tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52316314512060192672024-03-21T18:21:57.707-07:00Steve CarneyChiliconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14734411484092454332noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5231631451206019267.post-214005143431710252019-03-14T00:36:00.011-07:002020-12-11T23:42:09.786-08:00How actress Selma Blair — and that cane — inspire others with MS<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span face="Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">By Steve Carney, Special to the Los Angeles Times</span></span><br />
<br /><div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYDZIoXKsh1B_TCwG1ZX0kFd7Lq4o05RWxVVgd5jhspI_bqA4OsDgKvMC94pNXLbOYLGGxb5pVTqs14EUTQCG2kyLKA3VfUNXiN78x8sSXRrlZZCZynBvM9i4x8ffvswjLzciJecStLak/s1600/Selma+Blair.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="473" data-original-width="840" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYDZIoXKsh1B_TCwG1ZX0kFd7Lq4o05RWxVVgd5jhspI_bqA4OsDgKvMC94pNXLbOYLGGxb5pVTqs14EUTQCG2kyLKA3VfUNXiN78x8sSXRrlZZCZynBvM9i4x8ffvswjLzciJecStLak/w400-h225/Selma+Blair.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: right;"><div class="figure-caption" style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; font-family: BentonGothic, arial, "helvetica neue", helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Selma Blair arrives at the Vanity Fair Oscars party. </span></div></div><div class="figure-credit" style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; font-family: BentonGothic, arial, "helvetica neue", helvetica, sans-serif; margin-left: 5px; text-align: start;"><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> (Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images)</span></div></div></td></tr></tbody></table>When actress Selma Blair strode onto the Vanity Fair red carpet on Oscar night, her most public appearance since announcing in October that she has multiple sclerosis, what drew most attention was not her couture but her cane. Not utilitarian medical supply, foam and stainless steel, but sheathed in patent leather, and embellished with a pink diamond and gold monogram — a signal, both brash and heartening, to others living with the disease.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Kudos to her for her stepping out like that, and looking beautiful. I think she encouraged a lot of people,” said Dawnia Baynes, 39, of Compton, who was diagnosed with MS in 2006. “She helped me be like, ‘Who cares? This is what I’m dealing with.’ Now I want to trick out my walker! Bling it out! Put some spinners on it!”</div><div><br /></div><div>Blair, who first gained a cult following with 1999’s “Cruel Intentions,” walked carefully and deliberately across the carpet, pausing and smiling for each barrage of paparazzi strobes, waving the diaphanous cape of her Ralph & Russo gown, maintaining her balance while showing off that cane. She broke down momentarily halfway along, and with the help of her friend and manager Troy Nankin, composed herself, then turned an unflinching gaze toward every lens trained on her.</div><div><br /></div><div>“That was awesome,” said Nandi Bowe, 55, a writer and director in Silver Lake, diagnosed 13 years ago. “All of a sudden, it took a little bit of the fear away. I’m not in a club of one, or a club of 10. MS can look lots of ways. MS can look like a fabulous, beautiful actor.”</div><span><a name='more'></a></span><div><br /></div><div>Blair’s confidence and openness about the disease come at an especially important time, according to Cyndi Zagieboylo, president and chief executive of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. Not just that March is MS Awareness Month, but because a study published earlier this year revealed that twice as many people in the United States have MS than previously thought.</div><div><br /></div><div>The disease strikes the central nervous system, causing symptoms ranging from numbness and tingling to blindness and paralysis. But because it’s not infectious, doctors aren’t required to report cases, so prevalence has been hard to pin down. The old estimate, about 400,000 people nationwide, was extrapolated from a 1975 study; the new research, published in the medical journal Neurology, puts the number at almost 1 million.</div><div><br /></div><div>The new tally shows the urgency for more funding and research, and will help indicate whether the disease is growing, or appears in geographic clusters, Zagieboylo said. At the same time, Blair’s panache can dispel insecurities among those with MS, and raise awareness — not just for donations, but to spur people into getting checked.</div><div><br /></div><div>After Blair revealed her diagnosis in October, the MS Society said traffic on its web site increased 200% from the same time a year earlier — though there’s no guarantee the two are related. And after her red carpet turn in February, visits to the page “Definition of MS” were more than 300% higher than the same time in 2018.</div><div><br /></div><div>Blair announced her diagnosis on Instagram, and since then has chronicled her life with the disease, with honesty and self-deprecating humor, via the web and through interviews on “Good Morning, America” and in this month’s Vanity Fair.</div><div><br /></div><div>The actress said she’d had symptoms for years — fatigue, numbness, loss of coordination and others — but either ignored them, or was misdiagnosed. Finally, after an MRI in August, she got a definitive answer, and cried tears of relief.</div><div><br /></div><div>“I’ve heard that from people,” that an MS diagnosis is not devastating, Zagieboylo said. “To have a name for it — ‘You have MS, and here’s what you can do for it’ — is much more powerful.</div><div><br /></div><div>“One of the things so tricky about MS is that it varies from person to person, but also that it varies within each person,” she said. That’s why people often take so long to get diagnosed.</div><div><br /></div><div>According to the NMSS, the disease is rarely fatal, but its complications increase the risk of heart disease, stroke and other problems. Researchers are still unsure what causes MS, and though there’s no cure, treatments can alleviate some symptoms. It affects women up to three times more often than men, usually between the ages of 20 and 50.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Women in the prime of their lives,” Bowe said. “What a cruel time to be affected by this debilitating disease.” (Unable to hike with her three sons, Bowe said now a simple trip to the mall requires mental calculations about walking distance, bathrooms, crowds and even temperature.)</div><div><br /></div><div>Blair, currently starring in the Netflix series “Another Life,” wisecracks about the ordeal of simply getting dressed, even with help. She has long ventured into the fashion realm — as a collaborator with numerous designers, the onetime face of Chanel and a frequent guest at New York Fashion Week. Now she hopes to create her own line of adaptive clothing, joking that she’ll make elastic waistbands chic.</div><div><br /></div><div>Zagieboylo credits Blair for talking frankly “about her appearance, and how she looks, and how that’s important to her.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“Some people, that’s what keeps them hidden,” she said, shame over not presenting like they used to. But Zagieboylo said Blair is owning it: “I got a cane, and it’s beautiful, and it should be beautiful.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Baynes, who runs a support group for people with MS in their 20s through 40s, lauds Blair’s desire to keep working, and said people with the disease sometimes “shut down.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“Don’t cancel things, or feel like you’re being a burden to someone,” she said. “You do need a community.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Luis Lemus, 31, of Norwalk, was diagnosed in 2014, and — like Blair — exhibits the rare symptom spasmodic dysphonia, which affects the larynx and causes strained, halting speech. But he’s also a communications major at Cerritos College, planning to graduate in the spring then move on to Cal State Fullerton.</div><div><br /></div><div>“If someone tells me, ‘Oh, you can’t do that,’ I personally see that as a challenge,” he said. “I lost coordination, but I’m still pursuing school. I don’t let this define me.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Lemus said he feels the disability has cost him friendships and party invites, but admits his own fears sometimes made him cautious and closed-off.</div><div><br /></div><div>But Blair inspired him.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Because of her, and her fancy cane, she put her own fashionable spin on the horrible disease, and I can only hope it works out in her — in our — favor,“ he said. “In my case, I see it as a second chance to do what, in the past, I would have passed on.”</div>
