There are two rampant rumors circulating in the talk radio community about Randi Rhodes. One is she’s trying to renegotiate with Air America Radio to take Tom Hartmann’s spot when he is picked up by Dial Global. The other is that she’s negotiating with Dial Global to join him.

Amy Bolton, who runs the talk syndication division at DG, has heard the rumors about both her company and Air America being a landing zone for the Rhodes show. But she says it won’t be Dial Global; her company is not in talks with the Rhodes show to join her stable of talent.

Dial Global now operates the former Jones Radio Network, which syndicates Ed Shultz, LA’s Stephanie Miller, Bill Press and Neal Boortz. It also owns TM/Century, which radio old-timers will remember as the producer of “Tomorrow Radio,” which sagely foretold radio’s future 29 years ago.

Things haven’t been rosy in the talk radio business, no matter what your politics. Shock talk took a hit last Friday in Los Angeles when KLSX–once the SoCal home of Howard Stern–started spinning the hits again. Today, the NYSE delisted Citadel Broadcasting, which is the company of suckers that bought ABC Radio for top dollar only to see its stock tank.  It lost five cents in value today. That’s normally not a big deal, unless, like Citadel, your stock trades for nine cents a share. The New York exchange told them to take their stock to the OTC market.

The other rumor is that Rhodes is talking with Air America Radio. Representatives there did not return calls for comment. Meanwhile, her old Palm Beach station, WJNO, has moved Sean Hannity into her old timeslot, and has moved uber-reactionary Mark Levin into Hannity’s.

Shortly after the 1950s became the 60s, I was one of those geeky kids who read Popular Electronics and took gadgets apart to see how they made their magic. I got in just on the end of that period where a big part of  Popular Mechanics was how wonderful the future, driven by science and engineering, was going to be.

I hit the tail end of that period; things became more noir starting in the 50s. We became xenophobic. Superman’s fight for “Truth, justice and tolerance,” in the comics became “truth, justice and the American Way” when it moved to television. And then we became downright cynical. Donald Fagen mocked it all, with his great lyrics for I.G.Y. A song set in 1957-58 about how wonderful things would be in 1976.

Here at home well play in the city
Powered by the sun
Perfect weather for a streamlined world
There’ll be spandex jackets one for everyone.

What a beautiful world this will be
What a glorious time to be free

………………………………… –from IGY – Donald Fagen

I’ve been watching TED videos since shortly after they first came online. I’ve always loved them, and always learned, but this year it was different. The election of President Obama has restored science and reason to public policy. It no longer must hold equal footing with the assertion that Adam & Eve rode dinosaurs. We are not afraid of stem cells. We’re not afraid to hope.

Following the tweets from the many on Twitter who attended, and then watching the videos as they’re released from this years’ TED conference has brought me back to the way I felt reading the pop science and engineering magazines of my childhood.

I know I’m not the only one who feels this way. The presenters allude to it or say it directly in their presentations. The audiences erupt in spontaneous applause when they do. I’d guess that if you’re reading this blog, you’d feel that way too, and if you aren’t following TED, you’re missing out. They’re available as video podcasts on I-Tunes and through other “delivery mediums near you.”

It wasn’t but 20 years ago, we were dumping ASCII messages from BBS to BBS in the dead of the night. Today we send text messages instantaneously to hundreds of thousands of the likeminded and follow it up with high quality video.

We can leverage technology to escape our predicaments. We can develop energy industries that can save us from paying oil rich countries while simultaneously giving us a valuable export.

We can find ways to teach our children better, and use our knowledge to better understand the world and help it solve its problems, which will restore our tattered image oversees.

The Internet has shrunk the world to nearly manageable size, and our search for other worlds and in the ancient history of our own has shown us how much there is left to explore and learn. Some may disagree, but I think its a wonderful thing that with a few clicks of the mouse, you can find I.G.Y. as done by a Japanese cover band.

Dear Rush Limbaugh:

Thank you for writing your open letter to President Obama, published Friday as an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. I know things have been tough for your syndicator and owned stations (Premiere/Clear Channel). First, the banks tried to renege on their deal to take your employer private, and you all had to take less. Then the bean-counters came in and you had that mass firing Inauguration day.  Then, the junk bonds keeping your company alive got even junkier.  Standard and Poor downgraded them from B to B-.

