Archive: 4/24/05

BUSH FLIES IN FROM TEXAS IN ATTEMPT TO SAVE THE FIVE-MINUTE SPOT CLUSTER 

How was your week? I started mine waiting for white stuff to appear on the Fox smokestack-cam which, of course, would mean that they were about to name yet another American Idol contestant who'd had sex with Paula Abdul.
Then, Wednesday, I was knocked back by the announcement that Susquehanna was now planning to unload their broadcasting properties. I can just see them now. Setting up hot-dog carts with Infinity and Bud Paxson outside some D.C. attorney's office in hopes that Randy Michaels is hungry after the consumption of the Entercom/Citadel merger.
"40 times cash-flow?! Alright! 20 times cash-flow?! Puhleeeeeeezzzzz!"
"Spanish Jack couldn't save you guys, huh? I'll take Atlanta. With relish."

But, I spent most of my week replying to folks about my column last week on the decline of mass media. Many were from broadcasting veterans like myself who also had picked up on the changes in this new media age where it's more and more difficult to get in sync with your listeners or viewers on the pop culture that's relevant to them.
Too much information coming in on too many pipelines.

While I've been noticing this change throughout the last year, I'm not the first to pick it up. Two other sources that really grabbed me were, first, the new book from Tom Friedman, the Pulitzer-prize winning foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times. It's titled "The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century," and in it, Friedman gives breathtakingly lucid explanations of obtuse economic data that basically breaks down to this: with the explosion of cheap, ubiquitous telecommunications throughout the world, states and nations matter less and less while globalization levels the playing field for everybody. Especially with international trade.

Everywhere. And values are changing rapidly.
Friedman points out that the U.S. is quite behind the curve in technology adaptation. While we may invent things, getting them to market takes longer here than, say, Japan, India, Indonesia and South Korea (with China comin on strong), where wireless broadband is already available to anybody for as little as $22 a month. Because their governments have put effort, energy and investment into doing that while the GOP in America lets the market slowly find it's own level. Hopefully in a company these GOP leaders are invested in.
Old habits die hard.
      
The second item that caught my eye on how mass media is changing came from NPR's On-The-Media editor Bob Garfield, who presented a piece on April 8th about Mass Media becoming Micro Media.
"Network television was built around the 30 second spot. But that model is no longer working.
Audiences are shrinking, ads are being skipped and marketers are beginning to worry. And the New Media Order is fast approaching with innovations like podcasting, videologs and video-on-demand. What happens if the old advertising model collapses before the brave new world is fully prepared?"
Garfield's answer is, "Chaos."
And television and radio need that funding to survive.

The world's largest advertiser, Procter & Gamble has moved maybe 20% of its budgeted advertising off TV for web and other platforms. The stat that really got me was that American Express' TV budget is down 70% compared to last year!
TIVO and DVR's are already having a huge impact on the TV advertising community. And this is just starting.
There was a moment about eight months ago when, one day, I punched through my 18 presets in my car radio and found a spot break on all of them. Again.
For the umpteenth time.
And I realized that the post WW2 "cause & effect" of marketing in the form of five-minute clusters had passed me by.
My attention span is too short. There are too many other choices for my entertainment. I can jump away and come back (but usually don't).
I did not believe anything was good enough for me, on the other side of that spot cluster, to keep me listening. 
A CD went in the dashboard.
The current American business model of advertising like this is in desperate shape and will get worse. 
What's the replacement?
I don't know but it now appears the advertising industry is looking to figure out some new form of truly connecting with new customers. And the web is going to get a ton of it.
Who knows? Radio and TV may have to pull the feeding tube from the five-minute cluster before chaos truly sets in!

BIZ: One of the reasons for alternative and rock's slump at the marketplace and in the ratings is simply because there are too many acts with nothing to say out there. 13 years of virtuosity-free "I've got the weight of the world on my shoulders" has just gotten plain old. They're lucky they've milked that idiom for this long. Lately I've wondered if hip-hop may be getting close to having nothing to say too. When a typical quarter-hour now pinches Bobby Vinton and Fiddler-On-The-Roof followed by a coupla lifted classic cheerleader shouts over the same four middle-eastern notes Usher, Beyonce and Lil Jon have ridden for the last three years, it almost makes me nostalgic for East Coast/West Coast drive-by shootings...AAA, Urban and country keep plugging along with fresh new sounds and artists. As a matter of fact, the surprise slump in Classic-Rock during the last few Arbitron's may be due, not only to the inevitable burnout of those same 400 Jacobs songs from 1985, but by more male listeners getting off on Country's recent Music Mafia boom from artists like Big & Rich and Gretchen Wilson. There's twang there, but there's also rhythm and attitude that boomer males obviously are comfortable with...There's some Wall Street speculation that maybe Ed Bronfman is prepared to cash out his purchase of WMG from Time-Warner. He and his backers put up $2.6 billion to buy it. Now with their initial IPO set to go at $22 to $24 a share soon, that would value the company close to $4 billion. Hhhmm.

TV: One big reason NBC ponied up for "Sunday Night Football" was that they got in the Superbowl rotation.
They'll get the Superbowl now after the 2008 and 2010 seasons. The part of the new NFL prime-time TV deal I love is that the starting times have been moved up so that us viewers on the east coast might be able to see the game end before midnight! Sundays will start at 8 P.M. on NBC and now on Mondays on ESPN, the games will start at 8:30PM...
New shows on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart this week with guests Floyd Abrams, Ice Cube and Christina Hoff Summers...Favorites of mine populate Leno this week with Anna Nalick on Monday, Keane on Thursday and Snow Patrol Friday...Billy Miles on The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson (CBS) Monday...Ben Folds on Conan Tuesday with Todd Rundgren and Joe Jackson on Thursday..SNL a repeat with Hilary Swank and 50 Cent this weekend.

MOVIES: Overall business down from last year for the ninth straight week. "Star Wars" can't get here fast enough for exhibitors. This weekend The Interpreter did well, opening at #1 with $22.8 million. How much Ashton Kutcher do we need? Only $7.7 million worth as his new A Lot Like Love with Amanda Peet comes in $3 million under expectations for fourth place. The sleeper film out there is Kung Fu Hustle which is subtitled but is like nothing you've ever seen.
Hilarious sendup of Hong Kong chopsocky films surprised with $7.3 million in limited release.
"XXX-State of the Union" with Ice Cube replacing Vin Diesel and "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" open next weekend. Don't panic.

FINALLY: This is our headline of the week. Reuters actually put this on the wire - "U.S. Hard-Core Porn Pioneer Al Goldstein Making a Comeback at 69"

I'll try to make the smoke whiter next time.

—Mike Lyons
mike@triplearadio.com
  
          
Archive: 4/17/05

I'LL MISS MASS MEDIA
        
Tuesday is the 40th anniversary of the revelation of Moore's law. In 1965, Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, in an interview for Electronics Magazine, said that in the foreseeable future, computer chips would double in power for the same price every 18 months. He says he was just ballparking it, but the law has turned out to be very accurate for the last 40 years and shows no signs of slowing down. Basically, what Moore meant was that micro-processors, the invention that made the modern computer possible, would keep getting stronger and stronger and stronger. And consequently, smaller, more efficient and cheaper.
Twice as good. Every 18 months.

Cingular Wireless announced this week that it is now streaming Major League Baseball game play-by-play on its phones.

At this year's Sundance Film Festival, filmmaker David LaChapelle screened his new hi-def movie Rize by streaming it from Oregon and then transmitting it through a WiMax station in Salt Lake City. It worked flawlessly. Who needs projectors?

Last week at the U2 concert in San Jose, Bono asked everyone to "text message your names to the number 86483 and be added to a petition pledging your support for improving human rights around the globe." Then all the names scrolled on the huge screen behind the band. Thousands of their names as cells have obviously replaced lighters as the ubiquitous concert accessory.

Another whiz-kid researcher actually predicted the explosion of cell-phones in that same historic 1965 issue of Electronics magazine, but Gordon Moore's law is the one that is effecting pop culture more than anybody could have imagined. Mass media is being replaced by micro-media. The old, three TV network, three radio station, one newspaper world that informed the baby-boomer generation, is rapidly evolving into another  world of thousands of information delivery choices. And the theoretical possibilities of new delivery hardware are becoming reality quicker because of Moore's law.

BANG! We've got iPods, satellite receivers and picture phones under $100.

I have to admit though, that I'll miss mass media. It has been a terrific editing tool in my world (I'm 52). News, art, science, sports, history and the pop culture of note was delivered to myself and others in my community. Like I was talking about in referring to "connective tissue" last week, lives were made happier as life, in all its forms, was shared with one another. You didn't feel alone. "Can I give you a hand?" "Did you see Richard Pryor last night?"

Everybody had a clue to what you were talking about (and as a former morning man, it made my love of non-sequiters so much easier. It's hard to get someone to laugh when you make a joke about Alan Greenspan repeatedly typing "Lauren Grahams' thighs" as his computer password if that someone doesn't know who Greenspan or Graham are)

Terrestrial radio reaching its tipping point has been well chronicled recently. Listeners are leaving for celestial or wi-fi or simply giving up on the dullness of its product.

Ten years ago you had fifteen network television shows a week with over 30 million viewers.
Now you've maybe three a week getting over 20 million.

Newspaper circulation has dropped by another 5 million in the last ten years. As far as most journalism goes nowadays, it's shameful. It's now dominated by either propaganda or the pursuit of manipulating emotions for ratings purposes (witness the recent coverage of both Terry Schiavo or the Pope).  At the end of this year we will have seen the loss of such pop-culture news icons as Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, Ted Koppel, Bill Moyers and Peter Jennings. What are the replacements? Shephard Smith? It's a new world.

But in this new world, tomorrow I still wish I could find one place that would tell me the current Dow/Nasdaq count, sports scores & headlines, new releases for books, DVD's and music on Tuesday, the latest hard news (not what might happen. What did happen), the latest pop-culture headlines (even if it is just another confirmation that Kevin Federline's boys can swim) and maybe my weather.
Oh, the MSN Home Page?

Maybe someone will eventually read that on the air tomorrow. Somewhere.
Happy 40th Gordo.

MOVIES: Horror continues its almost sure-thing run for the studios as the remake of The Amityville Horror opens strongly at #1 over the weekend with $23.3 million followed by Sahara with $13.1 million, Fever Pitch at #3 with $8.8 million and Sin City in fourth with $6.7 million. Next week it's The Interpreter with Sean Penn and Nicole Kidman along with the continued overexposure of Ashton Kutcher in A Lot Like Love with the charming Amanda Peet. Overall movie revenue down for the eighth week in a row compared to last year. Like a lot of music radio, we need some HITS HERE!

TV: New York dailies speculating this week that producer/writer David Chase is considering a seventh season of The Sopranos...the delightful Sarah Vowel and Dennis Miller are guests on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart this week...Rob Thomas on Leno Monday and Tuesday with Regina Spektor on Wednesday and Tori Amos Thursday...next new SNL not until May 7 with host Johnny Knoxville and musical guest System of a Down.

FINALLY: From an interview with Martin Johnson in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal comes Joni Mitchell's opinion on the current state of pop music: "It's not about the talent anymore, it's about a look, and a willingness to cooperate."

—Mike Lyons
mike@triplearadio.com
  

Archive: 4/10/05

COUNT THE CONNECTIVE TISSUE IN THIS COLUMN!

 "Ultimately, Mr. Marrone's tastes determine his selections. He also enjoys inserting connective tissue between songs. Don Henley's "Boys of Summer" segues into a Grateful Dead song because Mr. Henley sings about 'a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac.'"

"Ninety-five percent of the audience won't get it," Mr. Marrone said, "The other 5 percent will never change the channel."

This was XM's Mike Marrone describing how he programs the XM channel "The Loft" in a front-page story in Tuesday's New York Times. Reporter Lorne Manly, in a story headlined, "As Satellite Radio Takes Off, It Is Altering The Airwaves," notes that satellite, with an adoption rate faster than cell phones, is now looking at a subscriber base of 8 million customers by the end of the year, and Manly credits satellite with forcing terrestrial radio to finally embrace changes. Of course the JACK phenomenon is mentioned first followed by the alleged cutback in spots and radio finally entering into the field of Internet radio offerings.

It's a great story on the "big" picture and reminds me of why I love Marrone and the AAA format so much. Sprinkling in those "connective tissues" was always what made my radio day and I'm sure most AAA stations do this as a matter of course. If you do, take pride. If you don't, start doing it now. That "tissue" is picked up by most of your loyal listeners and gives them a reason to remember you, the song and the station. Such true connection is the key element missing from most of broadcast music radio today.

