Disappearing Voices

November 29th, 2011

CLEAR CHANNEL DUMPS JONES IN PHILLY

Posted by Iyanna in Uncategorized

CLEAR CHANNEL DUMPS JONES IN PHILLY

11-29-2011

We reported late last week that Power 99’s Jonesy Jones got herself in hot water when a Philadelphia business owner filed a lawsuit against her and Clear Channel. Jones allegedly called out a local business owner saying she had beaten up teenage kids. The woman, Tracey Parson, owns the Kiddie Kare day-care chain and her name was given to Jones by a caller to the show. Parson says she was misidentified and started receiving death threats and losing business immediately after her name was broadcast. Yesterday Jones was gone from Power 99, her picture taken down off the station website. A call to Power 99 General Manager John Rahm was not returned yesterday.

In a defamation lawsuit Parson said families pulled their children out of the four Kiddie Kare day-care centers she owns in Philly after callers to the show misidentified her as a mother who had beaten up teenage girls. The complaint alleges that Jonesy and Power 99 embarked on a “coordinated campaign of contriving controversies - which were designed to destroy people’s lives, reputations, and livelihoods.” Parson was told by station employees that tapes of the segments do not exist.

The story began back in October when teenage girls from North Philly got into a fight with some girls from South Philly. Parson, who was at  a business meeting, learned during the meeting that her daughter had been involved but was uninjured. The mother of a South Philly girl allegedly picked up the girls from her neighborhood afterward, found a North Philly girl, and jumped her, the complaint alleges. Police say Parson was never a suspect.

November 14th, 2011

FORMER NEIL ROGERS PRODUCER MAKING WAVES ON THE INTERNET

Posted by Iyanna in internet radio

FORMER NEIL ROGERS PRODUCER MAKING WAVES ON THE INTERNET

Jorge Rodriguez is the former producer for the late South Florida talker Neil Rogers and sunsentinel.com has a feature on Rodriguez who, like many others being displaced, has turned to Internet. He tells the paper, “The Internet has really taken a chunk out of the terrestrial radio market and is responsible for a lot of talented people losing their jobs. But the same element responsible for us losing our jobs has also become the vehicle that has allowed us to continue our jobs.”

The paper quotes the Edison/Arbitron study which says one in five Americans are now streaming audio weekly and the number who listen to Internet radio in their cars has nearly doubled in one year, and now reaches an estimated 57 million people age 12 and older per week. Rodriguez’s network, called SoFloRadio, is also home to Nicole Sandler, who you may remember was arrested during U.S. Rep. Allen West’s town hall meeting after she was accused of disrupting the meeting. Rodriguez was fired from Beasley’s WQAM- AM in 2009. His online network now has 12 original shows.

Rodriguez’s network, called SoFloRadio, is also home to progressive talk show host Nicole Sandler, who made headlines in April when she was arrested during U.S. Rep. Allen West’s town hall meeting for allegedly being disruptive (charges were later dropped). There is also a wine and beer show on Thursday evenings and a sex and relationship show hosted by longtime South Florida radio personality Gina Martell.

October 12th, 2011

The BW Moving Images Snapshot October 11, 2011

Posted by Iyanna in Uncategorized


…Our latest updates. In a flash.

Tylon “U-Savior” Washington just returned from the 41st Annual Congressional Black Caucus in DC where he moderated the successful and well-attended panel “Lest We Forget”: Documenting and Memorializing African-American History. The panel was hosted by Congressman Donald M. Payne (D-NJ) Click here to view highlights.

Check out BW Moving Images’ all new exclusive promo! Click here to learn more about the small business that makes big things happen. Special thanks to Melvin Van Peebles who came to visit on set, Joe Galbo who conducted the interviews and Ana Perero our gifted director of photography.

Support Diary of the Dragon: The (R) Evolution of Fred Ho a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. If sending a check please make checks out to FRACTURED ATLAS.  In the memo line please write DIARY OF THE DRAGON. Please MAIL CHECKS TO: A Black Waxx Nation, P.O. Box 349, NYC 10185. Please do not mail checks directly to Fractured Atlas. If you’d like to make your tax-deductible donation online via credit/debit card at Fractured Atlas’ website, click here.