With so many things wrong in this country, it made no sense when there was suddenly so much hue and cry from the biggest right wing talk networks and station groups over the fairness doctrine. Mr. Obama’s never liked the fairness doctrine, your party is against it, and you can count those in my party who want it reinstated on your fingers and toes. You may not even need your toes.

Last Friday (the same day Clear Channel’s massive debt got downgraded), you dropped your pants in your WSJ op-ed and it suddenly all made sense. Its not about the fairness doctrine at all, is it?

Its about a handful of companies owning the vast majority of powerful radio stations across this country and putting on nearly every station the same imported schlock with no local staffs, minimal local content, and in some cases not even a living soul stationed at studio or transmitter.

Your precise question to President Obama:

Is it your intention to censor talk radio through a variety of contrivances, such as “local content,” “diversity of ownership,” and “public interest” rules — all of which are designed to appeal to populist sentiments but, as you know, are the death knell of talk radio and the AM band?

Requiring Clear Channel to provide local content in their communities of license is not censorship. Its like requiring an investment company to actually buy some stocks and bonds for their investors and truthfully advise those investors about their holdings. Requiring radio stations to serve their communities–regardless of the political leanings of the ultimate content–is only a death knell to weak and poorly managed companies: companies like yours; companies that you would ordinarily, as a free market conservative, demand be thrown under the bus.

Fact is, Mr. Limbaugh, what has happened in the radio business is the same thing that has happened in the banking, the mortgage, and even the automobile industries. We “let the market decide,” by deregulating everything in sight, and the charlatans took over: people who don’t give a rat’s ass about ethics or values or anything but this month’s profit. Your masters bought up every radio station and station group they could find using expensive debt. The interest payments siphoned off the money for local programming and public service.

The decimation of the radio business by firing legions of talented people at the local stations, replacing them with automatons voiced in sweatshops in “cluster facilities” hundreds of miles away is broadcasting’s version of a Ponzi scheme. Its like selling off the locomotive of a train claiming inertia would keep it moving. Now that its ground to a stop, you’re trying to blame President Obama because you’re afraid he’s going to force you to replace the engine.

Your answer is to do what Rove, Cheney, and Bush did to sell the Iraq war. First you teach that the fairness doctrine is a bad thing. You call it censorship. Then you use those terms in a sentence with all the things you want to sully. Fairness doctrine, public interest, diversity of ownership, local content. There’s no connection, but you hope your listeners aren’t sharp enough to catch it. Saddam Hussein, terrorist, 9/11, weapons of mass destruction, Iraq, axis of evil, mushroom cloud.

But this time, they might catch on. All those words strung together to get us into war were either bad or unfamiliar and foreign sounding. Local content, local ownership, local people behind local mikes discussing local issues—what we once called full-service radio—are things people understand and many of us even remember. It will not be easy to redefine them as a negative when a lot of people will see them as an old friend, and it would truly be karma to see the “populist sentiment” that you’ve played like a violin for 20 years be the thing that puts your stations back in the hands of people who care about serving their communities, and takes you off the air for good.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if your denouement came the very first time you got caught red-handed at the Shock Doctrine? Rush Limbaugh, Saddam Hussein, Sean Hannity, Clear Channel, Terrorist, 9/11, mushroom cloud.

Nova-M Radio, the radio syndicator for Randi Rhodes, crashed and burned to the great delight of a gaggle of right wing talker fans everywhere. Moe Lane at Redstate took mock credit for its demise, claiming an appearance by “our own Mark Impomeni…shut it down cold.”

The #tcots on Twitter were all a-twitter too. Free Market At Work, they crowed. And they’re right, but its not because there’s a lack of appetite in the country for liberal ideas or thoughts, it just there’s a lack of demand for it over old delivery methods.

The correct paring of medium and message was one of the main reasons for Rush Limbaugh and neocon-talk radio’s rise in the first place. When Limbaugh began doing his brand of political talk, old pickup trucks still had AM-only radios.

