Category Archives: media

Jack FM – 103.7 KHJK

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The print article in the star section is considerably longer than the online version. KLOL died a few years ago, KIOL tried to resurrect it and failed (20th of 37 stations), so now they’re going with the “fresh new thing”. I’m sure it will spike up for it’s newness, but will again grow stale and old. Instead of updating their play list with time, they’ll rebrand it again.

Jack FM to make Houston debut

Jack FMBy DAVID BARRON
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle

The eclectic, iPod shuffle-like music format known as Jack FM makes its Houston debut at 10:37 a.m. Friday at 103.7 FM.

The Cumulus Media station, now known as KIOL or Rock 103.7 FM, will be reformatted as KHJK, said Pat Fant, Cumulus’ Houston market manager.

Houston will be the seventh market in Texas and the fifth top 10 market in the country to add Jack FM, which formats about a thousand songs by 500 artists in 18 genres of music dating from the late 1960s through today.

Jack FM operates without live DJs, so Cumulus will attempt to find positions elsewhere in the company for Rock 103.7’s current on-air personalities.

others: Houstonist, McGuff

Babe-of-the-DayI love that the impending axe will fall in less then three hours and the website says “This Labor Day Weekend Rock 103.7 is counting down the Top 500 Rock Songs of All Time, and you get to pick the songs…”

And their Babe-of-the-Day gives you super-hyphenated information on who their target audience was. Radio station or soft-core porn portal?

And, according to the FCC, the KHJK call sign was registered ten days ago to 99.1 in Sioux Falls.

AP: Christa McAuliffe no longer an Astronaut

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Knock, knock. Hello? Anyone home at the AP?

Weather improving for tomorrow’s shuttle launch

Associated Press Aug. 7, 2007, 4:40PM

Christa McAuliffeCAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – The weather is improving for Wednesday’s planned launch of Endeavour on a space station delivery mission featuring NASA’s first educator-astronaut.

…

Seven astronauts are assigned to the mission, but the spotlight is on Barbara Morgan, who was Christa McAuliffe’s backup for Challenger’s doomed mission in 1986.

…

Christa McAuliffe was the first educator-astronaut. Because she died doing her job does not disqualify her from the title.

I hope she and the rest of the STS-51-L crew will be watching over the Endeavour.

Chron: Commercialism and Art Cars

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Here’s an article against corporate infringement into the art car scene. It’s more invective because of it’s harsh title – which is just typical “journalism”. I heard a few discussions on this topic at the many events I was at. Mostly, the corporate cars don’t show for the quirky events and thus don’t effect the “counterculture vibe”. The parade is a media event, and I fully expect corporateness to show up for a 250,000 person crowd.

I heard one major complaint about the McDonald’s shoe visiting schools on Friday. It’s a reasonable complaint, though one not shared by all artists. The complaints about the Shoe’s stereo being too loud are much more common.

What humors me the most is the social elitism of the comments to the article on the Chron’s web site. (“It’s not art because I don’t like it.”)

Is commercialism driving off fun of the Art Car Parade?

A few say sponsors detract from the event’s counterculture vibes

By SARAH VIREN
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle
May 13, 2007, 9:57PM

Patrick Stanley exhausted his supply of souvenir hard hats an hour before Houston’s Art Car Parade started Saturday. Each bore the name of the construction company he works for, SpawMaxwell, just like his art car, a 1958 Edsel Pacer.

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The Pentagon Papers and Rumsfeldian song

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A very sobering article titled The Pentagon Papers. An insiders view of the war planning and unprecedented overhauling of institutional knowledge within the intelligence and defense parts of the administration. By Karen Kwiatkowski on Salon.com

To balance off that outrageousness, there was lighter news recently on NPR, last year’s book The Poetry of Donald Rumsfeld, which my mother bought me, but enjoyed so much never gave to me, has been set to music. Any you must hear it!

One of the classic Rumdfeldianisms below. Jon Stewart had fun with it when it happened. And BBC-4’s great collection of Rumsfeld Soundbites of course has the original quote.

The Unknown

As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don’t know
We don’t know.

Department of Defense news briefing
Feb. 12, 2002

the theme to both: we don’t know,
-b

liberal media

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On Meet the Press, Bob Novac whines about the liberal media making “the conservatives” uphappy with George W’s unconservativity.

The host says, “Bob Novac, with his syndicated column,… his own TV show,… and it’s the liberal media.”

I smiled.

-b