Join Tylon “U-Savior” Washington & Marsha Coleman Adebayo on Tuesday, October 11 in DC at the world famous Busboys and Poets Bookstore. Coleman-Adebayo will sign copies of her new book “No Fear” and Washington will talk about the documentary film of her life he’s slated to direct. For more information on the event, click here.

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October 12th, 2011

Two Ways In Which Pandora Is More Radio Than Radio

Posted by Iyanna in Uncategorized

Written Apr. 8, 2011 by Sean Ross in Content Internet Radio Terrestrial Radio with 0 Comments

The release of Tuesday’s Infinite Dial report from Edison Research and Arbitron showing that 10% of respondents nationally had listened to Pandora in the previous week, may prompt some extra cognative dissonance for those who feel that time spent with Pandora is coming from the iPod or its predecessors, not from traditional listening to music radio.

I’ve written recently that trying to separate the time that listeners give to their own music vs. somebody else’s is increasingly a fool’s errand. If radio TSL is down, it is cold comfort that an iPod might conceivably have lost even more listening. But a few things have convinced me recently that Pandora, for whom Edison does several research projects, belongs in the radio stack, not the “successor to 8-tracks, cassettes, CDs, and iPod” pile.

1) In recent years, those discovering and using Pandora have very much had a shared experience of the sort that radio used to specialize in providing. This was driven home at a recent Country Radio Seminar panel — a live focus group of “real” radio listeners. It wasn’t a very talkative bunch. But when moderator Charlie Cook asked the Pandora listener on the panel to describe it, she snapped to attention, describing it in detail, and in pretty much identical words to anybody else you’ve ever heard describe the service. With the increased amount of national radio programming, I’ve been waiting for radio to ramp up its shared experience quotient, creating an Infinite Dial of Musicradio 89 WLS and 77 WABCs for our age. But, clearly, that isn’t the only sort of shared experience radio can offer.

2) It’s been the case for a while that if your Pandora listening starts with a mainstream music choice, it will continue among those lines and may even be a little more conservative and gold-based than what you would hear on a comparable terrestrial radio station. While Pandora’s personalization and the ability to skip songs leads some people to think of it as “the other,” it’s actually the culmination of what many radio programmers have been trying to do for the last 35 years, since listener music research took hold on a large scale: progressively eliminate more and more of the “bad songs.” It’s just that Pandora users have the advantage of deciding for themselves what the “bad songs” are, even if their own tastes aren’t all that different from what 100 respondents typically decide.

October 12th, 2011

DRM Consortium to Demo Short Wave DRM for South Africa

Posted by Iyanna in Uncategorized

Oct 11, 2011 10:03 AM, By Doug Irwin, CPBE DRB

russels - Oct 10, 2011 - The DRM Consortium will make its first ever DRM transmissions for Southern Africa in the French and English languages on Oct. 11, 2011, on the occasion of the Digital Radio Conference organized by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) at the headquarters of the European Parliament in Brussels. The two-day conference will include two live studio discussions on the possibilities and future of digital radio from the multimedia radio studio of the European Parliament. The programs aim to showcase multiplatform and distribution techniques in front of a studio audience of Digital Radio Conference delegates.

Both the French and English programs will be carried live on DRM SW 21800 from Ascension Island in the Atlantic Ocean and should be heard in South Africa, Angola, Zambia, Lesotho, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Mozambique. The English program will also be carried at 1800 GMT into Southern Asia on DRM SW 12085, at the end of the daily regular BBC/DW transmission.

July 21st, 2010

Clear Channel Donates Two More Stations to Minorities

Posted by Iyanna in Uncategorized

July 20, 2010 -By Katy Bachman

Clear Channel Radio donated two more radio stations to the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council, adding to the four it previously donated, the radio group announced Tuesday (July 20) during the MMTC’s annual “Access to Capital and Telecommunications Policy Conference.”

As part of the MMTC-Clear Channel Ownership Diversity Initiative, the stations will be re-launched with new minority operators and executives.