Let’s digress a moment, and quote Wikipedia’s entry on buggy whips:

Though similar whips are still manufactured for limited purposes, the buggy whip industry as a major economic entity ceased to exist with the introduction of the automobile, and is cited in economics and marketing as an example of an industry ceasing to exist because its market niche, and the need for its product, disappears. — Wikipedia on Buggy Whip & Coach Whip

The buggy whip didn’t disappear overnight. There was this period where whip manufacturers were failing, and those most successful in staying in business hewed to markets where their product was still in demand, and they did what they needed to be premier in that market.

It would be as if a smart buggy whip manufacturer would identify the Amish market and do what ever it took to best serve their needs. Even naming themselves—in a not so subtle nod to their remaining market—Ordnung, the German word for order.

Ordnung, if you’ve been keeping up with your Mennonite apologetics, is the Amish name for their set of rules for living. What a great name for a whip, if you’re Amish!

So take no joy in watching libtalk radio go over the cliff, righties. It was just the weakest buggy whip company in the business: it deserved to die. But the lesser Rushbos aren’t far behind.

Radio Equalizer has just published a document purported to be from Randi Rhodes’ attorney Robert V Gaulin claiming that Nova-M radio has shut its doors.

Eric Reinert, general manager of Nova-M’s flagship station in the greater Phoenix market, acknowledges that he is familiar with the letter from seeing it on the web, but refused to confirm nor deny the rumors. The office phone is no longer answered as Nova-M radio.

Pressed for details Reinert added, “Its not that I can’t confirm or deny, its that I won’t.” It will all become clear over time, Reinert said.

If you watched the five-day celebration where Barack Obama became our 44th president, you’ll recall the many parallels that were drawn to Abraham Lincoln, from the train trip that retraced Lincoln’s, to the reading of Lincoln’s words by patriot Tom Hanks at the Saturday celebration at Lincoln’s memorial. Lincoln was looking down on us.

And you also heard Aaron Copland. A lot of Copland, from The Lincoln Portrait which accompanied Hanks’ reading, to strains of Simple Gifts,  one of the themes blended by John Williams for his arrangement for Itzhak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma, also used by Copland for his Appalachian Suite, to Fanfare for the Common Man. Our list of American composers of ceremonial music is short, and runs the range of styles from John Philip Sousa to Mr. Williams. But the dean is Aaron Copland whose pioneering styles can still be heard in modern film composers like James Newton Howard.

I couldn’t help thinking how proud Aaron Copland would have been; a proud Socialist during the 30s FDR administration. A man who loved his country not in the “love it or leave it” frame, but “love it and improve it.”  He wrote the soundtrack for monumental progress that would happen long after his death.

Perhaps Copland and Lincoln were both looking down at us in our time of great progress and great peril. Thinking of that, I started experimenting with Copland and Copland-like themes as an arranging project, which I’ve posted here. The middle portion is real Copland, performed at the Obama Lincoln celebration and narrated live by Tom Hanks. These are real instruments playing real Copland music in a fair-use sized chunk. The surrounding music, accompanying Mr. Obama, are my composition and orchestration realized by the East-West Symphony Orchestra sample set being driven by Sonar 7 Producer.

Most browsers should play the files below by clicking the links. Don’t attempt the lossless WMA without a fast connection.

President’s Day Copland Tribute – mp3

President’s Day Copland Tribute – wma (lossless 18meg)

President’s Day Copland tribute – wma (compressed 1.8 meg)

I Don’t Read The Newspaper

There I’ve said it!  I am officially a heretic.  I teach journalism, but I don’t read a newspaper.

And I doubt that most people reading this blog or others do either. — Blog post from @Teach_J

The 1920s saw an amazing change. The automobile was overtaking the horse, the telephone was becoming an appliance for more than the rich and early adopters, and the radio was replacing word of mouth and the evening newspaper as the method the public first learned of a new important event. Instantaneous communication changed everything, and the radio has lived on its laurels ever since.