Mr. Marrone has been one of my interview subjects for our PROGRAMMING section at Triplearadio.com. Now,one of the creators of the JACK format, Mike Henry of Paragon Media Strategies, is the subject of my latest interview. Now available under PROGRAMMING at this site. Henry gives a great perspective and history of the latest radio format du jour (and he's been a AAA whiz from the start of his career!)

BUSINESS: Congratulations to Citizen Cope for getting his song "Son's Gonna Rise" used for a new GM TV ad for the Pontiac G6. Hopefully it'll help sales of the new model better than Oprah did. If you remember, back in September, Oprah started her new season by giving away new Pontiac G6's to the 276 members of her audience that day. But, according to the Detroit Free Press, sales since then have been less than sales for the model the G6 replaced, the Grand Am. Perhaps GM needs more "connective tissue" to move these suckers off the lot...Reason #7 for the rise of JACK and the fall of alternative: NIELSEN ENTERTAINMENT RESEARCH said Thursday that men spend more money on video games than they do on all forms of music...NAPSTER announced this week that subscribers were up 53% in Q1 2005. I prefer focusing on the development of subscription music delivery services because it generates more cash-flow to keep them alive as businesses and that cash-flow means more money going to artists. I don't know about you, but I will download 12 songs, then listen to them until I'm tired of 'em, then return to Napster and burn 12 more. There's validity to renting songs through a subscription system. And artists get income both from the purchasing and the renting of their songs throughout the new digital world...Congressman James Sensenbrenner (R. WI.), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, is introducing new legislation that will make broadcast indecency violations a criminal, rather than just regulatory, offense. In other words, if Howard Stern says "penis," both he and WXRK GM Tom Chiusano would go to jail as well as paying fines. Like the proposals to censor cable television and satellite radio, it's enaction is highly unlikely. I'd rather Sensenbrenner intro'd something to stop Joel Denver from using terms such as "night slammer" or "clusterbuddy" on All Access.com.
Or Variety from using words like "kudocast".

TV: Speaking of kudocasts, MTV announced this week that they will return to Miami's AAA, (American Airlines Arena), for this year's 22nd annual Music Video Awards on August 28. Hhmmm. This after many of the female stars on MTV complained loudly about schvitzing in that Miami heat. Hairstyles blown out, makeup melting and running. Look for night slammer Jay-Z to somehow air-condition Biscayne Bay to the MacArthur Causeway to keep Beyonce happy...Viacom clusterbuddy VH-1 is the real ratings story this year.
Using videos from the '80's and '90's in hourly packages (Reason #8 for the rise of JACK and the fall of alternative) along with hit shows like "Surreal Life" and the excellent "Best Week Ever", ratings are up 20% from 2004. Their prime-time average of 618,000 viewers this year is their highest ever...After picking up a Peabody Award last week, The Daily Show Jon Stewart is new this week with guests Byron York (National Review White House correspondent), former Senator Bob Dole and David Duchovny...Ray Lamontagne on Letterman Wednesday...New England Patriot quarterback Tom Brady and Beck on  a new SNL this week...Finally in TV coverage, Sexist or Stupid?
You Decide on the following quote from Fox News founder Roger Ailes - "They've (MSNBC) hired every blonde who hasn't worked for us, and it's not working."

MOVIES: Sahara surprised Paramount with an opening about $4 million more than expected, coming in at #1 at the weekend box-office with $18.5 million followed by Sin City at #2 with $14.1 million in its second week. Fever Pitch didn't meet expectations coming in third with $13 million despite a hot, buzzing start to the baseball season (record attendance in spite of the steroid scandal). It was the seventh straight week that U.S. movie attendance was down compared to similar weeks in 2004. While it may signal a disturbing trend for the major studios, remember that today the studios are working on a much bigger scale.
Most major studio releases open on 17,000 screens worldwide. Maybe India will love Jimmy Fallon.

SHE'S NOT YOUR QUEEN, SHE'S YOUR CONSORT: Now that Bobby Fischer has taken his nimzo-indian defense to Iceland, it might finally be the time to point out one of those little "connecting tissues" for you. Board games (like chess, scrabble, monopoly etc.) are enjoying a pop-culture resurgence. I saw a Wall Street Journal article a while back that noted that sales of board games were up 6% last year before enjoying an even bigger surge over Christmas. More boomer moms and dads are finding them a cheap, fun and desirable way to spend an evening with
the kids, pure and simple.  
     
FINALLY: The staff at the BBC in London e-mailed the Bob Marley Foundation last month asking for an interview with the reggae legend. The BBC asked to speak to Marley for a documentary and stated that the filming was penciled in for June, July or August, but "our schedule is flexible." Marley, of course, died in 1981 at Miami Beach's Mt.Sinai Hospital (right across the Bay from the AAA). The BBC issued a statement
saying, "We are obviously very embarrassed that we didn't realize that the letter to the Marley Foundation did not acknowledge that Mr. Marley is no longer with us." A blunt mistake.

—Mike Lyons
mike@triplearadio.com
  


Archive: 4/3/05

JESUS, LETS TAKE A FUNERAL BREAK!
           
So, now we're sitting here waiting for the white smoke to come from the Sistine Chapel's chimney, (sources say the next Pope will either be an Italian, Bono or Senator Bill Frist), and trying to determine exactly where Camilla Parker-Bowles is registered before she becomes "Bride of Chucky" this Friday, and finally, just wondering why Florida Governor Jeb Bush is planning to ask that Neil Young's feeding tube be removed tomorrow.

Maybe he really didn't like "Trans".

GOOD MORNING! David Hinckley, in an article in Wednesday's New York Daily News, pointed out more evidence of listeners continuing to turn away from commercial radio now that the Fall 2004 ratings have been broken down. The country's top morning radio show continues to be NPR's "Morning Edition," which had 13.2 million listeners versus last year's 12.4 million listeners per week during the Fall book (coverage of the presidential campaign helped.) While no firm numbers for Howard Stern were available, Talkers magazine estimates Stern's national weekly audience at "more than 8.5 million." One reason for the difference is that Stern was on only 46 stations nationwide while "Morning Edition" has hundreds of affiliates. Hinckley points out that more and more listeners keep moving from commercial radio to the lower-key style of NPR. That same appeal exists on AAA morning shows too.   
   
BIZ: Remember that terrestrial radio spent plenty of years following the balloon with their eyes instead of reacting to the appearance of new revenue opportunities. But a new report from Borland Associates says local ad spending on radio station websites was up 94% in 2004 compared to 2003. The numbers are still small though, $33 million versus $17 million and the reason for that relatively small amount is the usual suspect, as newspapers get 48% of all local online money and took in $1.3 BILLION in 2004 revenue...XM added an impressive 540,000 new subscribers in 2005's first quarter (up 68% compared to 2004) and now has 3.77 million subscribers. Sirius numbers for Q1 '05 should be out shortly. XM also enjoyed a stock bump last week as Hyundai announced that they would make XM satellite radio tuners a standard feature in all their models starting with the 2006 models. XM will offer their service for free during the first year. This is the first time any auto manufacturer has made satellite tuners standard in all models. Vintage Research analyst Alden Mahabir estimates the Hyundai deal could add 300,000 paying subscribers to XM in 2007 alone...Apple is jointly developing a cell phone with Motorola called the ROKR. It will merge the iPod with a mobile phone in what could be the definitive new tool for digital music delivery and cells. Negotiations with a carrier are underway now but Steve Jobs may have grabbed another killer brand name (The Rocker!).

MOVIES: According to Tuesday's Variety, theater owners are now getting nervous as the window between the studio release date of a film and the followup issuance of its DVD is tightening. Last year, studio pictures arrived on DVD an average of four months, 16 days after their theatrical releases, this year it's gotten down to three months!...Robert Rodriguez' Sin City opened very strongly at #1 over the weekend with $28.1 million followed by Beauty Shop debuting with $13.5 million...First it was Stephen King's book, now it's Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore benefiting from the Boston Red Sox' improbable World Series win last year as they star in Fever Pitch opening this weekend.

TV: If you have a chance and haven't seen it yet, check out the season finale of The Starlet on the WB this Tuesday at 9pm. Celebrity judge Faye Dunaway is worth the effort, if just to witness her delightfully droll kiss-off of the clueless contestants. "This isn't the Paris Hilton school of acting, dear," is a typical Faye bon mot but its her delivery that's so fascinating...West Wing season finale comes Wednesday...HBO has picked up Deadwood for a third season next year. Six Feet Under starts it last season on June 6th...Death Cab For Cutie plays the Bait Shop on The O.C. on April 21...New shows this week for The Daily Show With Jon Stewart with guests Reggie Miller on Monday, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman on Tuesday, brain stem Mathew McConoughey on Wednesday and Drew Barrymore on Thursday....Cameron Diaz and Green Day on a new SNL this weekend.

FINALLY: Headline of the week from the Onion - "Scientists Isolate Gene Simmons"
Band name of the week: Extreme Unction.
Rapper Name of the Week: Lil' Unction.              

—Mike Lyons
mike@triplearadio.com
  
 

Archive: 3/27/05

I CAN WRITE ANYTHING I WANT!!!!!!!!!!!

This week, expect a statement from Alan Greenspan predicting that the U.S. economy will experience a boost this spring from the purchasing of new office furniture and equipment destroyed by radio executives charging into their lobbies to announce they're changing their station's format to JACK. Now!
Before anybody el...wha?

After several stations adopted the JACK format, including Clear Channel's BREW in Milwaukee and Emmis' KBPA in Austin, who debuted and rose into the top three 12 in their respective markets almost immediately, the rest of broadcast radio cannot resist. The evidence makes these decisions almost risk-free to them now. So we're off!

Last week it was Infinity flipping KCBS-FM in Los Angeles to JACK followed by word that WXRK will follow with a flip as soon as Howard Stern leaves (or maybe sooner).

Then this week you have alternatives, classic-rockers and HOT/AC's all grabbing the brand phrases and sticking them on the air. "We Can Play Anything We Want," "You Never Know What's Next," or as WKQX in Chicago is doing, have a "Shuffle" weekend and cume with the Apple iPod phenomenon while WTMX dabbles with the "Can You Believe I'm Playing This?" position.

In Boston, WBMX (under new PD Mike Mulaney, our old friend from WXRV) is running a "Whatever Weekend" while WBOS on Friday started running the cryptic sweeper, "Coming Soon, a WBOS Extreme Make-over For Those Who Like Music, Not Radio."
     
(To clear out my Boston notes, I've also heard of WBCN going sports-talk if they get the rights to Red Sox' broadcasts to go along with the Patriots, who they already have under contract.)
     
Hot AC's such as K101 in San Francisco, WRQX in Washington D.C. and KPLZ in Seattle all started dropping in JACK songs and phrases this week too.
     
We also have JACK stations within the AAA format. WZGC in Atlanta and WPYA in Norfolk are two stations playing new AAA songs on top of a JACK list.
     
And another old friend, Jim Robinson, took over Entercom's KWOD in Sacramento this week with a more AAA lean on top of another "Rock Without The Rules" music list.

Bottom-line, as a broadcast radio lifer, I'm glad to see the medium finally take steps to make its product better. And it's more interesting. Depth in classic tracks, the return of inexplicably forgotten recurrents from the last decade and, sometimes, a judicious layer of new music on top gives listeners a real reason to tune in.

But AAA already contains most of the perceived attributes of the JACK format. There's so much new music played (especially compared to other formats) along with an already deep classic list presented with a lack of hype that AAA stations just have to make sure they mention these highlights ON-THE-AIR on a consistent basis.
 
Remember when AAA was dismissed as "classic rock in drag" by rocking poseurs back at its early 90's beginning?
The target audience for all these JACKS, like a night at the bar, is women. 
But AAA is already in position to ask for their number.

MORE BIZ: "As soon as broadband is big enough, the record (retailing) business is over" —Elvis Costello at this year's SXSW...Nice PR effort by the record industry last week announcing larger figures for CD's they have "shipped" in the past year. C'mon, while CD sales in the U.S. were up over 2% last year, overall, worldwide sales of CD's were off just over 1% according to the IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) in a statement released last week. Lotta words being parsed here. "Shipped" just means the CD's were produced. If they're just ending up in storage or on shelves in stores, who cares? It reminds me of those old Pennsylvania and Jersey warehouses from the old days that used to fill up with "cut-outs" as certain forgettable albums went "GOLD". We will be impressed by "sales" figures, not "shipping" figures as labels retool their business model...Jerry Springer replaces Lizz Winstead in Air America's 9 A.M. to Noon slot starting this Friday.