The two newly donated stations are KFXN-AM in Minneapolis and WTOC-A in Newton, N.J. At last year’s MMTC conference, CC donated a transmitter and four AM stations: WHJA- in Laurel, Miss.; KYHN in Fort Smith, Ark.; KYFX in Wabasha, Minn.; and WYNF in North August, S.C.

MMTC selects the candidates for the stations. WYNF-AM was awarded to Shannon Renee deMedicis of Medici Media, Inc., and WHJA-AM was awarded to Jeffrey Hedgemon, CEO of Full Spectrum Broadcasting. The MMTC is now working with Renee deMedicis on WYNF and Jeffrey Hedgemon on WHJA.

Pending financing and final diligence, the stations will be operated under local marketing agreements.

July 17th, 2010

Emmis Revenue Rises In Q1

Posted by Iyanna in Uncategorized

July 15, 2010: Emmis Communications isn’t issuing earnings releases with its go-private deal pending, but it reports in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that overall revenue was up about 1 percent, to $60.3 million from $59.8 million. In the radio segment, net revenues came in at $44.4 million, up nearly 2 percent from $43.5 million in the same period a year ago. Operating income for radio was $9.4 million in the quarter, rising substantially from $325,000 a year ago.

Domestic radio revenues rose, Emmis said in the filing, “principally due to the continued improvement in the general pace of business.” The filing cites Miller Kaplan reports that Emmis’ markets saw revenue increase 5.7 percent in the three-month period ended May 31, while Emmis “fell short” of that, with its stations seeing revenue rise 3.1 percent year-over-year. Emmis’ revenues were up more than the market average in New York, Indianapolis, and Austin, but trailed in Los Angeles, Chicago, and St. Louis. Miller Kaplan doesn’t report on the Terre Haute, IN, market, where Emmis also operates.

 

The radio results were affected by the loss of Slager Radio in Hungary, now classed as a discontinued operation since Hungarian authorities in a controversial decision did not renew Emmis’ license for the profitable station.

The filing discusses the various shareholder lawsuits filed over the merger proposal under which Emmis Chairman/CEO Jeff Smulyan would take the company private, but not the “lock-up agreement” by several holders of Emmis preferred stock who have agreed to vote together against the proposal, which was revealed more recently.

July 17th, 2010

Study: Content Key For Female Listeners

Posted by Iyanna in Uncategorized

July 15, 2010: The first data from Alan Burns and Associates’ study “Here She Comes: Insights Into Women, Radio, and New Media,” show that both women who are the heaviest users of radio and women who are listening to radio less lately report content concerns. Looking at what would make radio more enjoyable, 68 percent said fewer commercials, while 60 percent said fewer “obnoxious commercials.” Thirty-seven percent would like more information on songs and artists, the same number would enjoy more new music, and 36 percent asked for less music they’re tired of.

CEO Alan Burns said that “content improvements can help address all of radio’s biggest consumer challenges.” He continued, “It improves the price/value relationship with regard to commercials, it improves relevance, it creates incentive to stay with or come back to radio vs. new media, and it can generate higher interest and loyalty among the very vulnerable young end.”

Twenty-five percent of respondents said they’re listening to radio more lately, and 28 percent said less, with most of those listening less saying that “there’s no radio station that sounds like it really understands them.”

Half of all the women studied like air personalities and think they enhance listening, but the rest either actively dislike air personalities or can “take or leave them.”

Looking at technological developments, half of all the women surveyed and 73 percent of the “early adopters” of technology surveyed said they’d buy a different cellphone if the phone had a radio receiver. Fifty-four percent said they’d listen to radio more if they could listen on a cellphone.

“This is great news for the radio industry,” Alan Burns said, “because now we have hard data to show cellphone manufacturers that putting radio receivers in their products would benefit them financially. It’s a huge opportunity, because over half of the 2,000 women we interviewed said they’d listen to more radio if they could listen on their phone.”

Usage of iPods and digital music “leans young,” the study found, but more than half of the 35-54-year-olds report spending an hour or more listening to music on digital devices weekly. Additionally, the heavy radio listeners tend to be heavy consumers of digital and new media, and vice versa.

