. Even the index page comes up blank for me now.
Guess it doesn't just happen naturally
On the phone with Britt, who just said, When you experience bad service it's because that service is hostage to a business plan.
Who new?
Turns out (little did we know) that our own Denise Howell, attorney at blog, also sings opera with the Cleveland Ballet. Found this out at the Sounds of Sousa site. ("Sounds of Sousacide," when you say it out loud.)
