No question about it, our voters love their talk radio.
In our poll for favorite local AM station, Taking Your Pulse voters chose 850 WFTL by a decent margin.
The conservative talk station picked up 43.8 percent of the vote, finishing well ahead of 1280 WJNO (21.8 percent). Third place went to 640 Sports.
AM radio used to be the only game in town when it came to finding entertainment — you tuned in for shows, news, music, everything.
These days, AM has changed dramatically — now it’s the home for opinion. You still have to tune into an AM station to hear the likes of Rush Limbaugh or Mike & Mike. You still have to check in to AM for a ballgame — most of the time anyway.
AM listeners, we want to hear from you. What’s your favorite AM station on the dial – and keep in mind, these are stations based in Palm Beach County only, so you won’t see the likes of WIOD from Miami or the superpowered 880 The Biz out of Sweetwater.
If you feel so strongly, however, that you want an out-of-area AM station to vote for, we’ve got the write-in spot just waiting for you.
Through everything that life and the world of radio has thrown at Jennifer Ross, she refuses to be knocked down. (Brandon Kruse / Palm Beach Post)
Of all Jennifer Ross’ fans, the little guy hurtling toward her may be the most persistent in demanding her affections.
Squealing with joy, he launches himself at her legs – a 25-pound, thickly packed hunk of burning love for Ross, whose feet he proceeds to nuzzle with unalloyed ardor.
"Meet Poppy Chulo," she says, giving the potbellied pig a good scratching on the head.
Hearing her voice – and who doesn’t recognize that smoky contralto? – the rest of her menagerie, minus her two horses, bounds into the patio of her Palm City home. There’s Trixi, the Boston terrier; Annabelle, the Chihuahua-dachshund mix; and Toby, the 125-pound Saint Bernard puppy, who stretches to lick Ross’ face, almost knocking her over.
If he had, Ross has had plenty of experience in getting back up.
Howard Stern announced earlier this week that he'd be staying with Sirius-XM Radio. (Bryan Bedder / Getty Images)
Back in October, I wondered about the future of Howard Stern. Yesterday on his Sirius XM Satellite Radio show, Stern shared the news that his fans have been waiting for: he’s decided to renew his deal with Sirius for another five years. The terms of the contract weren’t discussed, but needless to say Howard spoke about the deal in his typical style.
For the sake of “good radio”, he dragged out the announcement for about 30 minutes before finally revealing the good news to his fans and co-workers. Much of the last couple of months has been spent speculating what he would do and how it would affect the rest of his staff; some of that staff has been with Stern for 30 years. He would make it known that he worried about certain staff members because they were basically useless and couldn’t find another job. This made for some great comedy in the past few months. However, Stern’s loyalty can’t be questioned, and in fact part of his thinking process did take into account his employees. In the end, he maintained that he couldn’t imagine “not doing this” anymore.
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After all his threats to leave, and others’ speculation on where he might go, Howard Stern is staying put at Sirius XM.
The loose-lipped shock jock announced on his show Thursday that he has signed a new five-year contract with the satellite radio company.
The deal, which runs through the end of 2015, provides that Sirius XM can now transmit Stern’s show to mobile devices. No other terms will be disclosed, the company said.
Stern had been locked for months in stormy negotiations as his original five-year contract with Sirius radio, worth a breathtaking $500 million, neared its expiration just days from now. Sirius and then-rival XM radio merged in 2008.
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Juan Williams
Longtime news analyst Juan Williams, who has written extensively on race and civil rights, has been fired by NPR after saying on the Fox News Channel that he gets nervous when he sees people in Muslim garb on an airplane.
NPR issued a statement late Wednesday saying his contract as a senior news analyst was being terminated after Williams’ comments Monday on “The O’Reilly Factor.”
Host Bill O’Reilly brought on guests to discuss his own appearance last week on ABC’s “The View” during which Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg walked off the set in protest of O’Reilly’s views on Muslims.
“Where am I going wrong here, Juan?” O’Reilly asked.
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Howard Stern (right) and his wife, Beth Ostrosky. (AP)
In 2006 when Howard Stern decided to get out of the confining rat race that was terrestrial radio, he embarked on a journey into the unknown. With two months left on his five-year deal with Sirius XM Satellite Radio it remains a mystery as to where Stern may end up – if anywhere. The consensus is that Stern won’t disappear. The possibilities range from having an internet-only show that will cost less to subscribe to than the $13 a month it costs to have Sirius to simply doing the same show, but fewer hours.
Stern signed a huge contract, at least according to the mainstream media, with Sirius to basically do the same thing he’d done for the past 30 years: entertain, provoke, and continue to ridicule anyone who deserved it – and even those that didn’t. Only this time he could say whatever he wants without invoking the delay button. The five-year, $500 million contract has been downplayed by Stern over the years as an overblown number, but needless to say Stern is one of the highest paid “personalities” in show business.