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<br /><br />Chiliconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14734411484092454332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5231631451206019267.post-76315030771955079002018-02-17T12:39:00.057-08:002020-12-09T01:38:20.438-08:00Architectural Spotlight<div><b>Midcentury Modern, with its clean lines and simplicity, still has an edgy feel</b></div><div><br /></div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span face="Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><div><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span face="Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><br /></span></span></div>By Steve Carney, Special to the Los Angeles Times</span></span><br />
<br /><div>As World War II ended, advances in manufacturing, easing of wartime austerity and pent-up creativity among builders and architects led to a design explosion with its ground zero in Southern California: Midcentury Modern.</div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2C2VrULN1h6tISKBPcZMI8WAbqDIiOUplO5ateBdhfnJDvaAqDpcbX8GlenK7DQArGk1m92H-XvT2Ab-_sBa-6UWWmIccBYUE8wjrtFzsRW3yTlBxw3-RQWje1B6r4tNTMcq80M-PdXI/s840/mid-mod+house.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="473" data-original-width="840" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2C2VrULN1h6tISKBPcZMI8WAbqDIiOUplO5ateBdhfnJDvaAqDpcbX8GlenK7DQArGk1m92H-XvT2Ab-_sBa-6UWWmIccBYUE8wjrtFzsRW3yTlBxw3-RQWje1B6r4tNTMcq80M-PdXI/w400-h225/mid-mod+house.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Stahl House in the Hollywood Hills (Damon Winter/Los Angeles Times)</td><td class="tr-caption"><br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><div><br />Known for its open floor plans, wide expanses of glass and indoor-outdoor living, the Midcentury Modern movement created homes that still seem avant-garde today, 50 to 70 years after they were built.</div><div><br /></div><div>“It’s about simplicity, clean lines, getting away from ornamentation and molding, exposing the raw structure,” said Doug Kramer, a real estate agent who specializes in modern homes. “Obviously, the style is very much centered on a connection with the outdoors — the experience of just being able to slide open a wall of glass and be open to the outside.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Kramer was a fan long before he bought and sold these houses — he’s lived in a midcentury Cliff May-designed home in Long Beach for 22 years and was hooked when he first saw the modernist design of the Tucson airport, his childhood hometown.</div><span><a name='more'></a></span><div><br /></div><div>“The sense of space, the sense of openness, was one of the critical things I was looking for,” Kramer said.</div><div><br /></div><div>World War II restrictions on building anything that didn’t advance the war effort created one of the biggest housing shortages in the country’s history, said Sian Winship, president of the Southern California chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians.</div><div><br /></div><div>Once the war ended, service people in Southern California needed homes, and a coterie of progressive architects working in the area stepped in, eager to map out the future of home design.</div><div><br /></div><div>“The concentration of new technologies, climate, postwar population boom and optimism made Southern California a fertile breeding ground for new architecture in the post-World War II era,” said a report from the National Park Service on the residential architecture of John Lautner.</div><div><br /></div><div>One of the main engines of the movement was the ambitious Case Study House program, launched in January 1945 by Art & Architecture magazine editor John Entenza.</div><div><br /></div><div>The program, which ran from 1945 to 1960, tapped leading architects of the day — mostly living in Los Angeles, where the magazine was based. Entenza said he believed advancements in home building would “expand considerably the definition of what we mean when we now say the word ‘house.’”</div><div><br /></div><div>The project led to some of the most iconic examples of modernist architecture, captured in the pages of the magazine by photographer Julius Shulman and disseminated worldwide.</div><div><br /></div><div>The best known is probably his shot of Case Study House No. 22, the Stahl House, a glass and steel box cantilevered over the Hollywood Hills. The viewer peers into one glass wall, through the house, and out another — sharing the panoramic view of L.A. city lights with the cocktail-dress-clad ladies inside.</div><div><br /></div><div>Because of advances in manufacturing and construction and the use of industrial materials in home building, the Midcentury Modern houses didn’t need structural load-bearing walls with windows cut into them. Instead they featured long beams supported by wood or steel posts, which enable the massive walls of glass the style is known for.</div><div><br /></div><div>The style, Winship said, “starts in earnest after the war, but you can see the seeds before,” in the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra and others.</div><div><br /></div><div>Real estate developer Joseph Eichler was still the treasurer of his family’s produce business when he briefly rented a Wright-designed home in Northern California during the war. The home’s openness and light inspired Eichler, and he launched a new career, building more than 11,000 modernist houses in Southern and Northern California.</div><div><br /></div><div>But maybe the greatest concentration of Midcentury Modern homes can be found in Palm Springs, which had the same need for postwar housing among service people based there.</div><div><br /></div><div>The modernist boom in the desert was also fueled by a market for vacation homes (thanks to peacetime affluence), and getaways for Hollywood stars and other well-to-do Angelenos.</div><div><br /></div><div>Father-son builders George and Robert Alexander saw the void and filled it with about 2,500 modernist homes in the Palm Springs area.</div><div><br /></div><div>“It’s the holy land for Midcentury Modern enthusiasts,” Kramer said.</div><div><br /></div><div>Popularity of the style waned as the 1960s ended. But in 1989, a LACMA exhibition, Blueprints for Modern Living: History and Legacy of the Case Study Houses, rekindled interest in Midcentury Modern architecture. Their appearances in movies, TV and commercials — as eye-catching, offbeat settings — also generated intrigue.</div><div><br /></div><div>“It’s definitely not a fad,” Kramer said. “It’s established, just like Craftsman, just like Spanish — it stands with all of that in the architectural history of Southern California.”</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="background-color: #fff2cc;">INFOBOX:</span></div><div><span style="background-color: #fff2cc;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: #fff2cc;">Style: Midcentury Modern</span></div><div><span style="background-color: #fff2cc;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: #fff2cc;">Features: Clean lines, little ornamentation, open floor plans, wide openings — between rooms and to the outdoors, post-and-beam construction, lots of glass, turning the focus from the street to the backyard.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: #fff2cc;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: #fff2cc;">Where to find them: Hollywood Hills, Palm Springs, Long Beach, Orange, Beverly Hills, Pacific Palisades, West Hollywood, North Hollywood, Thousand Oaks, Granada Hills, Villa Park</span></div><div><span style="background-color: #fff2cc;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: #fff2cc;">Some prominent architects: J.R. Davidson, Richard Neutra, Sumner Spaulding, Eero Saarinen, Charles Eames, William Wilson Wurster, Ralph Rapson, Pierre Koenig, Raphael Soriano, A. Quincy Jones, Edward Killingsworth, William Krisel, John Lautner, R.M. Schindler, Rodney Walker, Edward H. Fickett, Richard Dorman, Cliff May</span></div>Chiliconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14734411484092454332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5231631451206019267.post-25119980470192882082012-07-01T12:00:00.000-07:002014-07-20T02:55:56.792-07:00Tom Leykis returns — over the Internet<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The shock jock, who used to be on KLSX-FM, has brought his show back online with minimal staff and resources. This could be the future of radio.</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">By Steve Carney, Special to the Los Angeles Times</span></span><br />