TV: Speaking of Air America, as it celebrates its first anniversary, HBO will run a special documentary on the left-leaning radio network this Thursday March 31 at 8pm. It's called Left Of The Dial...Air America's Janeane Garofalo is in an NBC comedy pilot called All In about single-mom poker champion Annie Duke for next season. She'll find out if it's picked up before the TV up-front ad selling season in May...Despite critical drubbing that Steve Carell was "too broad" in his take of original star Ricky Gervais in the NBC version of the BBC cult hit The Office, the show debuted with good numbers on Thursday, grabbing 11.3 million viewers and delivering a sharp 5.0/13 share in the key 18-49 demo...This week on Letterman, it's the John Butler Trio on Tuesday and the cool new Brit band, the Kaiser Chiefs, on Wednesday... Kings of Leon on Leno Tuesday with Jimmy Eat World on Thursday...Marc Broussard on Conan this Tuesday...This week's SNL is a repeat with Topher Grace and The Killers. Next new SNL features host Cameron Diaz and Green Day April 9. Don't forget Daylight Savings starts next Sunday morning.

MOVIES: Tops at the box-office on an unremarkable Easter weekend was Guess Who that lead with $21 million followed by a disappointing Miss Congeniality 2, taking in only $14.5 million. The Ring Two was third with $13.8 million, Robots with $13 million and The Pacifier with $8.5 mill round out the top 5. Opening next weekend is Sin City from one of my favorite directors Robert Rodriguez, who also lets author Frank Miller and Quentin Tarantino direct too!

FINALLY: "The U.S. Supreme Court became the tenth court to refuse an appeal. So the Terry Schiavo feeding tube will soon be removed from the cable news networks." —Jon Stewart Thursday on The Daily Show

—Mike Lyons
mike@triplearadio.com
  

Archive: 3/20/05

Ahhhh! The azaleas and crepe myrtles are blooming, Bobby Knight has made it back into the Sweet 16 for the first time in years and Kathleen Turner and Madonna have given up their British accents for Lent.
It's SPRING!

Time for rebirth, growth, warmth and great new ratings news. This week, ARBITRON's results for national format ratings in Fall 2004 became available and commercial AAA has risen to a .9, its largest share in
five years!
        
But winter continues for alternative and active rock stations. Alternative/modern rock, on a national scale, has now fallen to an average 3.6 share, their lowest since Fall 2000. Active Rock is now down to a 1.8 and AOR on a whole, continues its scary, steady downhill slide since 1998, now sitting at a 1.7 share. 
 
(Percentages for AAA are lower than the rockers because there are fewer stations nationally compared to those formats.)
        
Even Classic Rock slipped back to a 4.3 this Fall.
        
Reasons?
        
The historical difficulty of getting diaries filled out by men, especially 18 to 34 year olds. The explosion of other music delivery systems (iPods, satellite and Wi-Fi just to start). The tight-ass music lists finally losing listeners combined with a lack of new breakthrough artists. Gee, do you think somebody could see a cause & effect relationship there?
        
Alternative and active-rock PD's are wondering how much more Alice in Chains they can play to keep treading water until...
        
What?
        
They finally start putting cool new bands like Death Cab for Cutie or the Walkmen or Interpol on the air?
    
But while rock stations keep acting like they're on a snipe hunt, AAA has the luxury of already setting themselves up as a community conduit for quality new music, classic artist depth tracks and actual lifestyle communication. You know, news, humor, actual personality?
        
When you're taking the time and effort along with some judicious risk to provide a product for people to like and return to, that value keeps AAA alive and well as a format while the rest of broadcast music radio continues to lose listeners.

WHERE'S THE MONEY? One of my favorite old Dan Hicks songs came to mind this week as the discussion of Social Security continues its prominence in American discourse. One of the benefits for AAA and Classic Rock stations during all the town-meetings and talk-show discussions regarding retirement and Social Security is the increasing realization that the huge post WW-2 baby-boomer generation is going to continue earning money as they continue to live longer. Talk of raising the age for recieving retirement benefits to 68 or 70 may be a political hot topic, but it is helping make Americans realize that people are living much longer nowadays. And continuing to spend plenty of their money. This can't help but eventually get through to advertising agency buyers whose average age is like, 28.
        
Further impetus on this point was welcomed this week when Scarborough released a report pointing out that a high percentage of the nation's wealth is in the wallets of persons aged 50 , who now make up almost 40% of the U.S. population! Formats that attract older demos, like News/Talk, AAA, NPR and Classic Rock, should benefit if advertisers want to find customers with the nation's heaviest financial assets, according to Scarborough.
        
And someone tell those 28 year-olds at the agencies that AAA is the format that actually plays Moby! (whom they still use ubiquitously under their TV ads.)

PRINT: There was an interesting article on the front page of Friday's Wall Street Journal headlined "Hit By iPod and Satellite, Radio Tries New Tune: Play More Songs", which was primarily a profile of the new "JACK" format of Susquehanna's KCJK in Kansas City (KCBS in L.A. went JACK last week too). WSJ was taken with the 1,200 song playlists at JACK stations, which can work if you do it right. Emmis is cleaning up with their KBPA in Austin while Infinity's Atlanta JACK on the former Z93 is trending up finally after several other JACKS blew up, then flattened. Hell, it beats doing one of the moribund rock formats mentioned above.
      
But the article also included a big smooch to Mapleton Communications for its simulcast of KPIG Monterey/San Luis Obispo where it has thrived so well that Mapleton's Adam Nathanson is now "mulling introducing the format to another area station in his 27-station group. If it works in one market, maybe there's a chance to build it around." Good for Laura Hopper. Snort.

From WXPN's Bruce Warren came a tip to check out David Foster Wallace's cover story in the April Atlantic Monthly called "HOST - Deep, Deep, Deep Into The Mercenary World of Take-No-Prisoners Political Talk Radio." My dear God. Wallace does a fly-on-the-wall take on KFI Los Angeles' John Ziegler over a period of weeks last summer that is just fascinating. With a Tom Wolfe approach loaded with details and analysis, the contrived nature of talk radio itself is chronicled and explained. One of the highlights is when KFI Program Director Robin Bertolucci busts Ziegler for not talking enough about a current SoCal rape trail. "If we were KIIS-FM and we had a new Christina Aguilera song, and they played it in heavy on the the morning show and the afternoon show, wouldn't you still play it on the evening show?" That's actually a sound decision for talk radio, but the bitter, angry, self-loathing of Ziegler as he contrives his right-wing takes for each night are riveting. It's a long, comprehensive and well-written piece which leaves the obvious question. "Why would KFI and Ziegler ever let Wallace in the room. With a tape recorder!" Must-read stuff.

TV: HBO has renewed The Wire for a fourth season. NBC has re-upped E.R. through 2008 and picked up The West Wing and (urp) Joey for next season...Sandra Bullock, Catherine Keener, Ozzy Osbourne and the RZA from the Insane Clown Posse are Jon Stewart's guests this week on The Daily Show...Kings of Leon on Conan Thursday... Cameron Diaz and Green Day on the next new SNL April 9. 

MOVIES: "Many American movies were basically saved by their higher gross revenues in foreign markets," said new MPAA President Dan Glickman at the opening of ShoWest Monday in Las Vegas. It's true! Domestic underachievers such as Troy, Van Helsing and King Arthur may have died at the box office here in America, but overseas they all pulled in almost a quarter-billion apiece. Doesn't work for every pic, but the overseas trend for historical epics and horror has risen substantially in the last five years.
        
Despite bad reviews, The Ring 2 cleaned up over the weekend with $36 million to come in ranked #1, followed by Robots with $21.8 million. The Pacifier keeps raking it in with $12.5 million along with Ice Princess at number four with $7 million.

SCHMUTZ: After 32 years, CBGB's, the cradle of punk, may soon be losing its lease. Founder Hilly Kristal says a bookkeeping mixup caused him to get $91,000 behind in his lease payments. Bowery Resident's Committee, the landlord, agrees there was a mixup but still wants their money. Or they won't renew Kristal's lease when it's up in August...Had to laugh instead of cry when I read the story in USA Today Friday about how gas stations across the country are running out of "2"'s for their gas price signs and are now looking to get "3"'s by summer...Daylight Savings starts on Sunday, April 3. Like AAA, SPRING FORWARD!

—Mike Lyons
mike@triplearadio.com
     
      
Archive: 3/13/05

SCHMUTZ, NOTHING BUT SCHMUTZ

TEXAS RADIO & THE BIG BEAT: As SXSW tried to get by this year without performances by Julie Delpy and Minnie Driver, Austin and Dallas both got new Air America affiliates this week. What? Something about a Laura Prepon and Mars Volta jam last night? Go here for our complete AAA pre-coverage of SXSW.

JUST IN: Disney, staying in-house, has chosen Robert Iger to officially take over for Michael Eisner when he departs next year. The only other candidate, eBay CEO Meg Whitman, withdrew her name Friday. Iger (Mr. Willow Bay) was buoyed immensely by the ratings rise of the ABC network he overlooks.     

MORE GOOD NEWS FOR SATELLITE: The customers are there and they keep on coming. While Mel Karmazin's rock-star style CEO act at Sirius (stealing Nascar from XM, hiring the Coen brothers and recent Oscar-winner Charlie Kaufman to create new radio dramas, Howard Stern) impresses Wall Street, XM continues to accumulate its own impressive numbers, some perhaps, even more important to the street. Last quarter XM added 713,101 new subscribers, 66% more than the year before. I mean, new customers is what Wall Street prices rise and fall on. And XM is pulling in almost three-quarters of a million in 90 days. Sirius still doesn't compare to that. Wall Street analysts also are bullish on XM raising its price to match Sirius at $12.95 per month. It's a no-brainer. Nobody expects churn either. The market isn't making a purchase decision over satellite based on subscription price right now. Last week Lehman Brothers said it expects 35 million people to tune in to satellite by 2010, up from just over 4 million today. Both Banc of America and Suntrust Robinson Humphrey still have a $40 per share price target on XM stock and this final note from analyst Stuart Kagel at Suntrust shows why both XM and Sirius have solid stock prices, even though they are not expected to make a profit until 2008. "I've raised the expected 2010 EBITDA earnings at XM to $960 million," said Kagel this week. Thats almost one billion dollars a year in income. HELLO!

EVEN MORE COMPETITION FOR RADIO: On the PBS Wall Street Week in Review last week, I heard  a solid, no-nonsense New York investment banker matter-of-factly say, "Internet protocol on a portable device? It's now standardized and it can go anywhere. There are 17 backbone networks in this country for telecom (phones, wifi, cable etc). The available room is immense." When looking at The Forest for the trees, you see that we're still just at the starting point for digital content delivery. Last week I suggested new Sony head Howard Stringer would likely increase the company's efforts in producing MP3 players to compete with Apple's iPod. It took him less than 24 hours to announce a new $90 Sony Walkman with a 256 mb flash memory chip.

TV:  "Courage" 
—Dan Rather's last word as CBS news anchor, 2005
   
"Good Night For Pall-Mall"
—Douglas Edwards' last words as CBS News anchor, 1962

C'mon, Dan was getting a little loopy during his last decade in the CBS anchor chair. If it wasn't his super-serious delivery, it was Kenneth or one of those faux Mark Twain similes during last year's election coverage that made you (click). Not for me. I'll miss Bill Moyer a hell of lot more. Fact is, while the three broadcast network news shows still grab almost 30 million viewers a night (ten to fifteen times the ratings Bill O'Reilly pulls on Fox News), the numbers for one-hour news shows like 60 Minutes II, Primetime and Dateline have been tumbling the last few years. News magazines are dying. Too much like what's always there on cable. Look for broadcast nets to cancel these guys within the year...VH1's excellent Best Week Ever will be back on Friday, March 25. According to them, Bono had the "best week ever" last week with the release of the new U2 video, the announcement of 33 more tour dates, his nomination for the Nobel Peace prize and his being mentioned as a possible new president for the World Bank. Expect ex-Hewlett/Packard CEO Carly Fiorina to end up in that last position...The Sopranos' Michael Imperioli (Christofah!!!) began shooting four episodes of Law & Order this week that will run in May. He'll play good guy detective Nick Falco, who comes in to replace Ed Green (while actor Jesse Martin shoots the movie version of "Rent"). Sopranos production doesn't start til next month...The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame happens this week and it will be televised on VH1 this Saturday at 9pm (EST)...A California judge ruled Friday that Jay Leno can make Michael Jackson jokes on The Tonight Show despite being named as a possible character witness by Mr. JammyBottoms (He's special)... Al Green on a new David Letterman Monday. Rilo Kiley on a Conan re-run Monday. On The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson on CBS, he has Blue Nile on Tuesday and Maureen Dowd on Wednesday!...The guests this week on new Daily Shows with Jon Stewart are Harry Frankfurt, Al Green and Ferguson...Ashton Kutcher and Gwen Stefani on a new SNL this weekend.

