In Praise Of Jimmy Fallon
In a new post on The AV Club, Steven Hyden makes the case that Jimmy Fallon has become the best host in late night, and I agree with much of what he says. Fallon's rise is a classic example of not judging a show based on its first few episodes (or even months), but...
My Holiday Turkey
The first radio station I was paid to work for (after several years of volunteering at non-commercial college and high school stations) was WRCN/Riverhead. It was a classic small-town station on the east end of Long Island that played "album-oriented rock" to an...
Disgraced But Embraced
Judge James Zaget listened to Rod Blagojevich plead for leniency yesterday, then slapped him with a 14-year prison sentence for corruption and other charges. Blagojevich's statement, in which he finally admitted guilt and accepted responsibility, was a big 180 from...
Reporter Above, Traffic Below
Airborne traffic reports are a mainstay of large-market radio stations, but the people who do them don't get nearly as much credit as they deserve. Most of them work split-shifts, getting up well before dawn to get to the airport, spend several hours flying circles...
This Is Only A Test — Followup
Grade for this afternoon's federal test of the Emergency Alert System: a big fat F. I punched around on the St. Louis radio dial at 1pm and heard all the radio stations relaying the EAS test, but there was some confusion. At least two of them didn't know the exact...
This Is Only A Test
At 1pm CT today, there will be a test of the Emergency Alert System, carried by every radio and television station in the country. It's a waste of time and money. If there's one thing we don't have a shortage of in the USA, it's information. When there's an emergency...
Silent Sirens and False Alarms
One of the stories I talked about this morning on WHAS/Louisville was a test of the tornado sirens yesterday afternoon. It surprised a lot of people, including those who ran it, because it was supposed to be a "silent" test. I don't know how you test a siren silently...
My Favorite Request
In the early 80s, before I became a morning show host, I was the nighttime disc jockey at WHCN/Hartford, on the air six nights a week. Evenings were a big daypart for rock radio because, in world of limited media choices, that's when teenagers turned to radio for...