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Tom Leykis, the shock jock sidelined for more than three years after his radio station dropped talk for pop music, is infamous for persuading women to lift their tops and for coaching men to spend as little money as possible on dates. Critics dubbed him a Neanderthal. Now he's being called a revolutionary.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tom Leykis in his Burbank studios. <i>(source: Los Angeles Times)</i></td></tr>
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Silenced by the changeover at KLSX-FM (97.1) in February 2009, Leykis has resurrected his show online with a shoestring operation that he believes can take on the radio conglomerates — the latest in a cadre of stars staking out new territory for themselves.<br />
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"My job here is not to serve the corporate master. I am the corporation here," Leykis said while giving his "mission statement" on a recent show. "I reserve the right to talk about anything I find interesting."'<br />
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After three years off the radio, Leykis has resumed his weekday show on the Internet, once considered merely the realm of amateurs and vanity programs. Now he's streaming his show free on http://www.BlowMeUpTom.com, a reference to the tradition of fans' requests that Leykis end their calls with recorded explosions, among other sound effects. He broadcasts live weekdays from 3 to 6 p.m., sometimes 7, with continuous repeats until the following day's new show.<br />
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The Internet show began April 2, and at the end of its first week, 401,180 listeners had tuned in for at least five minutes. The first month, fans tuned in from 102 countries — England, El Salvador, Uganda, Australia, the Philippines and Mexico, among others.<br />
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"It's an example of how creative talent is adapting to a new reality," said Perry Michael Simon, news, talk and sports editor at the online radio-news journal AllAccess.com. "The number of outlets they've got on traditional media have shrunk. It's wise of anybody on the talent side to be entrepreneurial."<br />
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Behind an anonymous storefront in Burbank, with printers and auto-repair shops for neighbors, Leykis broadcasts from a small studio, dark and spare, standing at a crescent-shaped desk and still wearing his trademark dark glasses in the dim lighting. His KLSX show also aired weekday afternoons, and many fans listened while driving home during rush hour — not sitting in front of a computer. Is he simply missing out on that whole swath of his audience?<br />
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During a break, Leykis holds up an Android smartphone he'd been twirling in his hand.<br />
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"This," he said, "is a radio."<br />
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A few finger swipes, and he's turned on an application streaming radio stations and programs from around the world, with presets for his favorites — like a car radio with a global reach. He presses an on-screen button, and the current episode of "The Tom Leykis Show" starts playing. Plug that into a dashboard, and it's as if he never left the airwaves.<br />
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"This is a cultural breakthrough," said Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers magazine, the trade journal of the talk-radio industry. "You're on the same magic box that major corporations spend millions of dollars to broadcast through. That's a revolution."<br />
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And Simon noted that what listeners care about is the content coming out of their speakers, not whether it originated from a broadcast antenna on Mt. Wilson, a satellite overhead or a cellphone tower beaming an Internet stream.<br />
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"While the traditional media are shrinking, the opportunities to get your product out there have never been greater," Simon said.<br />
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In the short term, online audiences will run smaller than those for radio, he said, but in the long run "there's a much greater upside in terms of numbers."<br />
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Leykis is by no means the first radio refugee to take his program to the Internet. Almost immediately after their station switched formats in 2009, his former KLSX colleague Adam Carolla started offering a podcast that emulated his morning show. Among others, former Air America talk host Lionel and longtime Chicago radio personality Steve Dahl podcast regularly via their own websites.<br />
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With a podcast, listeners can go to a website or iTunes and download the latest show, then listen to it at their leisure. Likewise, the hosts can produce and post the shows whenever they want and aren't required to be in front of a microphone at a studio every weekday at 3 p.m. sharp.<br />
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Leykis' streaming model, on the other hand, better simulates the live radio experience for the audience, with the interaction of callers, host and subsequent callers reacting to earlier comments.<br />
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"He's basically offering a radio show without the antenna," Simon said. With podcasts, "there's a delay that takes the communal experience out of it."<br />
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Leykis' new show is much like his old one. He gives advice to mostly male callers – who refer to him as "dad" – on how to negotiate their world of conniving gold diggers, where nice guys finish last in the dating game. During his Thursday "Leykis 101" segments, the "professor" tells women "how men really think," and tells men how to get more women, without spending money on them. But he said part of his new autonomy is to explore other, non-relationship topics – whether mocking Mike Huckabee's radio show or riffing on the anachronism of the phone book or the barbarism of the Kelly Thomas beating in Fullerton.<br />
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"Frankly, I don't think the average listener wants me to talk about the same thing all of the time," he said on-air one day. "I refuse to be a cartoon character."<br />
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Simon said it's too soon to tell whether one method will eventually win out with listeners, streaming or podcasting. Leykis is hedging his bets and also ensuring income by offering premium subscriptions for $99.99 a year, which includes on-demand access to all previous shows.<br />