MOVIES: Hayden Christensen sure had that Michael Hutchence (of INXS) look in the trailer for Star Wars: Return of the Sith didn't he? I still don't care.

Number one at the box-office over the weekend was Fox's Robots opening with a healthy $36.5 million. The Pacifier dropped to $18.1 million but is still beating expectations. Be Cool fell 56% in its second week, never a good sign, and was third with $10.3 million. The Hostage with Bruce Willis lamed in fourth with $9.8 million followed by Hitch with $8.7 million. As Dan Rather might have put it, "You can turn water into wine but you can't pump the well when its dry," Mel Gibson's re-release of The Passion Of The Christ: Recut averaged only $251 per screen in just under a thousand theaters over the weekend. Maybe because everybody knows the ending.

FINALLY: TRIUMPH, the insult comic dog will now poop on Dave Mathews bus driver.


—Mike Lyons
mike@triplearadio.com
        

Archive: 3/6/05

WHY COME TO NON-COMM? He was trapped onstage in a plastic cocoon in Spinal Tap, is fondly remembered as the non-swimming synchronized swimmer in a classic SNL skit, does half the voices on The Simpsons and did the seminal Johnny Carson parody in his early days with The Credibility Gap that I wrote about last month. Harry Shearer will be the Keynote Speaker at this year's fifth annual Non-Commvention in Philadelphia May 19-21. Harry's Le Show has been podcast-ready from KCRW since its beginning and he is not only a comedy legend, he is passionate and extremely sharp on the facts concerning radio and the explosion of new technology. 

Check our front page at Triplearadio.com for registration details. Bruce Warren and Dan Reed promise not to send him up to the lectern through the basement of the Inn at Penn.

ANOTHER REASON TO COME: From Wired magazine's "The End of Radio" issue last month - "It is striking to notice that satellite radio and the iPod are not encroaching on NPR. NPR is a radio heavyweight whose audience increased by a staggering two-thirds since 1999. And some in the industry have noticed. Though they did not consciously emulate public radio, a scatter of (commercial) stations around the country have tried to create a kind of rock radio that models NPR's conversational tenor, lengthy attention span and relative lack of hype. Music-radio consultant Fred Jacobs calls it NeoRadio. Says Jacobs, 'In some ways, it's a throwback to the past, when radio stations were the centers of the kind of virtual communities, now more common online.' Well, bless your pointed little head Fred. If it worked, why isn't it being done now on a commercial level? 

This same "head-in-the-sand" approach to current commercial radio programming was also illustrated by Infinity's Joel Hollander this week who, when speaking to the Bear Stearns investors conference, claimed that Infinity would find some talent to replace Howard Stern (starting with "Rover," their morning man at WXTM in Clevelend) and that when Stern leaves, WXRK in New York would probably drop alternative for another format. He then said MLB and the NFL cost too much so they're likely to go too.

So, let's recap. Next year on Infinity stations, there will be no Howard Stern, they have no faith in alternative, and no baseball or football.
     
Why are people supposed to listen to your stations then?
 
For burned-to-cinders 300-song lists at the music stations with five minute spot clusters every 15 minutes?

No wonder folks are leaving commercial radio. You can't just say you have a great product. With the competition radio is facing today, you've got to have a great product. 

That is an advantage AAA enjoys right now as commercial radio slowly comes to accept the truth about their business model.

Dream harder. Execute better.

All the old tricks aren't working anymore.

OSCARS: So the numbers were down despite having Chris Rock as host. I have several reasons why I think the night didn't work so well. First, Rock made bad material choices. The blacks vs. whites angle didn't have resonance. Especially after Denzel Washington's and Halle Berry's wins in the last few years and five black acting nominess this year. And Jamie Foxx and Morgan Freeman ended up sweeping the male acting categories last Sunday. And the number one movie at the box-office last weekend was black filmmaker Tyler Perry's Diary of a Mad, Black Woman. The timing wasn't right for the subject matter. And the diatribe against George Bush was right-on but seemed somewhat irrelevant to the evening's
festivities. Where were the jokes about films from 2004? Or the room loaded with full-of-themselves STAHS?

Of course, the nominated films were also part of the problem. None were what you would call "blockbusters". None of the five nominated "Best
Picture" flicks has grossed over $100 million at the box-office to date.

But I think the main reason we saw Louis Gossett Jr. actually asleep in his seat were the five nominated "Best Song" performances.

Counting Crows did their "Accidentally in Love" from Shrek but, really, um, it's just OK, isn't it? Then we had not one, but three performances
by Beyonce of boilerplate, forgettable soundtrack ballads and then Carlos Santana with Antonio Banderas (?) singing the winning song from The
Motorcycle Diaries.

And all these four to five minute snoozers were laid on the public after 9pm Lend me your pillow Lou.

So while Rock's hosting of the Oscars lost 2 million viewers from the year before (but did increase the 18-34's by 4 million), he's right when he said "awards for art are idiotic."

And they make you sleepy when the format of the show guarantees an absence of anything hot, riveting or even newsworthy (other than Scorsese losing again and Julia wishing her babysitter "Happy Birthday" in her first post-partum public appearance.)

Hope Scarlett Johansson finally got down from that far-flung balcony. Boy, all those ideas sounded sooooo good at that lunch at producer Gil Cates house.

MOVIES: Comedies cleaned up at this weekend's box-office. Vin Deisel's The Pacifier came in $8 million over expectations, opening at #1 with $30.2 million. Roger Moore from the Orlando Sentinel opined in a review that while Get Shorty dealt with movies, (and everybody wants to be in movies), Be Cool would likely not match Elmore Leonard's original Chili Palmer saga because the music industry is beyond satirizing. Nonetheless, it gave John Travolta his biggest opening ever as Be Cool opened at #2 with $23.5 million followed by Hitch with $12.5, Diary of a Mad, Black Womans with $12 million and Million Dollar Baby, enjoying that Oscar bump, came in fifth with $8.5 million...In another fine example of synergy, Fox will debut the trailer for the final Star Wars flick, The Return Of The Sith, during this week's running of The O.C. on Thursday from 8-9pm On Fox.

TV: Fox won the February sweeps thanks, in no small part, to the Super Bowl. It's the first time ever that ABC, NBC or CBS didn't win a sweeps month. In fact, NBC was fourth in total viewers for the first time ever. Order two more Law & Orders now, Jeff...David Spade and Jack Johnson on a new SNL this weekend...HBO will air the documentary Left Of The Dial, about the trials and tribulations of the Air America network on
Thursday March 31 at 8pm EST.

SCHMUTZ: The New York Times website says tonight that on Monday Sony will name Howard Stringer as their new CEO. The whole Sony, not some geographical division like he is now in the U.S. He will become the first non-Japanese person to head a Japanese company. Stringer (who is British) was the guy who stole Letterman away from NBC when he was the head of CBS. He may be able to accelerate Sony's investment in an alternative MP3 player to the iPod. By the way, Napster's stock shot up this week when they raised their revenue target for the current quarter. More signs that the "subscription" business model for online music sales is continuing to gain ground. Napster plays on Sony's new equipment but not on iPod...Oil headed to $60 a barrel this year according to the front page of Friday's Wall Street Journal. We could be heading to $3 a gallon by the summer...Bush's Social Security initiative is lying in state. Other than a few think-tanks and his paid consultants, nobody thinks it will do anything to solve the problem. Plus, most Americans have no clue as to figuring out a P/E ratio.

FINALLY: This new Dubliners single is a smash!

—Mike Lyons
mike@triplearadio.com
        

Archive: 2/27/05

CAZART!

I wouldn't have done it if the guy hadn't been such a smug, jerk about it. 

"YOU ARE NOT HUNTER THOMPSON!" screamed my landlord and good friend John Tegethoff.
      
Over his shoulder, you could see a pile of six-foot tall lugustrum bushes, a dozen of 'em, that I had ripped out of the ground the night before.   
      
It was the summer of 1975. I was 22 and in my fourth year of being the music director of a very successful, free-form FM station in Orlando. My headquarters were in a stately, old mansion on Lake Osceola in Winter Park that had been divided into five apartments.
      
Mine was on the first floor in the back near the lake's edge. All the walls were covered with racks of albums. In those days, we were serviced in every format. And I listened to everything. Because I figured that, of all the music art released in America, the only two guaranteed listeners, in Orlando, to all of it were the local record reviewer in the daily newspaper. And me. Next to the albums on the wall were my books. Dickens, Hemingway, Salinger, Blake, Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson. And, like Hunter, I loved to drink. 

The rest of the tenants were friends and musicians so it was easy to do focus groups. Friends and neighbors would drop by and. ZAP. It was time to see if they had any liking of something I had just heard. Trapeze, Can, Godz, whatever. It was great.

But when a new couple moved into the front apartment, they decided one day to plant a row of bushes across the parking lot to keep the distasteful, polluting cars away from them. Meaning there was no place to park for the other four tenants. And forget about visitors!

The couple was what we might label as, hardened "Whole Earth" types. Cars are bad so no cars near us. I complained and other tenants complained but the bushes stayed and we ended up parking our vehicles on the entry road from the main street running by our house. Dangerous. Very dangerous.

Until that Saturday night when I, completely drunk, decided to solve the problem by simply and efficiently ripping the suckers up and leaving them in a pile near their front door. 

Sobering up, I apologized to John and the tenants. No, I wasn't Hunter Thompson. But the lugustrums never went back in the ground in that
parking lot.
     
"Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy
for those who think."
—poet Jean de la Bruyere
      
Hunter Thompson embraced both of these approaches to living throughout his remarkable career.

The hook for male boomers was most likely the inventory of the trunk from "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", when it first was published in Rolling Stone magazine.

"We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker filled with cocaine and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers...and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum. a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls."

If you were young and strong and filled with unbridled ambition in the early '70's, this sounded like a dream come true. Pure comedy though.

I've now been sober longer than I drank. But  living life through drugs was a no-win game. I learned that the hard way. So did Hunter.

Eventually the drugs take their toll on the human body. You can't be constantly loaded and stay coherent. Brain cells, nervous system and personality eventually change for the worse. And you never see it coming. Because you're addicted.

When I got sober in 1987, I learned the four stages of addiction. One - you can drink everybody under the table and still drive them all home. Two - you start using daily. Every life event has to be accompanied by drugs. Three - the addiction takes over. Need replaces desire and the mental and physical toll becomes apparent. Lost jobs, wrecked cars and broken relationships become the norm. Irrational thoughts appear regularly.

Four, you either stop or die.

Last Sunday, while on the phone with his wife at his Woody Creek farm, Hunter died.

The tragedy for me with Hunter Thompson is that I got hooked on his writing not because of the comedy (though I loved the drug tales and the surrealist political allegories) but by his writing about his hope that the "best instincts of the human spirit" would eventually prevail in the pop-culture and political evolution of the society he covered.

He used that line throughout Hells Angels and both brilliant Fear and Loathing books. He also evoked it when he was covering Jimmy Carter's campaign for the presidency in 1976 in Rolling Stone. 

"Did Carter just quote Rienhold Niebur?" he incredulously asked Johnny Apple of the New York Times upon his first meeting with Carter at a press event in Atlanta. Ironically, Niebur, the legendary 20th century theologian, came up with the serenity prayer that Alcoholics Anonymous uses at its meetings.     

I do wish he'd gotten to one.

Fact is, the one time I saw Hunter Thompson was at an appearance in West Palm Beach back in 1990. He was clearly in that third stage of addiction. Appearing late, with a beautiful assistant and plenty of booze, he rambled almost incoherently for two hours before we gave up. 

He could still come up with pithy lines, and his ESPN column was often a lazerous hoot towards the end.

But the drugs had obviously taken their toll.

I suspect tragedy had eclipsed comedy in his view of life. I was surprised but not shocked when I heard on the Today show last Monday that he had shot himself.    

But I'll never forget his devastatingly florid "gonzo" style of journalism or his addiction to truth.

My vision of Hunter will always be a shot of him and Carly Simon sitting on the floor of a tiny New York City hotel room closet as he and Carly waited in the ersatz "green" room to appear on a David Letterman show done entirely from a dowdy $40-a-night hotel at Times Square.              

When he got on, it was the first time I heard Hunter run out his legendary take on our business:

"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and
pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."

So long, Raoul. Jann needs to find a new gardening editor.

