July 16

Radio AM to FM: July 16, 2004

Pirate iPod

Electronics-oriented web magazine Engadget (www.engadget.com) recently had an interesting how-to column: How to make your own pirate radio station with an iPod.

Not a pirate in the traditional sense, wherein someone sets up a (relatively) high-powered transmitter and broadcasts to an entire city. This is small-scale pirate broadcasting, to be used as a public service. Examples include:

• "Ever get stuck at a stop light and the dude in the next car is blasting the radio? With the super-easy iPod interface you can quickly get to the station he's on and send over whatever you want. A couple gentle ocean waves or birds usually work out great."

• If your gym has televisions in the exercise area that send audio signals via FM, you can use your pirate iPod to override the sound. "Now we're not suggesting you go around and broadcast CNN or anything, but we think broadcasting 'aliens have landed today, the President and UN will be making an announcement immediately' could be quite fun."

• At the park, broadcast a silent track when someone disturbs the peace by blasting a radio.

According to the story, all it takes is an Apple iPod Mini and a Griffin iTrip Mini FM transmitter, plus a little nerve: in order to extend the range of the iTrip, you need to pull out the antenna wire, likely voiding the warranty. Read all about it at www.engadget.com/entry/3597373383872462.

Play Thing

Tomorrow at 10:00 PM, KPCC's The Play's the Thing will feature "Spinning into Butter" by Rebecca Gilman. Jordan Baker, Kevin Kilner and Charles Kimbrough star in a provocative and funny expose of political correctness at picture-perfect a Vermont college.

Award Sale

No sooner had KROQ's Kevin and Bean been named Radio and Records Best Morning Show than the award plaque was up for auction on eBay.

What happened? Turns out that the eBay offering was more of a test than anything else. The chain of events:

Don Barrett posts the eBay story on his radio website, laradio.com. Gene "Bean" Baxter reads it and questions what is going on: he has the plaque in front of him ... did R&R make extra copies that fell into the wrong hands? He investigates.

Turns out it was an office prank. Producer Jay "Lightning" Tilles put it up for auction just to see if there were any bids. Bean told Barrett, "We have apologized to Radio & Records for the mistake and reiterated that we are delighted with their recognition this year. Lightning is being transferred to the Leningrad Kevin & Bean affiliate station this winter.”

Real Steele

Featured this week on Uncle Ricky's Top-40 Radio Repository (www.reelradio.com) is a scoped aircheck of The Real Don Steele on KHJ from June 14, 1968. I challenge anyone to find a hit music station that sounds this good today, or a personality with this much energy. Remarkable.

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