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He's also selling merchandise and advertising on the air and on the website and has a dedicated link to Amazon.com, through which he gets a cut of anything purchased. He owns outright the computers, sound boards and other scant equipment he needs and works with only three other people — executive producer Gary Zabransky, engineer Art Webb and screener Dean DeMilio, all of whom return from his KLSX show.<br />
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Leykis said he will have spent about $1 million to get the show up and running and expects to make a profit by the end of the first year — more than some of the nation's biggest broadcasters can say about their bottom lines. He doesn't have the expense of an FCC license, transmitters or antennas or any debt from buying new stations.<br />
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For example, Clear Channel, which operates the nation's largest radio chain with 850 stations, had a profit of $330 million on revenue of $1.3 billion in the first quarter of this year but is saddled with nearly $20 billion in debt from a leveraged buyout in 2008.<br />
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"Now you've got these companies that are so over-leveraged," Leykis said, "they have turned the radio business into a bunch of scrap metal and homogenized formats."<br />
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KLSX had been the longtime home of Howard Stern until the "King of All Media" bolted for Sirius satellite radio in January 2006. KLSX then struggled until February 2009, when parent company CBS Radio flipped the station to the Top 40 "Amp 97.1" format it still broadcasts, which led to an immediate ratings jump.<br />
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"I didn't know what I wanted to do next," Leykis said, and for the rest of 2009 he "went to veg" on his 20-acre ranch in northern Santa Barbara County. His CBS contract paid him for three more years, so "I always had the option of not coming back. I could have stopped."<br />
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"It became apparent that anyone with a laptop and a cheap microphone was doing a podcast," he said, but few had his experience or following. He saw a chance to circumvent the traditional business model and "create a radio station without a transmitter."<br />
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He spent the next six months studying digital content, streams and podcasts. "I wanted to be one of the first to claim some of that beachfront property."<br />
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He used an e-mail list of 10,000 culled from his former show and 35,000 followers on Facebook and Twitter to spread the word about his return.<br />
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"It feels fabulous. I haven't worked this hard in 20 years," he said, keeping his hand in every aspect of the do-it-yourself radio station — even standing in line at Burbank Water and Power with a deposit check, to get utilities turned on at the studio.<br />
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"I have no time to feel like a revolutionary," Leykis said, grinning. "Someone's got to go to Costco and get paper towels."<br />
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<br />Chiliconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14734411484092454332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5231631451206019267.post-75231187777650040322010-09-20T12:00:00.000-07:002014-07-20T02:56:32.509-07:00A new day for Madeleine Brand<br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The former host of NPR's 'Day to Day' newsmagazine returns to the airwaves with a new weekday show on KPCC-FM.</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">By Steve Carney, Special to the Los Angeles Times</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Madeleine Brand <i>(source: SCPR)</i></td></tr>
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When Madeleine Brand was named co-host of National Public Radio's "Day to Day" in 2006, the newsmagazine was the network's fastest-growing show. The Los Angeles native had joined a small coterie of NPR hosts that included public-radio icons such as Bob Edwards, Linda Wertheimer and Brand's mentor, Susan Stamberg.<br />
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"I felt like I was joining this august company but that they had given me the freedom to update it," Brand said. "And then … they didn't."<br />
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In 2009 NPR canceled the program, a victim of the recession. But Monday, Brand premieres her own show at 9 a.m. on Pasadena-based KPCC-FM (89.3), which she said has the vibe of the pioneering days of NPR.<br />
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"I'm kind of feeling like I'm where they were. It has that spirit of 'just figure it out,'" Brand said. When you're understaffed and not overproduced, "that's when the excitement happens."<br />
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The hourlong "Madeleine Brand Show" fills the time slot once held by "Day to Day," but unlike its predecessor it doesn't have to appeal to a network of stations around the country. KPCC program director Craig Curtis said, "the point of view is now unapologetically a Southern California point of view."<br />
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Brand, 45, said the show will be "a place where people do get the news but get a different perspective — a more in-depth look, a more humorous look."<br />
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"I think a lot of public radio is so well edited, you don't get a lot of the warmth, where you have a conversation," she said. "There's a lot more desire for a more intimate format — less pretentious than 'the voice of God.' That doesn't mean you have to be dumb or you have to be trivial. You have to be real."<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Finding a balance</b></span><br />
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She knows there's a need on the air for in-depth coverage of Pakistan, for instance, but "I also want to hear about Kanye [West] and also hear about how to make a delicious dinner tonight."<br />
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They'll have guests reporting on music, sports, finance, food, technology, pop culture and other areas. "Five-Minute Meal" will have famous chefs — they've already lined up Susan Feniger — whipping up quick cuisine. And she's turning her "Parenting on the Edge" podcast, a project she launched during her layoff, into a weekly feature on her show; topics include stay-at-home dads and gifted programs in schools.<br />
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"I want this show to always have one piece in it where someone listens to it and says, 'You know what I heard on the radio today?' and talks about it at the dinner table. Intellectually stimulated and delighted at the same time," she said. "My goal is for it not to be reheated broccoli."<br />
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After stints as a reporter and fill-in host for NPR, Brand joined "Day to Day" three years after it premiered in 2003. The show had been a long time in planning and was supposed to anchor the weekday schedule between NPR's signature newsmagazines "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered." As the flagship program at NPR's new West Coast broadcast headquarters in Culver City, "Day to Day" was also supposed to deliver stories and a sensibility outside NPR's usual New York- Washington axis.<br />
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But then the economic downturn hit, and when plunging support and underwriting pushed NPR to an anticipated $23-million deficit, the network axed the show and laid off 64 people companywide.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Making her move</b></span><br />
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"I filled in on the other shows for a year," Brand said, guest hosting on "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered." "I went on many fruitless meetings with television executives: 'We love you on radio.… We don't know what to do with you on TV.'"<br />
