Former KD engineer passes
Pittsburgh:
Commenters on the Pittsburgh Radio Nostalgia message board report that former KDKA-TV (2) engineer Al Goetz of Ross Township passed away earlier this week at age 72. Goetz is survived by his wife, Angie, daughter Lisa, and brother Richard. Memorial contributions may be made to Animal Friends.
'Tell 'em you heard it on Mike McGann!'
Pittsburgh: (Mini-Commentary From Jason Togyer) I'm a pretty progressive guy, but I have to assume that right now (3:48 p.m. Thursday), several dozen Buick Park Avenues are crashed in ditches around Pittsburgh as their elderly drivers sputter with rage and confusion. A few minutes ago, during the Mike McGann Show, WJAS (1320) ran a commercial for a counselor in "gender issues" who can discuss hormone therapy if you want to "make the transition from F-T-M or M-T-F." ("Show the world the real you inside.") (more)Reach out and watch someone
Pittsburgh:
Competition for the cable TV company? It's coming to parts of Pennsylvania. And Pittsburgh area communities need to band together if they want to quickly negotiate agreements to obtain new fiber-optic television service from Verizon, says O'Hara Township attorney Dan Cohen. According to the Tribune-Review, parts of eastern Pennsylvania are going to be among the first in the United States to receive the new TV service, called Verizon FiOS, which could provide real competition for monopoly cable TV systems like Comcast. But the phone company doesn't want to just copy the 1960s-era cable TV contracts with local governments, and it also doesn't want to negotiate with each of Allegheny County's 130 municipalities separately. Several boroughs and townships in the eastern, southern and northern parts of Allegheny County, including Monroeville and the members of the North Hills Council of Government, have hired Cohen to negotiate franchise agreements with Verizon as a group. Still to be determined: Who's responsible for cancelling "According to Jim," and will they please do it soon?
Musings: The Weather
Pittsburgh:I am almost willing to bet that in this week's Post-Gazette Q&A Column where Rob Owen answers the emails of TV viewers, someone is going to ask something like, "Will WTAE ever re-air the 'Dancing with the Stars' that they so RUDELY interrupted on Monday night?" Or better yet, "Why does WTAE feel they have to interrupt our favorite programming to tell us about a storm in Mercer County?" I missed the show and the interruption, but I can probably piece it together from the clues in the 11:00 newscast.
(more)Whitlock to replace Imus?
National News: Radio Ink is reporting that Kansas City Star columnist Jason Whitlock was recently interviewed by WFAN PD Mark Chernoff for the syndicated morning show once hosted by Don Imus. Whitlock wrote about the controversy in a recent column saying that "rap lyrics are doing more harm than anything Don Imus could say. Whitlock, who has done morning radio before in Kansas City, is not sure that he wants the position. He feels that he's getting plenty of notoriety where he is.
Meanwhile, in another RI article, Imus reportedly hired high-powered, New York laywer-to-the-stars Martin Garbus. Garbus wouldn't elaborate on why Imus hired him, but some observers think a lawsuit may be coming.
Imus once aired locally on 1550 AM WURP, and was set to return to the station on the same day his original two-week suspension was to begin.
WKRP on DVD
National News:Everybody's favorite radio station is coming to DVD. The first season of"WKRP in Cincinnati" starring Gordon Jump, Loni Anderson and Carnegie-Mellon graduate Richard Sanders, will be released on 4/24. One can recall the days when most stations were privately owned and the jocks were live, but as Radio Ink points out, Dr. Johnny Fever and Venus Flytrap could always drop everything and show up at Jennifer's apartment when she had a problem. One change in the program will be the music heard on the radio station. Thanks to copyright issues, the Top-40 music used has been replaced with generic music.