Radio is the dominant source of music discovery by a wide margin; among women who buy music, radio leads three to one. Seventy-six percent of the women surveyed have a Facebook profile, and 21 percent have a Twitter account, compared to 26 percent who’d visited a radio station website in the past week. Twenty-two percent belong to a station listener club, and 8 percent are active in a station points or reward program.

Of those who visit station sites, 23 percent say the sites are more entertaining or useful than other sites, 16 percent said less, and 61 percent said station sites are about the same as other websites.

The study talked to 2,057 women.

July 17th, 2010

Court Strikes Down FCC Indecency Policy

Posted by Iyanna in Uncategorized

July 13, 2010: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has struck down the FCC’s 2004 change in policy on fleeting indecency, vacating an FCC finding that a “single, nonliteral” use of an expletive on the air in 2003 constituted broadcast indecency, as well as an omnibus order that followed ruling that other broadcasts were indecent under the same standard.

The 32-page order cites the 1978 Pacifica ruling and the FCC’s history of restrained indecency enforcement after that case; restraint that held until 2004, when, the ruling says, “The FCC’s policy on indecency changed.” After the 2003 NBC Golden Globes broadcast in which Bono exclaimed that receiving the award was “fucking brilliant,” the FCC “declared, for the first time, that a single, nonliteral use of an expletive (a so-called ‘fleeting expletive’) could be actionably indecent.” Under that criterion, the commission later decided that expletives, most unscripted, on earlier broadcasts on Fox, ABC, and CBS were also indecent.

Additionally, at about the same time, the FCC “began issuing record fines for indecency violations,” and treating each licensee’s broadcast of  indecent speech as a separate violation, each of which could be liable for a separate forfeiture. Congress soon upped the maximum indecency fine from $32,500 to $325,000 — meaning, says today’s court ruling, that “the fine for a single expletive uttered during a broadcast could easily run into the tens of millions of dollars.”

NBC Universal and other parties filed petitions for reconsideration of the Golden Globes order, and Fox Television Stations, CBS, and ABC filed petitions for review of the later omnibus order that ruled that broadcasts of the Billboard Music Awards on Fox, The Early Show on NBC, and NYPD Blue on ABC were indecent (the FCC later dropped the Early Show and NYPD Blue matters).

The court ruled at that time that the FCC’s change in policy on fleeting indecency was “arbitrary and capricious,” but did not address the constitutional issues. The FCC then took the matter to the Supreme Court, which disagreed with that the change was arbitrary, but also declined to deal with the constitutional arguments and sent the matter back to the Second Circuit for review.

So, in looking at the First Amendment implications of the FCC’s policy on fleeting indecency, the Second Circuit has now found the policy unconstitutional, on the grounds that it is impermissibly vague.

Says the court, “A law or regulation is impermissibly vague if it does not ‘give the person of ordinary intelligence a reasonable opportunity to know what is prohibited.’ The First Amendment places a special burden on the government to ensure that restrictions on speech are not impermissibly vague.”

 

The court disagrees with the FCC’s contention that its 2001 Industry Guidance on indecency along with its subsequent decisions provide enough information on to what will be considered indecent, pointing to apparent inconsistencies in which words or expressions have been considered “patently offensive” by the commission.

The ruling says, “The commission argues that its three-factor ‘patently offensive’ test gives broadcasters fair notice of what it will find indecent. However, in each of these cases, the commission’s reasoning consisted of repetition of one or more of the factors without any discussion of how it applied them. Thus, the word ‘bullshit’ is indecent because it is ‘vulgar, graphic and explicit’ while the word ‘dickhead’ was not indecent because it was ‘not sufficiently vulgar, explicit, or graphic.’ This hardly gives broadcasters notice of how the commission will apply the factors in the future.”

Additionally, the FCC argued that it needed flexibility because the famous list of “seven dirty words” was ineffective, claiming that “broadcasters simply found offensive ways of depicting sexual or excretory organs or activities without using any of the seven words.” The court says, “In other words, because the FCC cannot anticipate how broadcasters will attempt to circumvent the prohibition on indecent speech, the FCC needs the maximum amount of flexibility to be able to decide what is indecent.”