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But after the cancellation, the best prospect turned out to be the first one, from Bill Davis, president of Southern California Public Radio, which operates KPCC.<br />
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"Within hours Bill called and said, 'We're going to find the money to bring you over here,'" she said.<br />
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Curtis said a show of this type costs about $600,000 a year to produce, and station officials solicited its board members, foundations and other major donors for the money. Now they're seeking underwriting and other largesse for the second year but hope to incorporate the show into the regular station budget after that.<br />
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Brand is taking over the time slot of the " BBC Newshour," and Curtis said he's already received complaints from fans of that program. He noted that the station still carries the BBC World Service overnights and hopes that fans of the BBC will give Brand's program a chance.<br />
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"The show sits in that interesting area between a talk show and a newsmagazine," with a conversational style that lets Brand show her personality, Curtis said.<br />
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"They hired me to be me; I can't not be me," Brand said later and momentarily broke into song. "'I've got to be me!' … Within reason."<br />
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She admitted it feels strange to have her name in the title — one that took all summer to settle on. "We're super-creative," she joked. But as senior producer Kristen Muller noted, that way it's easier for people to find it on the Web, Twitter and Facebook, and it's what people will call the show anyway.<br />
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<br />Chiliconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14734411484092454332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5231631451206019267.post-39592875853105590102004-01-19T01:31:00.000-08:002014-07-20T02:57:26.705-07:00Ryan Seacrest's ambitions are no 'Idol' dream<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">With a slew of new projects, he hopes to prove that he's not just another pretty face.</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">By Steve Carney, Special to the Los Angeles Times</span><br />
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With the premiere of the third season of "American Idol" tonight, host Ryan Seacrest caps a 10-day span he hopes will mark the beginning of his evolution from affable, well-coiffed confection to entertainment mogul.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ryan Seacrest with Dick Clark <i>(source: Los Angeles Times)</i></td></tr>
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The prospect might be hard to reconcile for anyone dismissing the former KYSR-FM (98.7) DJ as a pop-culture firefly -- an attractive amusement who keeps appearing here, there and seemingly everywhere.<br />
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Along with his duties on "Idol," the pop-star factory on Fox, he's worked as host of its spinoff "American Juniors," as star of an AT&T cellphone commercial, as correspondent on "Extra" and "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno," as presenter on the Emmy Awards, as host of the American Radio Music Awards, as guest host on "Larry King Live" and as host of Fox's New Year's Eve broadcast.<br />
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Some viewers -- like the Salt Lake City columnist who called him the "bedhead antichrist" -- might think they've already seen and heard plenty of the tanned and toned 29-year-old.<br />
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Well, they're out of luck, because he's becoming even harder for them to avoid. On Jan. 10, Seacrest debuted as the host of the iconic radio countdown show "American Top 40"; then on Jan. 12 he premiered his new daily entertainment news-talk show hybrid, "On Air," syndicated nationwide -- on which he's not only host but also an executive producer.<br />
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The fate of that show in particular could help determine the public's appetite for Seacrest. Early results are troubling, with ratings for the first few days below expectations. Still, Seacrest is upbeat.<br />
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"This is my shot, to prove I can make it. It's my opportunity to do it all and do it well," said Seacrest, a self-effacing "radio geek" whose boyhood idols were Casey Kasem and Rick Dees, the morning institution on KIIS-FM (102.7). He's already taken the "American Top 40" reins Kasem held for three decades, and he is Dees' permanent guest host and heir apparent.<br />
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Next in his sights: Dick Clark and Merv Griffin, whom Seacrest admires for their business savvy as much as their screen time. Griffin started as a singer who went on to become a long-running talk-show host, creator of "Wheel of Fortune" and "Jeopardy," executive producer of other programs, hotelier and vintner. Clark, best known for hosting "American Bandstand," also owns several restaurants, and his Dick Clark Productions has flooded the TV airwaves with thousands of hours of programming. With "On Air," Seacrest wants to be both a face in front of the camera and a force behind it.<br />
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"Just to be a presenter for hire is a lot of fun, but if you want to maintain longevity, the success is in equity. I wanted to have ownership," he said. And "On Air," the first show from Ryan Seacrest Productions, will "hopefully be the first step in building that world."<br />
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Sean Ross, vice president of music and programming at Edison Media Research, said Seacrest is already ahead of the pace of Carson Daly, for example, the former KROQ-FM (106.7) DJ who went on to national fame hosting MTV's "Total Request Live" and a late-night talk show on NBC, "Last Call."<br />
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"It took several years and many projects for Carson Daly to reach critical mass outside L.A.," said Ross, whose New Jersey-based market research company tracks radio trends. Seacrest, he said, is capitalizing on his exposure and recognition without yet hitting saturation.<br />
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"On Air" broadcasts live from a studio built for Seacrest at the Hollywood & Highland complex and airs locally at 5 p.m. weekdays on KTTV-TV Channel 11. The hourlong program, syndicated by Fox subsidiary Twentieth Television, offers live music, celebrity interviews, pop-culture news and audience participation, all with a backdrop of the Hollywood sign and a billboard of a grinning Seacrest.<br />
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The program shares elements with MTV's "Total Request Live" and frothy newsmagazines such as "Entertainment Tonight" but also features radio-esque bits, such as phone calls from fans or a contest sending an Adam Sandler fan to Hawaii to interview the star about his new movie. In many ways, it's a visual version of "The Ride Home," the "Star 98.7" afternoon radio show he hosted with Lisa Foxx, Seacrest said, absent the personal dishing about relationships.<br />
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"Let's be honest. This is not going to change anyone's life," Seacrest said, but "we hope it will be a place you come to if you want the latest in entertainment."<br />
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He studied target audience demographics and time slots before pitching "On Air" to Fox, evidence of the career calculation and ambition he's shown since his debut on the radio at 16. As an intern in his Atlanta hometown for WSTR-FM, he went on the air without permission, then persuaded station management to give him a shift.<br />