TV: While it looks like Hunter Thompson's ashes will be shot from a cannon at an April ceremony according to his son Juan, HBO's 6 Feet Under will begin it's fifth and final season in June. In a good move, it'll run on Mondays instead of Sundays...Jon Stewart's guests this week on new Daily Show's are Senator Ben Nelson on Monday, Nancy Soderberg on Tuesday, The Rock on Wednesday with former Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer on Thursday...Scissor Sisters on Leno Monday with Elton John on Tuesday...Letterman has Solomon Burke on Monday, Kathleen Edwards showcases her excellent new album on Tuesday with Amos Lee on Wednesday...next new SNL is next weekend (3/12) with David Spade and Jack Johnson....The guy I'll miss the most on NYPD:BLUE besides Sipowicz is the black fellow in the green flannel shirt who always zipped out after babysitting the suspects in the cooler before Andy and his partner returned with the goods to fry 'em.

BIZ: We don't even think their worth that much. Last week, in accordance with the new accounting laws, Viacom wrote down the value of its radio division by $11 billion and Clear Channel follows by writing down their properties by $4.6 billion the next day. This is what a "tipping point" looks like. Radio stocks are down 8% in the last year while the S&P is up 4%...There are now no alternative stations in market #6, Philadelphia, market#8, Washington D.C. and market #12, Miami after format flips in the last two months...The London Mirror claims Renee Zellweger and
Damian Rice are now a couple.

MOVIES: Diary of a Mad, Black Woman shocks everyone by taking in an unexpected $22.7 million over the weekend to top the box-office list. Hitch keeps rolling with another $21 million in second place. Constantine drops to third in its second week with $11.8 million followed by Cursed with $9.6 million and Man Of The House with $9 million. The Get Shorty followup Be Cool opens this weekend when this interminable Oscar telecast tonite should finally be finished.

—Mike Lyons
mike@triplearadio.com
        

Archive: 2/20/05

U.S. RECALLS AMBASSADOR TO HOTMILITARYSTUD.COM

I love looking for trends. They are what I find fascinating in all the media I consume and they're what I try to point out to readers of The Forest.

What amazes me in the last six months, however, is simply the fact of how fast these changes are coming to pop culture.

At last Sunday's Grammy Awards, jazz composer Maria Schneider took home the Grammy Award for Best
Large Jazz Ensemble for her album "Concert in the Garden."

Without selling a single copy in a record store.

According to Reuters, Schneider, 44, financed her award-winning album through an Internet-based music delivery service called ArtistShare that "opens the financing of production to dedicated fans."

Her album was limited to 10,000 copies with 9,000 sold by pre-order to other ArtistShare participants and 1,000 held in reserve for later auction. Mmmm. Maybe a second run is now in order.

"This record cost $87,000 to make. I already made my money back." Schneider said. "I'm not splitting the profits with the distributor, the record
store or the record company. It's working so well for me!"

Here's the point : Sales of digital downloads are still a small piece of the overall music sales pie, but there were 143 million tracks sold in 2004
versus 19.2 million tracks sold digitally in 2003. What's that? Like a 600% jump?

Pew Research this week said over 22 million adults now have iPod or other MP3 players. And for teenagers, forget it, it's millions for them too.

Compared to, maybe thousands in 2001, that jump is simply stunning! According to that cute kid on "NUMB3RS", it's about a nine digit percentage increase!

Following cause and effect, we know this is not a one-year fluke. These numbers are trending in one direction and there is no reason for them to
plateau yet. It's just amazing how fast these kinds of mass consumption numbers are running up. 

Digital music players have moved from niche to mass in less than a year. The capacity's grown larger, the prices have come down and more and more music is becoming available.

Cuz NARAS and the RIAA can't stay in denial forever.

If Schneider's Grammy Award had been televised, she might have given the shortest acceptance speech of the night.

And you could have seen her list of true, sincere "thank you's' on her website.

Won't be a trend for long.

TV: The Grammy telecast was seen by only 18 million people. Lowest ratings for the show in ten years. Several reasons for this. Too many award shows. Television has contrived too many of these shows for the first two months of the year to give themselves some type of "event" programming. People lose that "must see" feeling after the AMA's, SAG, Globes, Peoples Choice, Source and even some P.Diddy-hosted Video-Game Awards show that I saw on UPN one night. Plus, combined with the Win/Lose contest nature of American Idol and many other reality-shows currently running, perhaps there's some burnout from watching all these competitions. After all, you either don't know these people at all, or you're seeing a successful millionaire get his or her ass kissed again. Plus ABC's Desperate Housewives has taken a chunk from both the Globes and the Grammy's ratings because WE MUST FIND SOMEONE FOR TERI!... We'll see what Chris Rock does as host of the Academy Awards this Sunday. Like this year's Grammy's, some may feel that the nominees aren't up to celebrity snuff. But it'll kill in the ratings. Because it's on ABC so it pre-empts Desperate Housewives, and expect it to go long. While the Grammy's cut down to only 12 televised awards this time, the Oscars will give out 25...Guests on The Daily Show w/ Jon Stewart this week: Monday - Eric Idle (repeat), Tues - Rachel Weisz, Wed - Peter Jennings, and Thursday - Christina Ricci. Notable musical guests this week: Kings of Leon on Letterman Tuesday, Conan O'Brien welcomes Rufus Wainwright on Tuesday with Ian Brown and Noel Gallagher Wednesday. Next new SNL is March 12 with David Spade and Jack Johnson!

MOVIES: The largest-opening romantic comedy ever, Hitch, continues at #1 in its second week with $31.8 million followed by an impressive opening for Constantine at $30.5 million. Because of Winn-Dixie surprises with $10.85 million at #3 with Son of the Mask at #4 with only $7.7 after Jamie Kennedy's incredibly surly PR interviews for opening weekend. Million Dollar Baby came in fifth with $7.2 million but there is now a distinct possibility that none of the five Best Picture nominees will gross $100 million domestically. If that happens it'll be the first time in 20 years that has happened (see previous note on celebrity snuff).

SCHMUTZ: KTLK-AM in Los Angeles is just the latest of 22 stations nationwide that Clear Channel has switched to a liberal talk format in the last year. They are expected to introduce the left-leaning format on 20 more stations by the end of the year according to a Friday article in the Hollywood Reporter. Like their expansion into AAA, the company is smartly investing in radio formats that attract a loyal following and cut through the treacle that IS much of today's terrestrial radio. Try to remember this when you complain about hearing the inexplicable "Fire On High" by ELO on one of their classic-rock stations.

FINALLY: The drug Triaminic was declared kosher last week. I'm not kidding. 

—Mike Lyons
mike@triplearadio.com
        

Archive: 2/14/05

"Awards for art are fucking idiotic!"        
—Chris Rock

Rock is so correct in that statement. When the object is simply to enlighten, inspire or effectively dazzle and connect with one another, it's kind of pointless to conduct an annual competition between works of art.

What's the point? Can you sleep better if you convince your co-worker that Monet's women are more beautiful than Renoir's? Of course not. As the Butthole Surfers put it, "You never know how you look through other people's eyes".

Gotta love a Texas alt-band pinching Plato.

But the early part of the year is the season for award shows. It's become a piece of the American pop-culture calendar. Especially since football is over, baseball hasn't started, and all the best movies, books, recordings and TV shows were already released for the Christmas buying season or the November sweeps. These award shows give the television industry something to pin their ratings hopes on during the February sweeps.

Rock's statement gives his hosting of the Oscars two Sundays from now a better chance of attracting viewers. What will he say?

Show bidness. The bidness we have chosen. So we play the game.

Last night, the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) presented their 47th Grammy Awards. Once again, most of the winners were stars of the AAA format during the past year! My notes from watching the TV follow:

6:30pm - We're tuned to E!'s pre-show. Stars arrive on the red carpet at L.A.'s Staples Center to be interviewed by Star Jones and Kathy Griffin, a new addition after Star's lackluster debut replacing Joan and Melissa Rivers last year. Do you have the TV Guide channel on your cable system? Me neither. Star "loves" everybody and "loves" their latest work. Even if she obviously has never met them before. Pure show-business jive. The only news I get from the coverage is the appearance of Gavin Rossdale, Gwen Stefani's invisible husband, who has returned to the scene as an actor opposite Keanu Reeves in the new film Constantine and announces that he has a new band "Institute" with an album coming in May. Guess Bush is dead. Meanwhile, Kathy Griffin keeps me from plunging a six-inch hatpin through my frontal lobes by asking every woman, "who are you wearing," and then instantly commenting, "I love his or her stuff too!" Griffin continues to ask almost every celebrity, "Who rolls the better blunt? Willie Nelson or Snoop?" with E! bleeping every celeb answer for obvious legal reasons. Griffin's mocking tone results in Lisa Marie Presley and Zeppelin's John Paul Jones ending their interviews with her in record speed. I'm laughing. You go girl!

8:00pm - Black-Eyed Peas open with "Let's Get This Started" which segues to Gwen and Eve onstage doing "Rich Girl" (with dancing pirates. Ok.), then out to Los Lonely Boys on a stage behind the soundboard doing "Heaven" back to Maroon 5 on the mainstage for "This Love," then to Franz Ferdinand doing "Take Me Out" with everybody then joining together for a climactic final verse or two of "Let's Get This Started". This "kitchen sink" opening doesn't compare to last year's Prince/Beyonce opening but we've already heard more rock and roll than we did during the entire MTV VMA's in Miami last year.

8:12pm - Anthony LaPaglia? Gary Sinise? Oh, this is on CBS.

8:14pm- Queen Latifah opens with a few good lines. Fun and comfortable. Mentions Rock and Roll's 50th anniversary this year.

8:17pm - John Travolta announces Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award to blues pianist Pinetop Perkins. This will be a pattern throughout tonight's awards as NARAS announces a different honoree before awards and performances. First award is Best Pop Performance By A Group or Duo and Los Lonely Boys take it! Nice to see a AAA artist pick up the first televised award. They thank God and Donnie Ienner. (shot of Tyra Banks, unimpressed).

8:21pm- Choreographed automobiles begin their ubiquitous assault in tonights ads by spinning into a record on a turntable for a Chevy ad.

8:25pm - Noticeable crowd reaction to drummer Art Blakey's Lifetime Achievemnt Award. Alicia Keys  is introduced w/ voiceover and brings to mind a great touch from NARAS. No lip-synching or background tapes at the Grammy's! Keys performs "If I Ain't Got You" then is joined by Quincy Jones leading the orchestra and Oscar nom Jamie Foxx, who she duets with on Ray Charles' "Georgia". She carries Foxx expertly and the number kills. Terrific moment.

8:35pm - Adam Sandler and Nelly present Best Male R&B song after "Longest Yard" plug. Carnak predicts its a Paramount flick. Viacom rolling out the synergy tonight. Prince upsets Usher to win for "Call My Name". He's not there.

8:40pm -  More Music! More Music! More Music! Only 12 awards will be televised tonight. NARAS has put less and less awards on camera in the past few years, wisely knowing that endless list-reading of names that are too inside-baseball drives viewers away. This year, an almost continuous flash of the 100 award winners keeps popping on at the bottom of the screen except during performances. Oh, Jon Stewart, Bill Clinton and Ben Harper have all picked up statuettes. And Jerry Lee Lewis is still alive! Looks good. Of course, I immediately check the age of the woman next to him.

8:42pm - U2 performs "Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own". I think this is the next single. From Bono to his late father Bob. Touching, with a beautiful chorus in the middle. Tim McGraw picks up "late father tribute" theme later tonight with his "Live Life Like You're Dying" about his late father Tug.

8:48pm - Led Zeppelin get their mention of a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones get a two-second shot in the audience and back we go to award Green Day Best Rock Album for American Idiot. Tre Cool thanks "everyone at radio that still plays rock and roll!" which is topical for me since two stations I worked at, WZTA in Miami and WDIZ in Orlando, had both changed to Spanish on their frequencies last week.

8:55pm - VO tells us, "The two performers you'll be talking about tomorrow! Next." Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony perform together for the first time. Look out, she's in the dark behind the half of the set that won't move. It's a tune in Spanish set in a bedroom. Anthony is singing "Escapemonos" and Lopez is singing "Where's the pitch?" Strangely underwhelming. Zero chemistry on this ballad aaaaaaand they're gone.