That suggests ” a certain futility in the FCC’s crusade against indecent speech,” the ruling says, “but it does not provide a justification for implementing a vague, indiscernible standard. If the FCC cannot anticipate what will be considered indecent under its policy, then it can hardly expect broadcasters to do so.”

The court also has problems with the FCC’s “bona fide news” exemption for indecent words, “which the FCC has failed to explain except to say that it is not absolute,” and to the commission’s ”artistic necessity exemption,” saying “there is little rhyme or reason” to earlier FCC indecency decisions and that “broadcasters are left to guess whether an expletive will be deemed ‘integral’ to a program or whether the FCC will consider a particular broadcast a ‘bona fide news interview.’”

The judges also say there is “ample evidence in the record that the FCC’s indecency policy has chilled protected speech,” citing decisions by both TV and radio not to air certain material, including a documentary on 9/11 and the reading of a Tom Wolfe novel, because of fears over FCC enforcement. The ruling continues, “The FCC’s application of its policy to live broadcasts creates an even more profound chilling effect,” noting that in the 2003 Billboard Music Awards broadcast, a staff member bleeped one expletive, but “while the person employed to monitor and bleep expletives was bleeping the first, the following two slipped through. Even elaborate precautions will not protect a broadcaster against such occurrences.”

Says the court, “Short of giving up live broadcasting altogether, no system will ever be one hundred percent effective.”

The ruling concludes: “We do not suggest that the FCC could not create a constitutional policy. We hold only that the FCC’s current policy fails constitutional scrutiny.”

FCC Response

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski responded to the ruling with a brief statement Tuesday afternoon that said, “We’re reviewing the court’s decision in light of our commitment to protect children, empower parents, and uphold the First Amendment.”

July 8th, 2010

Arbitron Shakes Up Exec Staff

Posted by Iyanna in Uncategorized

By Katy Bachman

Six months after Bill Kerr took over as president and chief executive officer of Arbitron, he’s shaking up the research firm’s executive staff, undoing the organization put into place by his predecessor. Exiting the company in the reorganization are Alton Adams, evp, chief marketing officer and Robert Henrick, evp, customer solutions.

As part of the reorg, announced Thursday (June 24), Sean Creamer gets promoted to evp of U.S. media services, putting him in position to be the company’s next CEO. Creamer’s newly created position consolidates operations of the company’s radio and cross-platform services, the latter a key growth strategy for Arbitron. He will continue to serve as chief financial officer until the company recruits a replacement.

The company also said it was searching for a chief research officer.

A former member of Arbitron’s board of directors, Bill Kerr stepped in January, following the exit of Michael Skarzynski, who was sent packing over a misrepresentation in testimony to Congress. Since then, Kerr has moved swiftly to untangle several issues hanging over the company, most notably settling disputes with ethnic broadcasters over the portable people meter service.

“Over the past several months I have made it a top priority to meet with many of our customers and other key stakeholders,” Kerr said. “I have found that feedback invaluable and I have incorporated it into this realignment. I believe this new structure is customer-focused and collaborative, and can help support the growth of both the radio industry and the company.”

The new executive organization cuts Kerr’s direct reports in half to five. Tim Smith takes on the expanded role of evp of business development and strategy from evp and chief legal officer, legal and business affairs. Scott Henry was named evp, technology solutions, from evp, chief information officer. Carol Hanley was promoted to evp of sales and marketing, from svp, chief sales officer. Marilou Legge assumes additional responsibilities as evp for organization effectiveness and corporate communications, from svp, organization effectiveness and chief talent officer.

Off the executive staff are: Taymoor Arshi, svp, engineering and chief technology officer, who now reports to Scott Henry; and Steve Smith, evp, service operations, who now reports to Creamer. Earlier this year, Pierre Bouvard, evp, cross-platform services was moved off the executive staff, reporting to Creamer.

It’s been a busy week for Arbitron. The company eliminated a potential competitor by purchasing the technology, patents and trade name from Integrated Media Measurement, a company that used audio matching in smart phones to track consumer exposure to multiple media. The radio research firm also introduced the next generation of its portable people meter device, PPM 360, allowing the company to wireless upload listening data.

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