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He later quit the University of Georgia to move to Hollywood, recognizing what he called the "ceiling of opportunity" if he stayed home. And he auditioned for "American Idol" in the first place because he knew how successful its precursor had been in Britain.<br />
When he worked for Griffin in 1997 as host of "Click," an Internet-themed game show for kids, he also haunted the production meetings, learning the behind-the-scenes mechanics.<br />
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"He astounded me on 'Click,' " Griffin said. "Here's a brand-new kid -- we never had a script on that show. He just came in and took over. He's very loose. He's very interested in the guests. He's not intimidated by anybody. He's inventive. He's not afraid of taking chances. Usually performers don't want anything to do with the business of the show, because it distracts them."<br />
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But Seacrest said hearing a show pitch or developing a new program is as exciting as hosting for him -- though not as fun, he admits.<br />
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He arrives at the "On Air" studios about 6:45 a.m., heads to a nearby gym for a workout, then begins show preparation with rehearsals and briefings until the program broadcasts live to the East Coast at noon. Afterward he's filming promotional spots for future shows or Fox affiliates, or sitting for myriad newspaper, magazine or television interviews. Thursdays he also tapes that weekend's "American Top 40," heard locally on KIIS Saturdays from 6 to 10 a.m.<br />
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And this week he adds "American Idol" to the schedule.<br />
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While scarfing down a grilled-chicken salad during a late lunch in his office last week, Seacrest said he had to grab a bite then or pass out before he got the next chance, hours later, to feed his energetic, elfin frame.<br />
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"I definitely have a very intense pace to each day," he said, but he was conditioned to the hectic, unending schedule by his job at KYSR, which he gave up to host "On Air." "I've been doing a four-hour radio show for 10 years. I'm not used to a hiatus."<br />
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It's a juggling act he's performed since high school, when he had to shuttle between his radio job and practice for the Dunwoody High football team, for which he played safety.<br />
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"It's a problem you want to have, not to have enough hours in the day," he said. "If I sleep until 8 o'clock, I feel somebody else is out there doing it. I put that pressure on myself."<br />
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Nevertheless, he said, "I'm in a very fortunate position. I'm a really content, happy person. I embrace the good and bad of being in the public eye. It feels good to have people invest in you."<br />
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The flip side, though, is that the company, the affiliates and the 100 staffers on the show are relying on the program's success, so "there is a huge amount of pressure on you."<br />
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While a truck hauling an "On Air" billboard continually passes behind the massive window serving as his backdrop, Seacrest is clearly far removed from his days driving the van for Atlanta's WSTR, handing out bumper stickers. Or when he was a 10-year-old imitating Kasem, or stuffing wadded-up toilet paper in his shirt sleeves to simulate muscles so he could play both roles in a pretend "Terminator" interview: host and Arnold Schwarzenegger.<br />
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"My mother really puts this in perspective when she visits," Seacrest joked. "She says, 'I remember when you used to do this in your bedroom.' "Chiliconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14734411484092454332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5231631451206019267.post-82238716359141083842003-08-01T09:00:00.000-07:002014-08-04T00:01:27.934-07:00In Rush Limbaugh's world, he's always right<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Whether you agree or disagree with him, the syndicated host has changed political discourse and radio during the past 15 years.</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">By Steve Carney, Special to The Los Angeles Times</span></span><br />
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Fifteen years ago today, the nation first heard from "America's truth detector," the man "with talent on loan from God." And American political discourse -- not to mention radio -- has never been the same.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rush Limbaugh <br />
<i>(source: Premiere Radio Networks)</i></td></tr>
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Rush Limbaugh took his local Sacramento program, which in four years had become a ratings juggernaut, and syndicated it to 56 stations nationwide on Aug. 1, 1988. Since then, the talk-radio format has gone from curiosity to influential force in broadcasting and politics, and now the conservative host airs on about 600 stations, including locally on KFI-AM (640), where he's heard weekdays from 9 a.m. to noon. His weekly audience of about 20 million listeners is the largest in radio, according to his syndicator, Premiere Radio Networks.<br />
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"I've wanted to be in radio since I was 12, and my whole life I thought I would end up being the most successful at it," Limbaugh said, though at that age he wasn't exactly sure how that ambition would play out.<br />
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He's won numerous industry awards -- the National Assn. of
Broadcasters has named him "Syndicated Radio Personality of the Year"
three times -- and also won credit from the new majority for his
partisan cheerleading when Newt Gingrich led the Republican takeover of
the House of Representatives in 1994, after 40 years of Democratic
control.<br />
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"I believe that if Rush Limbaugh were a
liberal, he'd be just as successful," said Michael Harrison, publisher
of Talkers magazine, the trade journal of the talk-radio industry.<br />
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"He's enormously talented. He's got a great voice. He also has a tremendous aptitude for explaining abstract political subjects in an understandable way. He's a very original thinker. And he's funny -- he's a very entertaining guy."<br />
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Limbaugh says his show combines "serious discussion of the issues with irreverent, off-the-wall humor, with credibility on both sides." He likened it to Ted Koppel opening "Nightline" with a monologue, or David Letterman or Jay Leno expounding on their political views.<br />
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"A good radio program is a performance," he said, and his boils down to "Here's who I am, here's what I believe, here's what I think you ought to believe." At the same time, "my objective here has always been to attract the largest audience I can. This is a business."<br />
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KFI was one of the first major-market stations to pick up Limbaugh's show, and the most frequent complaint about it "was that it's biased journalism," said David G. Hall, senior vice president of programming at Premiere and formerly KFI program director.<br />
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"Well," Hall said, "the answer to that is: It's not journalism at all, it's just a talk show."<br />
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On it, Limbaugh gives no quarter to those with whom he disagrees, whether they're "femi-Nazis," "environmental wackos" or anyone to the left of him politically.<br />
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"I think he's a brilliant propagandist for conservative and Republican issues," said Steve Rendall, senior analyst at Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, the liberal media watchdog group, and co-author of "The Way Things Aren't: Rush Limbaugh's Reign of Error," which challenges some of the assertions Limbaugh has made on his show.<br />
