jan1207

Airwaves: January 12, 2007

Ding! Dong! The Witch is Dead!

The future of Los Angeles radio, and the radio industry in general, got a lot better late last week when it was announced that Jamie, Jack and Stench were fired from Star 98.7 FM.

It sounds better already, even though the new show isn't in place. Just having Jamie White off the air made Star sound so much better it was amazing. Of course playing the old Emergency Broadcast Signal tone would have sounded better than White's irritating, yet annoying and grating voice talking about her sexual exploits.

This should have happened years ago.

Even better: Since Danny Bonaduce was just hired on as co-host on KLSX's (97.1 FM) Adam Carolla show, we don't have to worry about hearing him on Star either. The only people who have to worry about hearing him, in fact, are the three or four people who tune into the KLSX morning show.

Rumor right now has Sean Valentine and Lisa Foxx pairing up for Star mornings. The rumor is so strong that it may be announced by the time you read this. That pairing, or one similar, would make for a good match at Star: entertaining, yet music-intensive.

I'm looking forward to it. And I appreciate the fact that I can add Star back to my car stereo presets.

More Morning News

Country 540 and 1260 is going all out to put together an all-star country station. And Shawn Parr wants to help it go over the top.

Parr made his debut this week as the new morning host, paired with Robin Banks. "You may need a wetsuit for the tidal wave of energy we have on the way," Parr told laradio.com's Don Barrett. "I couldn't be happier! It's magic!"

What About Afternoons?

Local boy Petros Papadakis slides into the afternoon shift on KLAC (570 AM), joining Matt "Money" Smith. Papadakis moves to the station after working at KMPC (1540 AM); he will continue his work on Fox Sports Net and Spike TV.

And getting back to Country 540 and 1260, Whitney Allen brings her syndicated Saturday evening show to weekday afternoons and evenings: The Big Time will air from 3 to 8 PM.

XM on AOL

I can't believe I missed this one, but I'm glad I found out about it. In setting up my wife's new iMac, I downloaded the program for AOL. On the same page was a download link for something called AOL Radio. At first I did nothing with it.

Then I figured I'd try it. Ooh, what a treat. Among the many stations that are offered are channels from XM Satellite Radio. In excellent fidelity.

Strangely, this is not new: AOL began beta tests of the AOL/XM radio player back in August 2005.

The player works wonderfully my G5 and the iMac using cable internet. The presets -- limited to five stations -- switch almost as fast as a regular radio, and there are really a lot of stations, both on XM and off, that are worth sampling.
Download the player at www.aol.com.

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