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If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then three local radio folks just admitted a serious fan-crush on True Blood.
Morning Buzz folks Jeremy Loper, Randi Rasar and Brian “Smitty” Smith of Buzz 103.1 pulled off a pretty good remake of the famous Rolling Stone cover, which showed the HBO show’s stars Alexander Sarsgaard, Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer in the all-together, covered in blood.
Jeremy, Randi and Smitty decided to go to a photographer friend, Alexi Shields, and it looks like they really went all out, right down to gettin’ naked and bloody for their fans.
We can’t show the full cover here, but if you click on the picture below, you can check it out at the Buzz 103.1 website.
There is a battle between the Buzz 103.1 radio station and the band Rise Against and now both sides are baring their teeth on a dispute around the 2009 Buzz Bake Sale music festival. Rise Against has been playing the Buzz Bake Sale for years on the side stage. This year they were planned to perform on the main stage, which was being sponsored by the US Army. Rise Against are known for their political lyrics – they are a political band that are vocal about their beliefs not just in song but also in their daily lives. The band decided to give the radio station an ultimatum – drop the Army as a sponsor or Rise Against would not play the festival. The radio station did not agree with those terms and since then the band is now off the lineup.
This is where the real controversy and bad blood starts. The program director Don O at Buzz and the DJs talked about Rise Against’s decision to back out of the festival over the air on September 30, 2009.
You can listen to that here:
[audio:http://pbpulse.com/audio/Buzz-RiseAgainst-controversy-pt1.mp3]
Or go to the Buzz 103 site – http://www.buzz103.com/pages/5039974.php
Essentially they thought that the band was being unreasonable and immature for backing out and asking the station to drop the Army. For the station that was an unreasonable request. Don O really thought they should “grow up”. He also mentioned that the band had dropped f-bombs on stage against the Army and other sponsors. His feeling was the band takes issue with corporations and finds that their railing against the very sponsors that pay them to play isn’t very professional. The conversation then leans towards the war and Don O admits he isn’t in support of the war but supports the troops. He states he doesn’t like the band’s attitude and goes on to say he thinks they shouldn’t play their songs because “The message the band sends I don’t think is the right one, that is to not support our troops.”
Tim McIlrath of Rise Against (Photo by Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images)
Rise Against decided to share their side of the story. You can read that here:
http://www.riseagainst.com/blog/default.aspx
Their rebuttal is that they do not support the war but very much support the troops and their families. They take exception to what they claim as the station and program director Don O’s over the air defamation of the band’s reputation. They also stand by their decision to not play the show and make the point that to do so would go against all the things they believe. They reiterate they support the troops but not the army recruiters. They don’t feel comfortable playing a show in the context of recruiting for an unjust war.
Here is an excerpt from the bands website:
As a band that has worked in counter-recruitment in the past, we decided it would be hypocritical and inappropriate for us to headline this stage. In addition, we were surprised that a radio station claiming to be familiar with Rise Against thought that we would be ok with the idea that we would play a show and subject our fans to military recruitment tactics in a time of war, a war we adamantly and publicly have opposed since it’s bumbled inception. To be clear, this was not an event to honor the military, this was an event that the US ARMY was interested in recruiting people at, and we felt that our fans should be free from that interference at a rock show on a Sunday night in a time of war.
Thinking that was the end of it, the radio station retaliated. In an act reminiscent of McCarthyism witch-hunts, the radio station has come to the unfounded, false and irresponsible conclusion that Rise Against is “against the army” and, as of this morning, has decided to spread this misinformation over the airwaves, threaten to not play songs, and call for a boycott of Rise Against. Listening to the broadcast, we were surprised at willingness of the DJ’s to spin off of a lie.
Mike Miller and his wife Paulette Miller joke around during their live internet radio broadcast Tuesday evening inside the W4CY studio in Wellington. (Brandon Kruse / The Post)
If the Internet is the town square in our new global society, then Internet radio is the new speaker’s corner, where anybody, regardless of wealth or social standing, can rise up and be heard above the fray.
Someone like this guy.
“Welcome back to Ska Safari with Rude Boy Rising. We’re on with Chilled Monkey Brains, a quality ska crew from Tallahassee!”
In the corporate radio world of 2009, it’d be hard to find prime drive-time space for a Florida band not on the national playlist. But it’s just a random Tuesday afternoon at the Wellington studios of W4CY (www.w4cy.com), an inspired marriage of democracy, capitalism, new technology and old-fashioned “Hey, kids, let’s put on a show” gumption.
If you’ve got a good idea, the time and about $1,000 worth of sponsorship a month, your voice could be heard here. And to hear it, all you need is an Internet connection.
“This is the wave of the future,” says co-owner Dean K. Piper, a motivational speaker who started the station with business partner Peter Wein in March as a community-building tool and an alternative to the programming confines of “terrestrial radio. We don’t want to be like every other radio station.”
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