Voltmeter on 1922 Ware Neutrodyne Radio

That is, until the Internet crept in on little cat feet and slowly inserted itself first as an alternative for text communication, growing to a distribution medium so robust that it is easier to distribute high definition images–even moving ones–on the net than through adapted legacy media.

That has brought us to a crisis. We will, over the next few years, see the total decimation of the very technology that changed us in the first place. The change is going to appear far swifter than it really is, because its been going on for a long time, and instead of legacy media using its power to move forward, its used that power to be recalcitrant and reactionary. The best example is the RIAA, which was successful for many years in keeping the status quo through lawsuits and threats of suits, and through rent seeking–ie gaming the system instead of adapting to it.

The NAB has tried the same thing, and for years has been successful because no congresscritter wants to go against their local TV or radio station. But the Internet is a game changer, not only because YouTube can bring you a Macaca Moment, it lets you walk around those local gatekeepers and speak directly to your constituents: even about how your local broadcaster is gaming the system to make you think you’re being served by media that is really self-serving.

Take the Local Radio Freedom Act, which was named by the NAB to try and disguise what it really is: congressional affirmation that radio and television stations don’t have to pay performers when they play their songs. There’s always been an inequity in broadcasting. It had to pay the rights holders for the words and music, but not the performer who actually performed it in recorded form. When paying the talent was at issue for net-only radio stations and audio sources, the NAB was not interested in standing up against performance “fees and taxes.” Thousands, probably tens of thousands, of internet radio stations shut down.

But paying performers is a whole different animal when its legacy media. Its a tax. A bailout, screams the NAB, and they’re blaming the RIAA for it. In fact the only “freedom” in the local radio freedom act is to reaffirm in law the freedom of broadcasters to rip off musicians and artists, which they’ve been doing for years.

While these scorpions challenge each other in the bottle that is a shrinking space occupied by legacy media, we will see more and more of those of us who think about and write about a business we grew up in, no longer be consumers of it, because the new alternatives are just too enticing especially to those of us who follow them closely.

And I’m guilty just like the journalism teacher who eschews the pulpy rag. When I was writing about Randi Rhodes the other day, at a time her show was on, I wanted to make sure she wasn’t on the air but not on the net. I had to go out to my car to do it. I don’t have a radio in the house hooked up to receive an over the air signal.

Right wing radio and the conservative blogosphere has been nearly apoplectic since the majority/minority flip in Washington over the possible reapparence of the fairness doctrine. Even an oblique mention by Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) set off right wing blogger Ericka Anderson at Town Hall. Anderson is smart enough not to raise the First Amendment in her argument, but that subject shows up pretty quickly in the comments, no doubt because Sean Hannity’s favorite rant is how he’s going to be imminently unconstitutionally muzzled.

Even Mark P. Mays of Clear Channel fame raised a first amendment issue when he defended Rush Limbaugh’s “Phony Soldiers” gaffe:

While I do not agree with everything Mr. Limbaugh says on every topic, I do believe that he, along with every American, has the right to voice his or her opinion in the manner they choose. The First Amendment gives every American the right to voice his or her opinion, no matter how unpopular. That right is one that I am sure you agree must be cherished and protected.

Fairness Doctrine in full battle array!

At least four Supreme Court decisions since Brinkley v. FRC conclude broadcasting is not covered by the first amendment. Limbaugh has no constitutional right of several hundred thousand watts of force behind his words.

Those who would least like the first amendment to apply to broadcasting are Hannity’s bosses at the Citadel/ABC stations like WABC, and the folks at Clear Channel that air so much of him. For if they truly believe that “Congress shall make no law” restricting freedom of speech, and that freedom applies to radio, then they have a very serious problem in South Florida.

We’re famous for our pirate broadcasters. Right now, there’s a Creole station broadcasting without benefit of government license just a few miles away from where I write this. The problem is so critical that the broadcasters got the state of Florida to pass a law so that local gendarmes could arrest pirate broadcasters and confiscate their equipment. So when the FCC  is too busy with more important things like Bono’s intemperate mouth and Janet Jackson’s pouty breast to enforce those “unconstitutional” laws they now have a Plan B.

