Category: Radio

Rewound the years

You say you want oldies, but you’re tired of hearing the same songs over and over on your local station? You want the fun and surprises of hearing EVERYthing from the first 20 years of Pop-Rock music? You want Rewound Radio. Brought to you by the folks who run musicradio77, a tribute to the world’s greatest Top 40 radio station, 77 WABC in New York.

It’s a ’65-’74 no repeat Columbus Day weekend on Rewound Radio. They say “Turn it on and… Leave it on all holiday weekend!” and that’s exactly what I’m doing. Click here for a complete list of online listening options.

CBS Radio blocks online streams

CBS Radio has started selectively blocking online access to its stations. Radio.com on a browser works, but I use a Logitech Squeezebox Radio in my bedroom. This is what I hear when I try to listen to WBZ-Boston.

[audio:https://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2011/Aug/CBS_radio.mp3|titles=CBS Radio blocking stations]

Tunein.com now redirects to Radio.com, which doesn’t work with a Roku media player. I don’t know or care who CBS Radio is making happy by doing this, but it’s not me, and I have no intention of returning to AM radio to hear WBZ in the house.

Follow-up: There’s a workaround. I used the URL that’s been working in the Chumby.

In living color

RCA CEO David Sarnoff was a ruthless businessman. His great insight and accomplishment was seeing the potential of broadcasting as an entertainment medium and making network radio and television a reality. But Sarnoff didn’t hesitate to steal technology, as he did from Philo T. Farnsworth, and he crushed the great inventor Edwin Armstrong, who had been a close friend.

Having said that, RCA’s engineers did an exemplary job of creating the all-electronic NTSC color television system that was backwards-compatible with existing black & white sets. It was Ampex, however, that introduced b&w video tape recording in 1956. Two years later, RCA modified an Ampex deck so it could record in color, and the amazing results are in this video. If only this technology had been available during WWII, we would have an entirely different historical perception of the era.

Information on the restoration of this historic recording is at this link.

Smile, it’s radio

A UK study by the Radio Advertising Bureau says that — surprise! — radio is great. Better than watching TV, and better than surfing the net. Despite the lack of impartiality, I think the study’s conclusion is right. At least for me it is.

As I’ve said many times, I’m a fan of BBC Radio 2, but I also enjoy listening to BBC Radio 4, “a speech station for curious minds.” There are lots of great documentaries and all sorts of dramatizations of great breadth and often depth, like Brian (friend of the blog) Sibley’s adaptation of Mervyn Peake’s strange, densely-packed novel Titus Groan. The production is excellent, with lots of aural treats, but this is not a programme that can be appreciated casually, so I recommend listening on headphones. The BBC doesn’t keep everything online forever, but for an intricate series like Titus Groan one would hope they’ll continue to make it available for some weeks.

The Wright frame of mind

On WBZ-Boston radio Monday night laconic, existential comedian Steven Wright chatted with his fellow Emerson College alum, Steve LeVeille. Wright was scheduled to be on for just the first hour, but he stayed for two. (I wasn’t going to sit at the computer any later than that, Samjay!) Here’s the first hour, and I think I got all of the commercials out, but I left in Mike Love singing about pretty trees.

[audio:https://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2011/Jun/leveille.mp3|titles=WBZ-Boston: Steve LeVeille with Steven Wright]