9:01PM - "From Sahara, its Mathew McConaughey". Let me hit search here. Yup. It's a Paramount Picture. Which explains the appearance of Mathew's co-star, girlfriend Penelope Cruz as a presenter too. Ooooo. More synergy! He intros Gretchen Wilson, Keith Urban and Lynyrd Skynyrd in a "Southern rock tribute". Why not? I rode the bus to Jefferson Davis Junior High in Jacksonville with Skynyrd's Billy Powell and Allen Collins for a couple of years back in the '60s. They finally made the show, though I still can't figure out why the band isn't in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame yet. Tim McGraw, Dickie Betts and Elvin Bishop, among others, eventually join them and churn through about a ten minute medley of, um, everything. Whole thing actually sounds like kind of a mess but I do appreciate Gretchen's T-shirt with "In Memory of Kilgore" printed on it. Merle Kilgore, co-writer of "Ring of Fire" with June Carter Cash and manager of Hank Williams Jr. passed away just last week.

9:20pm - Tyra Banks wakes up to present the Best New Artist award. Nominee Kanye West, who got pissed that Gretchen Wilson beat him out for this at the American Music Awards earlier this year, loses this time to Maroon 5. Kanye drops his 'sore loser' pose quickly this time and shakes hands with the band as they make it up to the stage to accept. Adam Levine thanks Kanye West first thing. But we have ignition for the 47th Annual Grammy Awards telecast! West may go nuts.

9:30pm - Green Day perform "American Idiot" like a ton of bricks. "Mindfuck" perfectly bleeped like they did at rehearsal. First flames of the night!

9:35pm - Alicia Keys picks up Best R&B Album prize. Clive Davis ties Donnie Ienner for most mentions as record label head. Al is first to accept with a posse. Thanks "Elroy at WGCI, the first station that ever played me!" Cool. Stop now dear.

9:38pm  - CBS screws up with no music bump to spot break. Only production mistake I noticed all night.

9:43pm - "Like Kathie Lee needed Regis, that's how much I need Jesus". Kanye West, with the best lyric of the night, performs his "Jesus Walks" with Mavis Staples, his acolyte John Legend and the Blind Boys of Alabama. Absolutely killer. West's production and songwriting work has been a needed and welcomed alternative to the bling-bitch tone of much of current hip-hop and rap. West also has the most nominations of anyone tonight. But I wonder if he'll continue his knack for deadly PR if he doesn't win something on camera. Tick tock.

9:50pm - West wins Best Rap Album. "Get the music ready cuz I got a lot to say!" And he immediately quotes Al Bundy (?) and starts talking about "the accident" (his jaw was shattered in a wreck before he broke huge as a solo this year). "I'm gonna pop champagne every chance I get cuz I'm at the Grammies!" Everybody said, what will he do if he didn't win? I guess we'll never know!" His sheer exuberance at being here was appealing. It's a shame this kid is so full of himself. But he's great.

10pm - Latifah intros Kris Kristofferson. I instantly go "gesundheit" to myself. Kris intros Joss Stone and Melissa Ethridge who do a Janis Joplin medley in tribute to her Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Joss is barefoot and Melissa is bald, having just ended chemo for her treatment of breast-cancer with radiation still to come. Always liked her and it's moving to see and hear her belting out "Piece of My Heart" with Stone. A true highlight of the show so far. Ethridge looks healthy.

10:15pm - Tift Merritt gets nice exposure as nominee for Best Country Album which goes to Loretta Lynn for Van Lear Rose and she drags her producer Jack White up with her onstage acting loopy and loose. "Country radio wouldn't play this record but who's number one now?" shouts White. Very funny, poignant moment. Hey, AAA came to that party Jack!

10:26pm - Rob Thomas presents Ahmet Ertegun with the NARAS President's Merit Industry Award. Ahmet thanks Turkey.

10:27pm - John Mayer performs "Daughters". Shot of newlyweds Les Moonves and Julie Chen in the second row. Director hasn't chosen many audience shots tonight but he knows who's in charge here. Lisa Marie Presley gives U2 the Best Rock Performance by Group or Duo award for "Vertigo". Like they did for the last album, the single was released in time to be eligible for this year's Grammy awards while the full How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb album will be eligible for next year's Grammy's. Simply smart promotion. The Edge immediately thanks his daughter (hmmmm? that answers that question.) Bono proclaims this year's show "the best Grammy's ever, I think" and then Larry Mullen apologizes for the difficulty some fans had in acquiring tickets to the first leg of their American tour. Sincere and dignified.

10:40pm - Anthony LaPaglia explains the Tsunami tribute performance of "Across the Universe" as Bono, Stevie Wonder, Norah Jones (finally!), Brian Wilson, Steve Tyler, Alison Krauss and Velvet Revolver (looking surprisingly sober) launch into a rather unremarkable rendition of the Lennon tune. But it's for a good cause as the details on purchasing it at CBS.com and iTunes flashes on the screen.

10:45pm - Now we're getting to the biggies. Stevie Wonder and Norah give the Best Song award to John Mayer for "Daughters". "It's still not a good choice as a single but this is nice," winks Mayer.

10:52pm - Usher, with his killer choreography and tonight's first dry ice explosion, does a hot medley of his hits until joined by James Brown for a call & response dance number to "Sex Machine". JB getting up there so the moves are gone but he has a new book, so.

11:00pm - "Sheryl won this award ten years ago when she was 19, I guess". Lance Armstrong comes up with a great line as girlfriend Sheryl Crow and he give Best Record of the Year to Ray Charles and Norah Jones for ""Here We Go Again". Norah is gracious as is Charles' manager Joe Adams. The only time the music tries to play off anyone tonight is when one of the producers appears to start reciting a list. Nope. Not anymore at the Grammies. You're only a producer.

11:05pm - NARAS President Neil Portnow gives his annual speech, plugging Tsunami Relief, music in schools (yeah!) and pushing for his desired decision in an upcoming downloading case before the U.S. Supreme Court. He keeps it low-key but I do note his emphasis on "owning" your music. He ends with a long slide collage of those who have passed this year and I note Scott Muni, Johnny Carson, Elvin Jones, Jim Capaldi, Spencer Dryden, ODB among too many others. It ends with a shot of Ray Charles and segues smoothly to Bonnie Raitt and Billy Preston doing his "Do I Ever Cross Your Mind?" Well done production throughout tonights telecast.

11:25pm - Gary Sinise and Bonnie come out to present Album of the Year which goes to Ray Charles Genius Loves Company. We're done.

FINALLY: Ray Charles took eight Grammy's overall. Alicia Keys came in next with four. Still can't believe it took this long for Brian Wilson to finally get one! Comparing radio formats, AAA cleaned up again with Charles, Norah Jones, Los Lonely Boys, John Mayer, Ben Harper and the Blind Boys of Alabama, Maroon 5, U2, Keb' Mo', Ozomatli, Loretta Lynn, Wilco and Bruce Springsteen among others showing once again that for true, good songs that stand out and will likely last awhile, our adult rock format has more confirmed value once again! It's become a pattern in the last decade and there's no reason for it not to continue.

Glad I didn't use that hatpin.

—Mike Lyons
mike@triplearadio.com



Archive: 2/6/05

"Groundhog Phil Saw His shadow -
 Six More Weeks Of Social Security" 

So it's Super Bowl Sunday and I just read in the Wall Street Journal Friday about a recent poll, conducted by Penn, Schoen & Berland, that found that 58% of 1,735 Americans surveyed would rather go to the bathroom during the game than miss any of the commercials.

It's the one day of the year when people actually look forward to the ads! Because, supposedly, they will all be new. Some may be cool and funny. Some may feature something that everybody will be talking about tomorrow.

So, after last year's Janet/Justin bit, you can bet that everybody will have Tivo'd this sucker.

But nothing crazy or "out there" happened. Boston fans got to rejoice because their Patriots are now officially a "dynasty" and Boston becomes the first city since (of course) New York in 1986 to have their teams win both the World Series and the Super Bowl. 

As far as the ads, my favorite was the Anheuser Busch ad with the troops walking through the airport concourse with people breaking into applause.I suspect too many in America are really more interested in their ads, their game and their beer unless they actually have family stationed in the Middle East. But the feeling was right.

My next favorite was the Ameriquest Mortgage ad when an idiot in a convenience store yakking rudely and obliviously on his cellphone headset, keeps shouting "you're getting robbed" to his friend until the store owner drowns him with mace and clocks him with a baseball bat. I loved that.

The Napster ad was confusing. I actually stared at the screen for a while as the producers, I guess, actually expected everyone to squint at this card, held up in the shot at a stadium,  and read specifics of their anti-iPod deal. I think the country needs a better explanation of subscription online music services than this before it has a prayer of catching
on.

A much better new tech ad came from Verizon for their new VCast service which offers music and video plus calls on their phones. Lots of could-be-you shots. It looked cool.

The Pepsi/free-iTunes ads didn't work last year (kids didn't respond to that McDonalds/iTunes campaign last time. Get free songs from the web. I don't need a bottle cap to do that!) and I doubt if it'll work this year. A rare example of an Apple misstep.

Movie ads were ho hum. A new Batman? Who? What? A big SUV? Michael Caine? Who are they shooting this for?

War Of The Worlds looked good, especially after the Spielberg/Tom Cruise name drops. Be Cool looks cool with Travolta and Uma dancing again. Let's hope the screenwriter and director didn't screw up Elmore Leonard's funny book on record promotion.

But the best new movie ad from this year's Super Bowl had to be Constantine in which Keanu Reeves plays a radio programmer from free-formland who goes through consultantland and eventually ends up answering only to a voice known only as RCS.

And McCartney never showed his nipple.

MOVIES: The Horror, the Horror. The traditionally light post-Xmas-holiday release season continues to give great results to new, relatively inexpensive horror films. Columbia's Boogeyman set a new record for films opening on Super Bowl weekend with $19.5 million in the #1 spot followed by The Wedding Date which, despite uniformly awful reviews, exceeded expectations with $11 million. Are We There Yet? was third with $10.4 million. Hide And Seek fell to fourth with $8.9 mill and Million Dollar Baby came in fifth with $8.7 million. Notable for #8 Sideways, it's take of $4.8 million gives it a total to date of $46.8 million, making it the biggest picture ever released by its distributor Fox Searchlight, passing 1997's The Full Monty's $45 million...Jamie Foxx and Hillary Swank repeated their Golden Globe wins for Best Actor and Actress at last night's SAG Awards. Cate Blanchett and Morgan Freeman won the Supporting nods, replacing Globe winners Natalie Portman and Clive Owen. Sideways won for SAG's Best Picture, which they give out as an award to the cast. Oscars with host Chris Rock come to us February 27.

TV: Wilco on a Conan repeat Monday night. Ani DiFranco on a new Leno this Friday. Jon Stewart's in repeats this week. Arrested Development's Jason Bateman and Kelly Clarkson are on a new SNL this weekend and Queen Latifah hosts the Grammy Awards this Sunday...MY BOYS CAN SWIM!!! Taking a cue from the immortal George Costanza, German TV this week had a new reality show called Sperm Race. 12 men competed against each other to see which one had the fastest sperm. Contestants began by donating sperm in a clinic in front of three doctors, including an ob-gyn, according to the show's producer Endemol (creator of Big Brother). The sperm was then frozen and sent to the company's studios in Cologne, where the sperm "raced" towards an egg - lured by a chemical that encouraged them across the finish line. Winner got a red Porsche. Look for this on FOX any day now.

SCHMUTZ: Last week, researchers at the University of Utah announced findings that 20-year-olds using cell phones while driving had reaction times similar to 70-year-olds on the verge of a nap. The publishers of the Utah study blamed cell-phone use for 2,600 traffic deaths last year in the U.S...Studios? We don't need no stinking studios! The Hit Factory, one of New York's largest and best-known recording facilities, announced Friday that they will close within the month. Ownership will move its headquarters to its Miami facility, the former Criteria Studios, which it bought in 1999. Availability of new recording technologies has made the necessity of paying high studio rates less and less of a choice for many musicians...Looking forward to hearing what this sounds like: Since completing work on U2's latest, producer Steve Lillywhite if producing the new Jason Mraz...Forget about Brad and Jen. I'm sorry to see MSNBC's Dan Abrams and Law & Order's Elisabeth Rohm have broken their relationship off. ("Is this because I'm a lesbian?")

FINALLY: The groundhog day headline from the top of the column comes from another great website run by a good friend of mine. Barry Weintraub has been running a laser-like political comedy site at www.comedyusa.com that features dead-on lines on daily news events complete with links to the story source. Hit the site and you can get on his daily mailing list. Great for morning talent...And for those who've never heard the "Where's Johnny" Carson sendup from the Credibility
Gap that I wrote about two weeks ago, Harry Shearer played it on his "LeShow" last week and it's available on his site at www.harryshearer.com. Grammy coverage next Tuesday.

—Mike Lyons
mike@triplearadio.com

Archive: 1/30/05

BARRY WHITE'S STARTED, THE PINOT NOIR IS OPEN, TIME TO MERGE?

