Today from Michelle over at ASV and Scott Fybush’s fine NorthEast Radio Watch, WCBS-FM has dropped it’s oldies format, in favor of the format called among other things, “Jack”, which is being dropped into stations all over the country in various forms, including Rochester’s legendary Oldies stalwart, WBBF.
Fybush and I are very much on the same page:
It's a moment of reckoning for those of us who believe passionately in the value of personality radio, exemplified by Vin Scelsa's "Idiot's Delight" on WFUV (90.7) Saturday night, which Scelsa turned into a passionate rant about what WCBS-FM meant to him. It's that kind of radio - intimate, creative and exciting - that no MP3 player can duplicate.
Can the same be said about "Jack" - even if you can overlook what died to make room for the format in New York?
Correct, Scott. Of course the answer is “no”.
Look, I understand buiness choices are what’s driving this, but I think radio owners and programmers are cutting off their own feet, here, and have been for years, now.
Radio got going and was at it’s most popular, when driven by a good personality. A good voice, a tight board and a jock who both knew how to, and was allowed to, connect with his listener… both with music and words. Michelle does a very good job in her post of examining that relationship.
This kind of radio became a lost art as the technology allowed more and more poeple to have reasonably good systems in their homes and cars.. and then with the walkman, on their belts. Radio owners responded to the threat by making their stations sound more and more like the tape player in your car, and less like the freind Americans had known for generations. Thing is, Radio owners still found they’d come up short in many areas because they still had to sell airtime to stay on the air. How to respond? By removing still more personality, until such time is we’re running strictly by machine.
No wonder people are leaving to listen to their MP3 players, tape players, and CD’s, XM’s and so on… Why listen to radio at all, when, once they’ve cut out all personality, all they’re offering the MP3 player doesn’t have, is commercials, and static?
Look, in fairness, I do have to mention once again, that I come from a fairly heavy radio background. I grew up on personality radio, cut my teeth on it, and it’s the only kind of radio I was ever interested in doing. (And FWIW, I would include talk radio in that mold as well, given it’s more intensely driven by the personality than even most music radio is.)
But here it is; Personality radio is the only thing that music radio as we know it, has going for it, that’s going to save it’s butt. Trying to compete with personal audio players is a dead end road… Radio simply cannot compete with them… not on their own level. The kind of move being pulled by WCBS on Friday, is killing radio… not only as we know it, but killing it, period.
The good part about this is that some bright owner, somewhere, is going to figure this stuff out, and let the airstaff be personalities, again, and break this self-destructive cycle. The question now, of course is… WHEN?
Tags: BitsBlog
It’s about on the ‘shere this morning, that Bird’s in a dead heat with his Republican rival for his senate seat. Ace of Spades HQ is among those noting the story.
Too soon to tell, I think. But it’d show some serious improvement.
Tags: BitsBlog
Been spending some time with BitsBox over the weekend, it being the first chance I’ve had to do any serious work.
I did manage to get a pop rivet gun… and started using to to reinforce the bodywork. It works very well, indeed, particuallry for the $3 price tag. A small investment, but huge returns.
I also managed to get a better set of lift ramps so I can get my fat butt under the truck more easily. Again, small dollars… $35.
I’m having a devil of a time with the oil drain plug; some yahoo rounded it off. I’ll have to buy a new one.
I’m also having a time getting some paint for this thing… THere’s a few spots that need primer and paint… particulalry around the rear licence plate box, and on the steel plates just below the front turn signals, as well as the front of the raised roof. I’ve got the paint number, and I’m told Duplicolor makes it, but nobody stocks the color. (Shrug) Guess I’ll need to over-buy a bit, when I find some.
Turned 98,000 miles this weekend, and still turning heads, is BitsBox.
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I was reminded by a reader over the weekend that a year has passed since President Reagan’s death.
This week’s Bit’s Bit has some of my thoughts from that day, and some comments on it from today, as well.
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It was a year ago, today, that I wrote:
Today, we were greeted with the sad news, that The Gipper, the Greatest President of the 20th century, Ronald Reagan, is gone from us.
Today, we remember a man, whose mind was filled with wide visions and positive actions.