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Rendall said Limbaugh's authoritative tone appeals to fans, but he believes the host has fostered a divisive political climate of "us against them."<br />
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"Limbaugh is a major contributor to the name-calling and the degraded discourse that started on talk radio and has spread to cable news and elsewhere," he said. In that environment, "you can't disagree without being disagreeable."<br />
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Limbaugh's fan base of self-proclaimed "dittoheads" has often been described as a legion of "angry white males." But he said anyone calling him or his audience angry isn't listening to the show.<br />
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"There's no question I engender disagreement. There's no question people don't like me," said Limbaugh, 52. Those who are "challenged or threatened by my effectiveness, they're the ones who are mad. Listen to any feminist, listen to any environmentalist, listen to the antiwar crowd."<br />
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Instead of fire and brimstone, he unloads on his targets with derision and humor, such as referring to the former vice president as the robotic "Algore," or calling senator and Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry "French-looking" and "reputedly a Vietnam War veteran." On Tuesday's show, he said a New York high school exclusively for gay and lesbian students seeking to avoid harassment would need a specialized math curriculum, "because they don't multiply."<br />
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When he turns the humor on himself, it's alternately self-aggrandizing -- when he's citing his God-lent talent, or saying he works "with half my brain tied behind my back, just to make it fair" -- and self-deprecating, as when he calls himself "a harmless little fuzzball."<br />
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Harmless? Not if you ask the Clintons, congressional Democrats, or competing hosts.<br />
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"He's certainly harmed my career," said Michael Jackson, the L.A. talk-radio institution whom some credit with inventing the format, and known for his longevity and civility during 30-plus years at KABC.<br />
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When Limbaugh came to KFI in March 1989, the station ranked 20th in the market, compared to KABC's third-place status, according to the Arbitron ratings service. By the end of 1991, Limbaugh had overtaken Jackson in the morning ratings, and in 1997 KABC bumped Jackson to the weekends, in its first of several attempts over the years to combat Limbaugh's dominance in the time slot. KFI has not trailed KABC since.<br />
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"I don't agree with his politics, but he has amazing style," Jackson said. "He's sufficiently bombastic and outspoken that even those who disagree with him enjoy disagreeing with him. And those that followed him are pale imitations."<br />
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But enough imitators have come along to populate a booming industry. According to Talkers, the country had about 125 talk-radio stations in 1987, the year before Limbaugh went national. Now the figure is closer to 1,200, or about one-tenth of all commercial radio stations in the United States.<br />
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"I wouldn't say it's totally Rush Limbaugh, but I'd say he's played a major role," Harrison said. "If you compare talk radio to rock 'n' roll, Rush Limbaugh was Elvis Presley."<br />
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Harrison said a number of factors laid the groundwork for the success of Limbaugh and talk radio. In the late '80s, AM stations were looking for a niche to stay in business, after losing music programming to their FM brethren. In addition, Harrison said many people felt disenfranchised by the mainstream media, and baby boomers who had grown up with radio were ready to listen to something besides music. Also, advances in telephone and satellite technology made national talk radio programs more technically feasible, and finally, the repeal of the Federal Communications Commission's Fairness Doctrine "allowed radio to be controversial."<br />
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In 1987, the year before Limbaugh's national rollout, the regulatory agency eliminated its rule requiring broadcasters to air opposing viewpoints on controversial subjects. Thus, hosts could say what they pleased without giving equal time for a rebuttal. And Limbaugh was ready to unleash talents he'd been honing since he was a 12-year-old in Cape Girardeau, Mo.<br />
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"I didn't like school. The guy on the radio sounded like he was having a blast; my day was arduous prison. I wanted to be that guy," Limbaugh said. So he spun records, pretending to be a disc jockey, "and my mother would dutifully listen."<br />
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He got a real radio job in his hometown at age 16, then bounced around in various stints as a DJ. He left radio for a while, starting in 1979, and worked for four years in the front office of the Kansas City Royals baseball team. Then he became a political commentator for KMBZ in Kansas City, leaving a year later for KFBK in Sacramento.<br />
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"This was my last shot at radio," he said, and he took it with no guests and few callers. "I wanted to find out if I could be the sole reason people would listen to a radio program."<br />
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Hall happened to start as a news reporter at KFBK the same week that Limbaugh debuted, in summer 1984. He remembers walking down the hallway and hearing a voice blaring from a speaker playing the station's broadcast.<br />
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"I stopped cold in my tracks. He was going on and on about Teddy Kennedy and Chappaquiddick. I thought, 'Oh, this guy's got a crackpot guest.' " But it was all Limbaugh.<br />
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"I was used to the older style of talk show, where there was the revolving door of guests, with a nice, moderated discussion," Hall said. Limbaugh's performance, on the other hand, "shocked everybody. It was impossible not to listen to."<br />
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After tripling his audience in Sacramento, Limbaugh moved to New York when his show went national. Now he broadcasts mainly from a studio near his home in Palm Beach, Fla., where he moved in 1997.<br />
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It looked as though his successful run on the air might end in October 2001, however, when he announced that a degenerative condition had caused him to go deaf. But cochlear implant surgery restored his hearing and "served to wake up my 16-year-old passion."<br />
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Although his contract, for a reported $285 million, runs until 2009, Limbaugh said he has no plan to leave the airwaves then. Indeed, he's branching out, signing on as a commentator for ESPN's "Sunday NFL Countdown" beginning Sept. 4.<br />
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"I've always said I'm never going to retire until every American agrees with me," he said, apparently only half kidding. "When I get up in the morning for a week or two straight and I don't care what's in the news, if I lose my passion, then that's the time I'll move on."<br />