As one of the earliest voices testifying to the inevitability of success for satellite radio, this week I've been asked by many if the rumored merger of XM and SIRIUS will actually happen.

Honestly, I don't know yet. But I do know that they can merge if they want to. Why not?

Our current Republican government believes primarily in two things at its core. Smaller government and leaving business alone. While XM and SIRIUS began the satellite radio industry as an FCC licensed duopoly, if they merged, the market has already spoken. There would probably be another new satellite radio company jumping into the game in a New York minute.

Neither company has shown a profit yet but Wall Street has shown its faith in the business model of satellite radio. They see the over-a-half-million subscribers per quarter pattern that has emerged in the last year. XM's stock ended at $31.77 Friday. SIRIUS ended the week at $6.50. You don't get to prices like that without profits if investors didn't respect the evidence that the business model was working. It's Economics 101. Are they bringing in new customers? Shit yeah. And Wall Street loves new SIRIUS president Mel Karmazin. Because he's always delivered what matters to Wall Street. Profits.

Karmazin denied Tim Arango's Tuesday story in the New York Post in a conference call with investors on Wednesday. Hey, it's the New York Post. "Headless Body Found in Topless Bar". "Dick Gephardt to be John Kerry's Running Mate". As ESPN's Tony Kornheiser says, the Post's slogan should be "occasionally we print English." Not a great track record for accuracy, but, in the Forest, where there's smoke, there's always fire.

I've admired Karmazin for years. Because he does things instead of talks about doing things. I always admired his conviction to raise rates when he was in radio. Did the same thing for television at Viacom with CBS, MTV et al.

XM's target for 2005 in 5.5 million customers. SIRIUS this week, placed its goal at 2.5 million by the end of 2005. That's 8 million combined customers that could all be set up for the arrival of Howard Stern in January 2006.

Mel's probably shooting for 10 million.

Bam!

Now you're getting up towards numbers of critical mass for the advertising community.

It may be a dream right now, but Karmazin is a guy who has no problem making the big move. And at SIRIUS, they're putting talent first. The NFL, Stern, the new UMG deal. He's not one to sit back and wait for the music customers alone to come to the party. He wants to sell ads. At a high price. On Stern. On sports. That's what he does.

With a merger you get Stern, Opie & Anthony, NPR, the NFL, Major League Baseball and all the music you could ever want at one source. All the car dealers come together under the same roof, receivers get uniform (after the companies choose a standard) and financial savings become apparent in both hardware, software and marketing. (Wall Street does think SIRIUS overpaid for Stern. A half-billion dollars? Geez. But that was pre-Mel).

The one item in Arango's article that seems to be new and achievable is both companies convincing the FCC that they redefine the market to include all content delivered over wireless broadband services. That's cellphones, blackberries and Intel's upcoming new wi-fi delivery system WiMax just to start. Include all of them in the same mix with satellite radio and the merger of XM and SIRIUS isn't a monopoly. All the free-market regulators in the Bush administration should buy that. And expected new FCC chairman Kevin Martin is a Bush favorite. Ain't fucking with those Baby Bell mergers are they?   

But you can see there is a ton of legal and financial considerations to be dealt with before it comes to happen.

And what's XM's opinion on all this? Will they stay put in a battle to kill their only competition? Or will they be tempted by the financial benefits of cutting costs and letting Karmazin's pull from Wall Street put them on more solid financial footing. XM's Hugh Panero and crew aren't fools. Just lower profile than Karmazin.

Both companies have a mountain of debt. Servicing that debt quicker might be the biggest benefit to both companies.

But if there were really something to this now, XM would have liked to have done something before they shot up two new expensive satellites last week.

So, if the XM/SIRIUS merger does happen, don't expect it until after Streisand's Sondheim medley at next year's Superbowl half-time show.

MORE BIZ: Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel and the inventor of the microprocessor chip, came up with what we know as "Moore's law." The fact that chip strength doubles every 90 days. And lately it appears that hardware is getting better and cheaper, faster and faster. That's why topics such as an XM/SIRIUS merger get taken seriously so quickly. Sales of new, cheaper, easier-to-use satellite receivers were huge in the last quarter. Apple sold 10 million iPods from its introduction in 2001 until this past Christmas. Now Apple is likely to sell 10 million iPods this YEAR alone. Then, Meg James in the Los Angeles Times last week, reported on a new study by Smith Barney that said by 2010, half the U.S. households with TV sets are expected to also have digital recorders. The tipping point could come as early as 2007, when the television industry may lose as much as $7.6 billion, or about 10% of its annual ad revenue, as advertisers seek other ways of reaching consumers. The clock has begun ticking for those five minute spot clusters on radio and TV. Its obvious a new model has to be worked on for advertising presentation. Folks have too many tools to go away from spots now.

TV: David Letterman is back with new shows this week so if you want to catch a sincere tribute to Johnny Carson, Dave'll do it Monday night. Al Franken and Nanci Griffith are on Tuesday...Fareed Zakaria, Paula Abdul, Anderson Cooper and Time's Joe Klein are Jon Stewart's guests this week on new Daily Show...One of my favorite movie execs, Amy Pascal, head of Columbia Pictures, appears on AMC's Sunday Morning Shootout this Sunday at 11AM to talk with her former boss Peter Guber and co-host Peter Bart, editor of Variety...Paris Hilton and Keane on a new SNL this weekend.

MOVIES: First off, I think Paul Giamatti got screwed out of an Oscar nomination and, who cares about late fees? It was a Robert DeNiro weekend at the American box-office. Despite scathing reviews, Hide And Seek opened at #1 with $22 million, followed by Ice Cube's Are We There Yet? which dropped only 8% from last weekend and took in $17 million. Million Dollar Baby went wider and came in third with $11.8 million. Coach Carter came in fourth with $8 million and DeNiro came in fifth with another $7.6 million for Meet the Fockers. Both The Aviator and Sideways both went to more screens too after their Academy Award nominations came out, moving up to $7.5 and $6.3 million respectively for sixth and seventh place. Last night Clint Eastwood won the Director's Guild of America award as Best Director for 2004. The DGA has telegraphed the Oscar winner in 50 out of the last 56 years. To finally get that Oscar, Marty and Harvey gotta start working the room.

SCHMUTZ: My guts still love the hard stuff. The first 94 seconds of "Will You Smile For Me Again" from And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead's new album Worlds Apart takes the cake. Best rock opening in years. These guys have arrived. But I'll probably hear "Streisand. Party of seven" at the Malibu Olive Garden before I hear it  on alternative radio...KMTT, WRLT and KBXR all up in the Fall book...Gwen Stefani and Eve have hit the Top Ten with "Rich Girl", a pinch from the Broadway show Fiddler On The Roof. Can we next expect Fat Joe's "Consider Yourself" from Oliver next?...According to Bob Dylan, from his memoir Chronicles Vol.1, he recorded an entire album, which he does not identify, based on some stories by Chekhov. Quick, songs about sisters, songs about sisters. Discuss...Cream's reunion dates have been announced. Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker will perform together for the first time since their induction into the R&R Hall of Fame in 1993, in London at the Royal Albert Hall, on May 2, 3, 5 and 6...Nice to see Infinity recreate WHFS online through Radio@AOL.

FINALLY: Got a nice thank you from Harry Shearer on last week's mention of The Credibility Gap's send-up of the late Johnny Carson although he pointed out that it was fellow Gap member Michael McKean who played Don Rickles in the hilarious "Where's Johnny" piece. This is as good a time as any to plug Harry's wonderful weekly show, done at KCRW, called LeShow. Just go to www.harryshearer.com to listen to archives. His music is always cool too with things like depth tracks from Steely Dan and Procol Harum. Check out his reading of the trade magazines too. Bookmark it. Before making a fortune in movies and from his many voices on The Simpsons, you'll remember Shearer was the bass player for The New Originals back in the '60's.

—Mike Lyons
mike@triplearadio.com



Archive: 1/23/05

"Next, Stephanie Powers and Doodles Weaver star in
The Wonderful World of Rub (click)"

So, today at Sundance, instead of sitting around reading the Federal Reserve's Beige Book and
digging the sounds of Nico under those new Target ads while waiting for their agent to call, they're now all sitting Shiva for Johnny Carson. Bummer. At least it wasn't an avalanche. 

Imagine the line above the column delivered by Harry Shearer as a staid network booth announcer at the end of "Where's Johnny," a dazzling send up of The Tonight Show from The Credibility Gap, a legendary comedy group that featured Shearer and fellow future TV stars Michael McKean and David Lander from 1970.

I must have played the 14 minute-plus sketch, at exactly 11:30pm on a Friday night, six or eight times between 1971 and 1973 back in the old free-form career.

It was pre-ironic times. The bit worked as a simple "What the fuck?" non sequitur for those who had never heard it before. And usually stirred buzz on arrival for those who were hip to the Gap's send up of The Tonight Show with Shearer handling both the roles of Johnny Carson and his filthy, out-of-control guest, Don Rickles, ("how ya doin', Ed?" "Fine." "Good. You fat turd!") which followed a presentation to Carson of a tribute replica by a Carol Wayne-like bimbo from "The Manual Catharsis Institute" on Sunset Boulevard. 

It was just like what it might sound like if everything on The Tonight Show had gone horribly, horribly wrong (and honestly) one night.

Back then, Johnny Carson's Tonight Show on NBC was ripe for counter-culture parody. Carson was a legend and everybody knew who Carson was. He was an icon of the three television station, one rock radio station, one newspaper media age. A great target.

But there was also respect for Carson. Yes, he was our parent's point-of-view, but, like Walter Cronkite's move to criticism of the Vietnam War on CBS, he was the place you looked to see if any of the "Greening of America" cultural changes were taking effect in the mass media of the early '70s.

First time I saw Jimi Hendrix was on The Tonight Show. First time I saw Richard Pryor trying out his new approach to comedy, after years doing Cosby-like performances on Ed Sullivan, was on The Tonight Show.

And Carson was very funny. Once, when asked how he became a star, he replied, "I started in a gaseous state and then cooled." He loved poking holes in his bosses too. During the Christmas season in 1991, he said in his monologue that "new owner GE had sent him a holiday card announcing that, in lieu of a gift, a GE employee has been laid-off in your name." 

Also, Johnny Carson always behaved with a, now almost certifiably extinct in show business, form of dignity, grace and humility. After deciding on his own to end his run as Tonight Show host, Carson did just like he said he would. He retired from public life. Other than a few short appearances on David Letterman's CBS show and in the crowd at tennis events like Wimbledon and the U.S. Open in New York, you never saw or heard from him after his retirement in 1992. He was out of material and had finished what he wanted to do with his life.
  
Ironically, I was taking down notes about former Tonight Show producer and current CBS
vice-president Peter Lassally's revelation last week to TV critics that Carson, recently, had been writing material for David Letterman's monologues when the Variety bulletin landed in my in-box.

Johnny Carson died of emphysema at his Malibu home surrounded by his wife and family early Sunday morning. He was 79. There will be no memorial service.
 
Last week Letterman delivered a line that caught my ear.

"Mahmoud Abbas won the Palestinian election because the votes were counted by his brother Jeb."

Dave's a writer short today.

BIZ: I think his last decision was a pledge to not censor satellite radio & TV (the fact that customers pay by choice for those services legally removes them from regulation), so we will miss him for some good things. FCC chairman Michael Powell announced Friday that he will be leaving in March to "spend more time with his family." No he's not. He's gonna run for the governor of Virginia next year. Expect current GOP FCC commissioner Kevin Martin to replace him...YAHOO Chairman and CEO Terry Semel called 2004 "the year in which we witnessed the beginning of a tipping point in online advertising" as more mainstream advertisers increased their marketing online. YAHOO announced a rise in profits to $373 million last year compared to $75 million a year earlier. You don't get a 500% increase like that from just personal ads...Always nice to be a little ahead of the curve, even if it's just by 24 hours. After my column last week pointing out weaknesses at the alternative format, Paul Farhi had an article in the Washington Post Tuesday headlined "Rock, Rolling Over. Pressured By Other Formats and Ways of Listening, A Radio Staple is Crumbling" in which Farhi chronicled the collapse in ratings for the alternative rock format. The Today show on NBC also did a similar story on Wednesday morning. Farhi quotes Billboard's Geoff Mayfield as pointing out that while overall CD sales have slumped so far this century, rock's share of actual CD's sold has risen 19.8% in the last five years. So why isn't anybody hearing any of it on the radio? Potential listeners are running out of patience. Six weeks ago I told you Apple's iTunes was selling songs at the remarkable rate of 800,000 a day. Now iTunes is up to selling 1.25 million songs a day.