The central figure in pulling down the iron curtain and ending the cold war…
The man who brought the 20th century to a close with America as the sole superpower…
The man who reminded America that it IS good, that freedom, a belief in God and personal responsibility are good things to be encouraged and cherished…
The man who exposed to us the great evil that communism represents, in all it’s forms….
The man who created the longest peacetime economic expansion in America’s history…
This great man for the last several years has had those visions restricted to his room, and another days breathing.
Having been in seclusion on his BelAir home since the revelation in 1994 that he was suffering with Alzheimer’s.
In truth, at age 93, he’s now been on a long trip toward the exit for several years, and likely would have been anyway without the Alzheimer’s. The picture grew steadily worse, with him having fallen in the bedroom back in January 2001, and suffered a broken hip. He has been frail and bedridden ever since. He spent his time since then being fed, washed and cared for 24 hours a day by medical staff. Grand care, by a loving staff, I am sure, but he could not leave his bed, even for the most basic of functions. Nor could he make himself understood.
The specter of one whose spirit so positively affected us all, to be so trapped for so long, is hurtful to each of us, individually and as a nation, and as a culture. But, perhaps it will help us to remember, first, that that great mind, that great spirit, is now free again.
It will also help, I think to remember his words; he was a far more eloquent speaker than myself, after all. It is, perhaps somewhat symbolic that Mr. Reagan should pass on, on the day marking the 60th anniversary of D-day. It was on this day in 1984, that Mr. Reagan remarked:
"Mr. President, distinguished guests, we stand today at a place of battle, one that 40 years ago saw and felt the worst of war. Men bled and died here for a few feet of--or inches of sand, as bullets and shellfire cut through their ranks. About them, General Omar Bradley later said, "Every man who set foot on Omaha Beach that day was a hero."
No speech can adequately portray their suffering, their sacrifice, their heroism. President Lincoln once reminded us that through their deeds, the dead of battle have spoken more eloquently for themselves than any of the living ever could. But we can only honor them by rededicating ourselves to the cause for which they gave a last full measure of devotion.
Today we do rededicate ourselves to that cause. And at this place of honor, we're humbled by the realization of how much so many gave to the cause of freedom and to their fellow man.
Some who survived the battle of June 6, 1944, are here today. Others who hoped to return never did.
"Someday, Lis, I'll go back," said Private First Class Peter Robert Zanatta, of the 37th Engineer Combat Battalion, and first assault wave to hit Omaha Beach. "I'll go back, and I'll see it all again. I'll see the beach, the barricades, and the graves."
Those words of Private Zanatta come to us from his daughter, Lisa Zanatta Henn, in a heartrending story about the event her father spoke of so often. "In his words, the Normandy invasion would change his life forever," she said. She tells some of his stories of World War II but says of her father, "the story to end all stories was D-Day."
"He made me feel the fear of being on that boat waiting to land. I can smell the ocean and feel the seasickness. I can see the looks on his fellow soldiers' faces--the fear, the anguish, the uncertainty of what lay ahead. And when they landed, I can feel the strength and courage of the men who took those first steps through the tide to what must have surely looked like instant death."
Private Zanatta's daughter wrote to me: "I don't know how or why I can feel this emptiness, this fear, or this determination, but I do. Maybe it's the bond I had with my father. All I know is that it brings tears to my eyes to think about my father as a 20-year-old boy having to face that beach."
The anniversary of D-Day was always special for her family. And like all the families of those who went to war, she describes how she came to realize her own father's survival was a miracle: "So many men died. I know that my father watched many of his friends be killed. I know that he must have died inside a little each time. But his explanation to me was, 'You did what you had to do, and you kept on going.'"
When men like Private Zanatta and all our Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy 40 years ago they came not as conquerors, but as liberators. When these troops swept across the French countryside and into the forests of Belgium and Luxembourg they came not to take, but to return what had been wrongly seized. When our forces marched into Germany they came not to prey on a brave and defeated people, but to nurture the seeds of democracy among those who yearned to be free again.
We salute them today. But, Mr. President, we also salute those who, like yourself, were already engaging the enemy inside your beloved country--the French Resistance. Your valiant struggle for France did so much to cripple the enemy and spur the advance of the armies of liberation. The French Forces of the Interior will forever personify courage and national spirit. They will be a timeless inspiration to all who are free and to all who would be free.