If its true that Congress can make no law, then I can build a transmitter so big that it blows the local Clear Channel station all the way to Bermuda, but instead of calling to have me arrested and my transmitter taken away, they can join me in pointing to the first amendment. But of course, they’d be the last folks to do that. Because in fact they really love that Congress has made the laws that empower the Federal Communications Commission. Its what puts them in business and keeps the competition so limited that they can buy most of it.

So why is the right trying something so transparent? Does Hannity really believe the crap he’s spewing or does he think his audience is stupid? I think they see it as a win-win. Since the Obama administration has clearly signaled they don’t want the Fairness Doctrine back, but maybe they might want some more stringent ownership caps, the broadcasters can claim victory over that vicious strawman.

But more Machivellian is the possibility that radio’s future is bleak, and that the folks who have been complaining about how the market should decide what is heard on the radio have actually killed the medium with what they decided to broadcast. Citadel Broadcasting (which bought ABC Radio) is trading at 16 cents a share. Sirius started the day at 8 cents. Like the banks, they overvalued their properties driving out the competition and then watched them crash and burn. But when the folks who can’t see through the Hannity arguments wake up one day and their favorite conservative blowhard is gone from the air, they’ll assume it was the Democrats that got ‘em.

More information is emerging about the technicalities of the word “technical” that are being used by Anita Drobny and Nova-M radio as an excuse for Rhodes absence from her nationally syndicated show. “It is not an NSF issue,” said a source familiar with the situation at WJNO, where Rhodes originates her show via ISDN connection to the greater Phoenix Nova-M facilities where it is satellite uplinked to affiliated stations.

The new information confirms that Premiere (the Clear-Channel owned syndicator that distributes Rush Limbaugh) will not be involved in distributing the Rhodes program. It contradicts an earlier report that Rhodes will return as a Clear Channel employee hosting a local program. Radio & Records is reporting that the “technical” dispute is a contractual issue, which is echoed at the LTR blog: “Negotiations are reportedly completely amicable with both sides determined to get Rhodes back on the air as soon as possible.”

Her studio in the West Palm Beach Clear Channel cluster is available and unused, writes a knowledgeable source, “Whenever [Rhodes] and Nova-M decide she can put her ass in the seat, it’s waiting for her.”

UPDATE

Less than a year after Randi Rhodes broke with Air America, returning to Palm Beach County to move her national show to the Nova-M network, she is again off the air, her show being guest hosted, often at the last minute, by Nancy Skinner. Rhodes and WJNO are preparing to relaunch her show as a local program from the West Palm Beach studios of the Clear Channel cluster, according to sources inside Clear Channel knowledgable about the preparations.

Is this the Randi Rhodes channel?

Rhodes and Nova-M have been blaming “technical problems” for the interruption of The Randi Rhodes show, but when pressed, a spokesman at Nova-M’s flagship station in Phoenix responded that “technical problems” could have a lot of different meanings. The many definitions of “technical” was echoed by sources at Clear Channel in West Palm Beach, who said there were no Clear Channel technical issues, and that the assumption that a technical problems had to do with equipment or transmission wouldn’t be correct.

Over the last few days, according to those familiar with the situation in West Palm Beach, WJNO has been making preparations for Rhodes to return to WJNO as a Clear Channel employee hosting a local show from their facilities. Though Clear Channel owns Premiere Radio Networks, the radio syndicator that distrubutes Rush Limbaugh, it is not believed her show will be syndicated when she returns.

Rhodes seems to be doing her best to become the liberal counterpart of Rush Limbaugh: a deeply flawed spokesperson for an ideology. Its still not clear how a mugging with political overtones in New York which Air America reported squares with her ultimate story that she left an Irish Pub after several hours of drinking and isn’t sure what happened next.

The whole transition from Air America to Nova-M leaves more questions unanswered than nailed down. And now comes statements from Rhodes and Anita Drobny that make so little sense her supporters are shaking their heads in disbelief. Rhodes has depended upon the intelligence of her listeners to call bullshit on the Bush administration and have it resonate with those within the sound of her voice. There comes a responsibility when you appeal to the intelligence of your listeners to respect that intelligence when you speak about yourself.

UPDATE