TV: Ani DiFranco on Leno Monday then Tift Merritt on Friday. Scissor Sisters on Conan Tuesday. Richard Viguerie, John Leguizamo and Christine Todd Whitman on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart this week. Paris Hilton and Keane on the next new SNL on February 5.

MOVIES: Ice Cube does it again as Are We There Yet opens at #1 at the weekend box-office with a surprising $18.5 million. Coach Carter dangerously drops 55% but comes in second with $11 million followed by Meet the Fockers with $10.2 million. In Good Company continues exceeding expectations with $8.5 million in fourth place followed by Racing Stripes and the new Assault on Precinct 13 with around $7 million. Oscar nominations come out at 8:30 am Tuesday morning.

SCHMUTZ: U2's tour dates will be announced tomorrow morning (Monday 1/24). Kings of Leon will open the first leg of the tour, expected to start March 28 in San Diego. U2 will perform at the Grammy's February 13 along with Green Day, Alicia Keys & Tim McGraw. Joss Stone and Melissa Ethridge will share a Janis medley as Joplin gets inducted into the NARAS Hall of Fame along with Zeppelin and others...Registration for the Fifth Annual NON-COMMvention in Philadelphia May 19-21 is now available only through Triplearadio.com on the front (or home page). Sponsored by WFPK/Public Radio Partnership Louisville, WXPN (ooo, we get to see the sweet new XPN/World Cafe facilities!) and Triplearadio.com. Nice to see the Eagles break that curse Bruce!...Read my interview with bright WYEP Music Director Mike Sauter in the programming/ section of this site. Mike, at least the Steelers found their quarterback of the future.

FINALLY: While other formats have been slumping, results for AAA look great so far as the Fall books roll out. Healthy jumps for KFOG, KTCZ, WMVY, KTYD, WEHM, WKZE and WXRV (in Manchester) already. Congratulations!

—Mike Lyons
mike@triplearadio.com

Archive: 1/17/05

"Well, the bells out in the church tower chime
 Burning clues into this heart of mine
 Thinking so hard on her soft eyes
 And the memories offer signs
 that it's over...it's over"
           
Jeff Buckley's "Last Goodbye" was the last song played by WHFS in Washington D.C. before Infinity changed it to Spanish last week. One of my all time favorite songs. Stunningly beautiful. And so fitting for the moment.

Change sucks as you get older, memories flowback about the aural gem the Einsteins provided the capital of our country for years, but you know change is inevitable. Just sorry to see another legendary set of call letters roll into the history books.

Heck, a whole format may be rolling into the history books. The number eight market in America has just lost its "alternative" station. And if you check the latest Fall numbers from across the country, you can see the numbers for almost all alternatives dropping. I'm sure the kids that are left are also sick of hearing Pearl Jam's "Alive" and Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" every...damn...day.

The kids are en fuego to leave terrestrial broadcasting behind and get their music buzz from a better, quicker, hipper source. The web. On iPod. On satellite. Wherever. 

As Michael Corleone said, "it's not personal.

It's business."
                 
Heavy rumors had Clear Channel flipping DC101 to Spanish. Infinity just beat them to it. The latin segment has been under-served forever and it is growing. Radio is counting on it to balance the books until digital data delivery, music sales and other non-traditional revenue efforts grab a profitable segment of an audience.

Hip-hop, talk, Spanish, smooth-jazz and AAA are formats that have loyal listeners. Right now, other formats are hurting. Just ask a Hot/AC program director about the last two years. Clear Channel isn't politically liberal, but their switches of stations to left-leaning Air America and Jones talent sure as hell cuts through the radio treacle. And thats why they do it. People notice and talk about it. They aren't doing that anymore about "Today's New Rock Mix".

A lot of the old tricks aren't working anymore. And the new toys becoming available at a cheaper price to entertain oneself are booming.

So AAA has to keep doing what it does best. Honest, natural delivery of topics and information that they know their niche cares about.

Along with the best new music being made, they must provide actual value. Not some formula presentation created in a different time and place.

And keep skipping the dumbing-down for a mass audience that isn't coming anymore. There's too many other choices nowadays. 

But one less in D.C. now.

By the way, there's also a rumor that a certain rocker in San Diego may be going fishing with Fredo soon. 

The evolution continues.

BIZ: Jeff Tweedy even complained about it in the Wall Street Journal. Last week, the world's last manufacturer of professional-grade recording tape filed for Chapter 11. Quantegy, Inc. with both audio and video tape orders dwindling, closed its plant in Opelika, Alabama. Audiophiles who love tape are out of luck and so is NASA, which uses the two-inch tape to record pressure and temperature data on the space shuttle. Well NASA finally found enough to get the next launch and Tweedy got two rolls from producer Steve Albini, interestingly, just around the corner in Chicago. Unlike Fredo, Albini was smart, hoarding over 2,000 reels. But it looks like Last Goodbye for cool analog audio and video tape soon too...Great post from Bob Bellin at RAINN this week on the radio industry's new $28 million "For christ's sake keep listening" campaign: "Does 'you heard it hear first!' resonate with listeners? If so, it should be showing up in regular perceptual research and on liners already running. Let's say terrestrial radio played 4,000 new titles in 2004. How many at satellite? 40,000? How about Internet radio? 400,000? Does this campaign actually underscore a weakness more than promote a strength? It would be better for radio to highlight its attributes. It's free. It's local. And you already own lots of radios." I couldn't have put it better.

I HAVE A LOT OF PEOPLE TO THANK (click): Its awards season now, and the Golden Globes last night were pretty standard stuff, though I giggled at the choice of old Carol Burnett sketch music to segue the presenters. Ah, the mysterious HFPA. What did we learn? Brown is the new black. We like you Teri. We really like you. Good news for Natalie Portman, Clive Owen, Leo and Annette Bening in the acting awards. Good news for "Sideways", "Million Dollar Baby" and "The Aviator" though the whole night was working up to giving Martin Scorsese an award (he lost Best Director to Clint Eastwood)but after the producers of "The Aviator" bloviated too long after winning Best Picture, NBC cut the show off before Scorsese could speak. Again, letting the  format wag the dog. ("the affiliates will freak!)...Notice that this year, the rest of the big awards shows will, as John Lennon put it, "adding soul power to the karmic wheel," as Queen Latifah has been chosen to host the Grammy Awards February 13 while Chris Rock debuts as host of the Academy Awards on February 27. The Oscar nominations will be announced next Tuesday the 25th.

TV: The New York Daily News today reported that CBS has approached Katie Couric about replacing Dan Rather, despite the 16 months remaining on her NBC Today show contract. ABC's Ted Koppel, CBS' own John Roberts and rising star CNN anchor Anderson Cooper (Gloria Vanderbilt's son) are the other candidates...Paul Giamatti and Ludacris w/Sum 41 are on a new SNL this weekend...Daily Show With Jon Stewert guests this week include Tim Wallis on Tuesday, Michael Beschloss on Wednesday and Senator Joe Lieberman Thursday...On Letterman, it's Interpol on Tuesday with And You Will Know Us By the Trail Of Dead on Wednesday!...Joss Stone is on a new Conan Tuesday and the terrific new AAA artist Ray LaMontagne is on Wednesday...Looks like CNN's Headline News channel and MSNBC's weekday prime times will be much more pop-culture tuned starting within the month. Speaking of MSNBC, they beat E! Entertainment to the punch on trial reenactments last Wednesday night when Keith Olbermann debuted Michael Jackson Trial Puppet Theater. Olbermann made it clear that since the trial hadn't started yet, he was not using actual testimony, only an artist's conception with puppets crafted from ice cream sticks. Said Olbermann, "to quote the president of the E! network, Ted Harbert, 'I'm a person who believes strongly that what we need to bring to TV is taste'". E! is actually planning on nightly reenactments of Jackson trial testimony. Oy.

SCHMUTZ: Now, even I wanna give some awards out.
BEST WHO SINGLE IN YEARS - U2's "All Because of You."
BEST BLACK CROWES SINGLE EVER - Gavin DeGraw's "I Don't
Wanna Be."
BEST WALTER EGAN SINGLE THIS MONTH - Los
Lonely Boys "More Than Love."
And with Jet's "Look What You've Done" and Keane's "Somewhere Only We Know" piling up spins, it's as if my world is dominated by depth tracks from Paul McCartney's "Red Rose Speedway". 

And I love 'em all!

—Mike Lyons
mike@triplearadio.com

Archive: 1/9/5

"YOU MAKE ME WANNA SCREAM!"

- Ashlee Simpson at the Orange Bowl

Since I'm into my second box of Thera-Flu today, this column will be about as long as this week's total Fox News tsunami coverage. The halftime show at the BCS college football championship game at the Orange Bowl Tuesday didn't look good from the start. Southern Cal was already up on Oklahoma by four touchdowns in a blowout so ABC was desperately pushing their halftime show featuring Kelly Clarkson, Trace Adkins and Ashlee Simpson to hold viewers. First, game commentator Craig James' wireless mic wasn't working so anchor John Saunders quickly kicked it out to Clarkson on the huge set at midfield. Her new single "Since You've Been Gone" starts very low and soft until it builds to a yell like all the other girl-pop songs do now. Hell, all the boy pop-punk bands do to. Recite a verse, then YELL the chorus hook until done. Usually takes just under three minutes. Repeat immediately with Hillary Duff or Simple Plan. Doesn't matter. They're all the same. But even the yelling quickly became buried under the pre-recorded music track. As if there had never been a sound check or rehearsal. Dead mics popping up everywhere along with inexplicably prominent off-key live vocal attempts by background singers. It was already a trainwreck as Kelly handed off to poor Trace Adkins whose vocal vanished in the mix and then...ASHLEE. Who, typically, YELLED her new single horribly off-key until the end. When she shrieked, "You make me wanna scream!" Then the crowd of 70,000 booed heartily, showing us at the start of a new year that maybe there IS hope for mankind!

Truth is, the trend in pop music right now is producers, producers, producers. Like Dre, Pharrell and Timbaland dominating the actual sounds you hear in hip-hop, the Matrix and similar pop/rock production teams churn out the majority of current pop hits by formula for the labels. An actual good singer is not required. The talent is basically disposable. As recording artists, who's gonna be first to join the list of forgotten one-named hip-hoppers from the last few years? If it's not Kelly or Hillary or Ashlee, how about Lindsay Lohan? Doesn't have any remarkable singing ability or anything special to say, but she can burp over this C-major wall-of-sound synth wallop we just recycled from Kylie Minogue and then triple-track her yelling the chorus til fade. It'll sell a half-million outta the box, right?And sometimes it does. I'm not immune to pop ear-candy. Some of it is catchy as hell. But the artists have little to do with it today. It is what it is. Product. While some pop creations, like Britney Spears, go out and dance in elaborate choreography with their latest husbands wearing black and yellow plastic spaceman suits, most of these pop princesses just stand there and YELL. So if they try to pull off "live" performances with a straight face, they deserve what they get. Like Ashlee Simpson. Soon to be touring with Sisqo.

TV: Coincidentally, "Stop the Yelling" was what CNN-U.S. president Jonathan Klein said this week as he let Tucker Carlson go and canceled the networks' afternoon shout-fest "Crossfire". "There are better ways to serve CNN viewers. People screaming at each other adds a lot of heat but not much light" said Klein as he announced the changes. Carlson will replace Deborah Norville at 9 p.m. weekdays soon on MSNBC...NBC's "The Medium" with Patricia Arquette playing a psychic who sees dead people, got the best numbers for an NBC drama premiere in more than four years last week... ABC's move to offer producer J.J.Abrams' series "Lost" and "Alias" back-to-back on Wednesdays resulted in both shows setting series ratings highs with 21.5 million and 16.1 million viewers respectively last week...MTV has picked up "The Real World" for five more god-forsaken seasons. DISH-TV's new video channel from UMG and Andy Schoun can't get here any sooner...Speaking of satellite TV production, look for Fox to start pouring money into new services for their DIRECT-TV. New studios in L.A. next year will offer channels like one for their NFL package that will continuously show when teams are in red-zone scoring opportunities from every game currently underway. Constantly. Broken into split screen when necessary with the option of clicking the game you want, which then goes to full-screen. DIRECT-TV will also start featuring channels that will have all the news channels in individual boxes so you can monitor everything onscreen as you wish on one screen. Click the box you want for audio or to go full screen. Sweet...Jennifer Garner and the Killers on a new SNL this week if HER Thera-Flu works.

BIZ: CD sales for the record industry ended up 2.3% for the year 2004, the first increase in years and online music sales approached 150 million last year. A huge increase. But the RIAA's continuing legal attacks on downloaders do