Today, in their memory, and for all who fought here, we celebrate the triumph of democracy. We reaffirm the unity of democratic peoples who fought a war and then joined with the vanquished in a firm resolve to keep the peace.
From a terrible war we learned that unity made us invincible; now, in peace, that same unity makes us secure. We sought to bring all freedom-loving nations together in a community dedicated to the defense and preservation of our sacred values. Our alliance, forged in the crucible of war, tempered and shaped by the realities of the postwar world, has succeeded. In Europe, the threat has been contained, the peace has been kept.
Today the living here assembled--officials, veterans, citizens--are a tribute to what was achieved here 40 years ago. This land is secure. We are free. These things are worth fighting and dying for.
Lisa Zanatta Henn began her story by quoting her father, who promised that he would return to Normandy. She ended with a promise to her father, who died eight years ago of cancer: "I'm going there, Dad, and I'll see the beaches and the barricades and the monuments. I'll see the graves, and I'll put flowers there just like you wanted to do. I'll feel all the things you made me feel through your stories and your eyes. I'll never forget what you went through, Dad, nor will I let anyone else forget. And, Dad, I'll always be proud."
Through the words of his loving daughter, who is here with us today, a D-Day veteran has shown us the meaning of this day far better than any President can. It is enough for us to say about Private Zanatta and all the men of honor and courage who fought beside him four decades ago: We will always remember. We will always be proud. We will always be prepared, so we may always be free."
Here’s a few that caught my eye today:
"I've spoken of the "Shining City on the Hill" all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace, a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it and see it still.
And how stands the city on this winter night? More prosperous, more secure, and happier than it was eight years ago. But more than that; after 200 years, two centuries, she still stands strong and true on the granite ridge, and her glow has held steady no matter what storm. And she's still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home.
We've done our part. And as I walk off into the city streets, a final word to the men and women of the Reagan revolution, the men and women across America who for eight years did the work that brought America back. My friends: We did it. We weren't just marking time. We made a difference. We made the city stronger. We made the city freer, and we left her in good hands. All in all, not bad, not bad at all..... "
...""Whatever else history may say about me when I'm gone, I hope it will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears; to your confidence rather than your doubts. My dream is that you will travel the road ahead with liberty's lamp guiding your steps and opportunity's arm steadying your way...."
"And so, good-bye, God bless you, and God bless the United States of America. "
Farewell, Mr. President. Ya done good.
Rest, now.
A year, already. It is hard for us to fathom the passage of time.
In retrospect, his actual death was an anti-climax, his work long having been done… his path to the exit having long been determined.
Randy Travis wrote recently that it’s not what you take when you leave this world behind you, it’s what you leave behind you when you go.
What Reagan left behind him was monumental. And he knew it, thankfully before the illness stole his self-awareness… his impression having long been made unerasably on the American culture, his repairs on the American spirit having long before, reinforced us as a culture, and as a people.
And yet, it’s not so long ago, that we don’t remember…. Not so long ago, that we’re not thankful for his being among us.
Tags: BitsBlog
Today, there’s two stories suggesting trouble in doggieland:
The Detroit Free Press is the first, this morning:
Democrats Joseph Biden and John Edwards say party chairman Howard Dean's rhetorical attacks on Republicans have gone too far.
Dean "doesn't speak for me with that kind of rhetoric and I don't think he speaks for the majority of Democrats," Biden, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Sunday on ABC's "This Week."
While discussing working Americans standing in long lines to vote, Dean said Thursday, "Republicans, I guess, can do that because a lot of them have never made an honest living in their lives."
Edwards, a former senator and the Democrats' vice presidential nominee in 2004, said Saturday at a fund-raising dinner in Nashville that Dean "is not the spokesman for the party." Dean is "a voice. I don't agree with it."
The other story comes from RedState, which I’m simply going to ask you to go read.
The more chatter I see from the Democrats the more I am convinced they’re headed for a major split over the future of the party… and the flash point, I think, will be Howard Dean.
At this stage of the game, it’s an open question as to which is more damaging to the Democrats… admitting that Dean as DNC leader is a bust, or admitting that he perfectly represents his party.
And no, I don’t see those two as mutually exclusive.
