mediageek

Category: media ownership & consolidation

  • Chicago Reader Goes the Way of Clear Channel and Leverage Is the Culprit

    Private equity seems all the rage for financially troubled media properties, though I contend that is a bad thing. As I report on this week’s radioshow, all of the alternative weeklies owned by Atlanta-based Creative Loafing Inc. became the property of New York-based Atalaya Capital Management, which won a bankruptcy auction buying the company for…

  • Sometimes the Grassroots Wins: KRXQ Hosts Apologize for Defaming Transgendered Children

    What a couple of weeks it’s been for Sacramento radio station KRXQ and its wacky morning show hosts Rob, Arnie & Dawn. Their travails in meeting the wrath of outraged supporters of transgendered adults and children ended this morning when the hosts apologized on air and engaged in an open conversation with transgendered people and…

  • KRXQ Loses National Advertisers For Broadcast Defaming Transgendered Children

    Two days of contacting Sacramento rock station KRXQ’s advertisers regarding the station’s May 28 broadcast defaming and advocating abuse of transgendered children has gotten results. Chipotle Grill, Snapple and Sonic Drive-In have all pulled their ads from the station in response to the broadcast. KRXQ general manager Jim Fox acknowledged to the Sacramento Bee that…

  • The Empty Hypocrisy of Protecting Children

    You might have heard that the Supreme Court recently made a very narrow decision refusing to strike down the FCC’s enforcement of fleeting expletives on TV, such as when U2’s Bono dropped an f-bomb on a live Golden Globes broadcast a few years back. The justification always given for prohibiting so-called indecent words like “fuck”…

  • Some Great Radioshows Coming Up

    On Friday I recorded a phone interview with Jerry Del Colliano who is furiously documenting the death throes of commercial radio at his blog, Inside Music Media. However, that’s a shallow characterization of what Jerry is up to. As you’ll hear on the June 11 mediageek radioshow, Jerry has been way ahead of the curve…

  • Mediageek Radioshow Notes for April 9, 2009

    I’m going to try and get back in the saddle with posting show notes for each week’s radioshow so that listeners can check out some of the news items and other relevant stuff that comes up during the show. Since the show is produced live, often featuring live guests, I’ll be treating these posts as…

  • Interview: The End of Television

    Although the delay of the DTV transition to June 12 has taken a little wind out of the sails for the potential of a massive rude awakening for an American public unprepared for the sudden obsolescence of their analog TVs, the transition is still going to happen. While more households will have obtained DTV converter…

  • Chi Journalism Town Hall Reveals Creative Tension b/w Old and New Media

    This week’s radioshow is now online, with audio from a national conference call on low-power community radio along with excerpts of last week’s Chicago Journalism Town Hall. I meant to comment on the Town Hall earlier, but then all of a sudden already a week passed. First, I want to say that I was glad…

  • On Thursday’s Radioshow: New LPFM Bill & Journalism Town Hall

    Another new Congress, another new low-power FM bill. In what’s become a tradition since Congress voted to stunt the growth of low-power radio back in 2000, a new Local Community Radio Act has been introduced. But this time around the bill arguably has the best chance of passing yet. We’ll hear from some of the…

  • Inauguration Shows that the Internet Still Isn’t Broadcast

    Last Tuesday’s presidential inauguration was one of those moments where I think all business except for vital functions like transit and public safety stopped all over the country as people tuned in to watch Obama’s swearing in. Another thing that stopped for a lot of people was the internet. Arguably this was one of the…