Category: Radio

Steve LeVeille, one of America’s unemployed

There’s a “Bring Back Steve LeVeille” campaign. Link here. Also, a small but significant change has been made to Steve LeVeille’s homepage.

Steve LeVeille

I was talking to my buddy SamJay, another former radio biz guy like myself, and I mentioned that if Steve were back on WBZ, but his start time was moved down to 1 AM, I’d have a hard time catching him, because I listened during his first hour, before going to bed. Sam pointed out that Overnight America starts at 1 AM because it’s midnight in St. Louis, so WBZ cuts the last hour for its morning drive slot. Which means that even if Jon Grayson somehow gets Boston fans, they’ll be ticked off because they can’t listen to the whole program. SamJay says the only explanation is CBS wants to ditch WBZ AM 1030, and maybe all of the stations that are carrying Overnight America, so nobody there cares, and I think he’s right.

Steve Leh-VELL-ee

As a good counterpoint to the audio clip I posted with Jordan Rich introducing Steve LeVeille’s replacement, this is a brief excerpt from an interview LeVeille did a couple of years ago with Ed Walsh, when he was replacing longtime WBZ morning man Gary LaPierre.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2009/JAN/LeVeilleWalsh.mp3]

Overnight America, Overnight Success?

I had assumed that “Overnight America” was an existing program, but apparently not. Its premiere was last night, on four stations.

http://www.kmox.com/pages/3583198.php

According to Arbitron, Boston is the #10 radio market, and St. Louis is #20. Am I missing something here about taking the overnight slot from Steve LeVeille and giving it to Jon Grayson? Who besides the guys making the decision think it was a good one to make?

http://www.arbitron.com/home/mm001050.asp

Arbitron radio ratings

WBoZo 1030 AM Boston’s dumb idea

I predict that WBZ radio’s wrong-headed decision to replace overnight personality Steve LeVeille with a syndicated program originating in St. Louis will be a total failure. Here’s an audio clip of Jordan Rich introducing Jon Grayson, host of Overnight America, with a real party line of BS.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2009/JAN/Wbz1030.mp3]

It’s telling that Grayson is on the other end of a regular phone line, and not coming over a high quality link. Nothing against Grayson personally, because I’ve never heard of him before, but I have no interest in listening to his show.

Maybe Steve LeVeille will issue a statement on his website. Wherever he goes, I’ll follow.

Playing DJ with theRADIO.com

Thanks to my dad’s cousin Lawrie for tipping me off to (yet another) new online music service. This one is theRADIO.com. Type in a song or artist and it takes you to whichever category it belongs to. theRADIO.com is from some outfit called American Media Services Interactive, and at this point I feel almost overwhelmed by the choices available today for music, whether online on cable TV, and I don’t even have XM/Sirius or HD Radio.

What I’d really like is a free-form option — except no rap or hip-hop, thank you very much. I love playing DJ, so I played with theRadio.com for a while and skipped around genres while recording. The selection includes the Turtles, a Johnny Ramone instrumental (I checked the volume in the middle of it), Lucinda Williams (a fave of Carol’s), followed by my all-time #1 favorite Bob Dylan tune, and finishing with “Reason to Believe”, recorded while I was called away, so I’m not sure who it is. Some of the inflections almost sound like Petula, but it isn’t her. Marianne Faithfull, maybe?

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2008/DEC/RadioDotCom.mp3]

Speaking of lovely Petula, Dave Moncur sent a link with some photos of our favourite glamour girl, who was performing in Utreht, Netherlands (K3 country!) recently. Thanks, Dave. She looks even better than when I saw her in May!

Petula Clark MAX Proms