Tags: BitsBlog
This AP story exemplifies the duplicity in the press on the Iraqi WMD business rather well.
UNITED NATIONS - U.N. satellite imagery experts have determined that material that could be used to make biological or chemical weapons and banned long-range missiles has been removed from 109 sites in Iraq, U.N. weapons inspectors said in a report obtained Thursday.
How in he world can somehting that didn’t exist, be missing? Clearly it did and likely does exist. Further, we know a long line of trucks was headed for Syria at the onset of our invasion of Iraq.
And in another report, they appear to have turned up in Syria, where AP reports they’re being tested.
I’ve been calling this one for two years, people.
Tags: BitsBlog
From the “Whatever happned to ” file, we’ve heard form Melenie Safka, via Melanie’s News, which advises she’s got a new CD coming out on June the 28th. Apparently, this is the first since the August 2002 release of “Crazy Love”. Nice to see she’s still out there.
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Eject! Eject! Eject! goes long on, among other topics, why illegal comabtants are NOT prisoners of war, and why they are not, thereby covered under the Geneva Conventions. A worthy read.
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Tomas Kohl looks at the EU’s defeat and has some potent comments.
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Krispy Kreme is apparently celebrating Doughnut day by giving away one of your choice of doughnuts, (limit one per cust, apparently) all day, today.
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With apoligies to Vince Gill….Boortz today reaffirms what I said, yesterday.. that this Mark Felt press orgy is setting up an attack on President Bush.
We're already seeing rumblings of the Next Big Thing for the Democratic Party. It's the I-word....impeachment. It makes sense, doesn't it? Democrats are still mad about the impeachment of Bill Clinton. They want a little revenge. So how are they going to do it? What evidence could they possibly have to even think about starting any such proceeding against George Bush?
What's making the rounds is a Downing Street memo from 2002 (10 Downing Street is the official prime minister's residence in Great Britain, for those who don't follow such things.) In this memo, which was drafted by a foreign policy aide to Tony Blair, it allegedly includes minutes from a July 2002 meeting where Tony Blair allegedly admitted that the Bush administration fixed Iraq intelligence in order to go to war. Oh boy...this is a doozy! It's the smoking gun....George Bush is doomed! Well, not really.
The memo apparently doesn't quote either Bush or Blair directly and lacks any sort of evidence supporting a cover up. But that doesn't matter...facts are never a problem for the left.
It doesn’t take a great deal of imagination to see that what this is all about is ‘positioning’.
Set up a bad cop, as a hero, because he took down a sitting second term, moderate Republican president.
Why? So you can get someone to come forward and bring down… facts or no… a sitting second term moderate Republican president. So that there’s PRECIDENT for a corrupt political activist, being treated like a hero, for taking down a second term moderate Republican president. It’s called self-justificaion.
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INDC Journal: INDC this morning, addresses the real situation at Gitmo…
Americans are very kind people," one English-challenged detainee said in the March 4 paper. "If people say there is mistreatment in Cuba with the detainees, those type speaking are wrong, they treat us like a Muslim not a detainee."
"I'm in good health and have good facilities of eating, drinking, living, and playing," remarked another. "The food is good, the bedrooms are clean and the health care is very good.In a February 16 Gitmo dispatch, an American Forces Press Service report described the treatment of Camp Delta's roughly 520 detainees from about 40 nations. Troublemakers wear prison-style orange jumpsuits and mainly are confined to rudimentary accommodations. But those who follow camp rules wear white outfits and exercise seven to nine hours daily, often playing soccer and volleyball. In quieter moments, "chess, checkers and playing cards are the most requested items," Rhem wrote. As for reading, "A security official explained Agatha Christie books in Arabic are very popular and that camp officials are working to get copies of Harry Potter books in Arabic."
Detainees eat culturally sensitive meals and follow arrows painted on dorm floors to face Mecca. "Prayer calls are broadcast over loudspeakers five times a day," Rhem added."
Funny how you’re not hearing these reports in the mainstream press, ain’t it?
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If all men were created equal, Smilin' Bob wouldn't be making a fortune for the makers of Enzite.
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HUMAN EVENTS ONLINE has a list up, of the “Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries”
And frankly, I’d shuffle tyem around a bit wihtin the list, but they’ve clearly picked the right books to put in it.
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