The Host/Guest Relationship
Last Thursday on "The Daily Show," Mark Ruffalo introduced a montage of clips showing the many times Jon Stewart has admitted that he hasn't seen a guest's movie. I suppose this was meant to jokingly embarrass Stewart, as if he's never prepared for interview. To the...
Shame On You, ABC Radio
Shame on ABC Radio for leading its Noon CT newscast today with the conspiracy theorists in Texas who believe that upcoming military exercises by the Pentagon are part of a plan to takeover their state and take away their guns. The anchor even included audio of an...
Sexually Speaking With Dr. Ruth
When I worked for WYNY/New York in 1985-86, the biggest star on the radio station wasn't me or my morning show partner, nor the guys who did middays and afternoons. WYNY's most well-known personality was a petite sex therapist with a German accent named Dr. Ruth...
A Unique Jingle Package
Yesterday, I wrote about how I loved radio station jingles when I was growing up. Composing that piece, my mind flashed back to the late 1970s when I heard an interesting variation on regular jingles that I've never heard anywhere else. I was in college on Long Island...
Jingle All The Way
Growing up, I was a fan of great radio jingles like those produced by legendary production houses JAM and PAMS, which were heard on hundreds of radio stations across the country (and around the world). From hyper-fast name-shouts to shotguns to full-length theme songs...
Clutter Radio
Clutter has always been a problem in the radio business. Stations want to give you lots of content, but still get in all the commercials and sponsorship messages that pay for the rest of the programming you want to hear, hopefully without making you tune out. Why,...
Best Thing I’ve Read Today
I'm no cheerleader for the radio industry, which isn't investing enough in talent and ideas and continues to cut personnel because its bottom line is getting crushed by too much debt. But the hype this year for podcasts becoming the new way for Americans to consume...
Do Podcasts Make Money?
In today's NY Times, David Carr writes about the success of "Serial," a podcast from Ira Glass and his colleagues behind "This American Life," which has become a runaway hit in terms of downloads and listeners. But Carr doesn't address the bottom line -- is it making...