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Until then, Limbaugh said, "I'm doing what I love, I'm doing what I have always wanted to do, I'm doing it on my terms, and I've succeeded at it."Chiliconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14734411484092454332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5231631451206019267.post-20482506677616420352001-08-03T01:14:00.000-07:002014-07-20T02:57:55.784-07:00Pushing the Musical 'Buttons' for an NPR Newsmagazine<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /><b>A Web show and a CD give fuller voice to the eclectic artists and songs featured in the tuneful interludes on 'All Things Considered.'</b><br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">By Steve Carney, Special to the Los Angeles Times</span> <span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></span><br />
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WASHINGTON — A delightful discovery, a little humor, and a chance to breathe and reflect--that's an awful lot to pack into a 10-second snippet of music. Especially one nestled in the middle of a news program.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bob Boilen <i>(source: NPR)</i></td></tr>
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"All Things Considered," the afternoon newsmagazine on National Public Radio, features two hours daily of headlines and features. Between the stories, though, a listener might catch a few twangy notes by jazz guitarist Bill Frisell, or a buoyant Basque accordion, or the Ronettes' "Be My Baby" as played on traditional African instruments. The interludes, called buttons, serve as cushions between the segments.<br />
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To some listeners, the musical moments may seem like throwaways, if not invisible altogether. But for many others, the buttons are as vital to the program as reports from Capitol Hill or Kosovo--and that popularity has turned the buttons into a cottage industry at NPR. To quench listeners' interest, last year the network launched a World Wide Web show called "All Songs Considered" (<a href="http://www.npr.org/programs/asc">www.npr.org/programs/asc</a>) , the eighth episode of which just debuted. And last month it released a compact disc by the same name, featuring songs and musicians excerpted on "All Things Considered," after clamoring fans said they needed more than just a few seconds of these artists they weren't hearing anywhere else.<br />
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"There's gobs of great music out there. I can't pass on enough of it," said Bob Boilen, who, as director of "All Things Considered" since 1990, chooses the music for the buttons and also is host of "All Songs Considered."<br />
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"'Eclectic and accessible' is sort of the motto. The accessible part is really important, because it's easy to be eclectic," Boilen said. Easy, because more than 5,000 CDs line the walls of his 10-foot-by-10-foot office at NPR, and hundreds more arrive every week. Each day for "All Things Considered," which airs locally on KPCC-FM (89.3) from 3 to 6:30 p.m., and on KCRW-FM (89.9) from 4 to 6:30 p.m., he grabs a stack of CDs, encompassing a variety of moods and genres, to fill 15 to 18 buttons during the show.<br />
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The term's origin is unclear. Some say the music snippets are called buttons because, like the clothing fasteners, they connect disparate pieces of the program. Others say it is short for "panic button." "When you feel the show teetering on the brink of completely falling apart, you want something there that can buy you some time," Boilen said.<br />
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Marika Partridge, who directed "All Things Considered" from 1987 until she left earlier this year, said, "The music gives [listeners] a chance to reflect on the material." That's unlike what she labeled "the BBC model," which is wall-to-wall talk.<br />
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Amid all his other duties as the show's virtual traffic cop -- cueing the announcers, making sure each microphone comes on when it should, checking that the tapes are ready to go when needed and that the stories are in the right order -- Boilen is on the fly, picking music from his stack. "What can I give people for 22 seconds that will give them a chance to think and breathe?" he asked. "I find that if you leave your mind open, the right song will come up."<br />
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Sometimes it involves just matching the mood of the previous story. Every once in a while, it means injecting a sly reference or musical joke -- "Mack the Knife" after an essayist rhapsodizes about her Macintosh computer, or a story about Vladimir Putin followed by "Puttin' on the Ritz." Then there was the story about scientists working with fruit flies to investigate cell and limb regeneration. Among other experiments, they had successfully transplanted cells, growing eyes on the fruit flies' legs. The story ended; a pleasant instrumental began. Then, for some listeners, the unheard lyrics started echoing in the back of their minds: "I'll be seeing you, in all the old familiar places...."<br />
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"The perfect music is only barely upfront," Boilen said. "If you know the lyrical line, you laugh. If you don't, it's a nice piece of music. It's a line above subliminal.<br />
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"Always shoot for mood," he adds. "The jokes and references you have to be really careful about."<br />
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Partridge said, "If it's your first, most obvious, pedestrian choice, I won't do it. If it's like three layers down, I might do it. The good thing about going to CDs--faced with a library of 4,000 choices keeps you from being so cliched."<br />
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Listeners may love the buttons, but the director is wedded to them out of necessity. Affiliate stations nationwide rely on every segment of the show beginning and ending when it is supposed to, so they know exactly when to air their own news or station identifications. If an "All Things Considered" story scheduled for five minutes comes in at only 4:47, the director can toss in an interesting piece of Norwegian fiddle music or an Adrian Legg guitar instrumental, fade in, fade out, and fill the 13 seconds.<br />
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From the show's debut in 1971 through the early '80s, directors needing buttons simply used variations of the program's familiar theme. In the late '80s, they began sampling new age or jazz-fusion tunes, then moved toward a broader range of music.<br />
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"Over the years, as the music got this eclectic feel, we got stacks of mail. 'What is this?' 'What is that?"' Boilen said. Listeners sent stamped, self-addressed envelopes asking for artist and song information. In 1995, the staff began listing the music credits on NPR's Web site.<br />
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For about a decade, Partridge and Boilen worked to get the "All Songs Considered" disc made, fighting artists' labels and other legal obstacles. Meanwhile, Boilen and NPR engineer Bill Deputy launched the Web show in January 2000.<br />
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"I think the Web has this remarkable potential that we're starting to realize," Boilen said. "It takes the music to one more level. Now you're engaged in this thing that's like a little movie."<br />
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"All Songs Considered" is essentially a computerized slide show, with still pictures and captions about each band or its music fading on and off the screen while the music plays. A caption on one episode illuminates the show's goal, and Boilen's daunting task: "There are more than 30,000 CDs released each year. This program is an attempt to showcase some of the more remarkable music that most radio stations don't play."<br />
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Such as Michael Masley and his cymbalom, a table-like dulcimer he's played on the streets of Berkeley for 16 years. The tiny bows extending from his fingers make him look like Freddy Krueger but let him pluck, bow and hammer the strings to make ringing, haunting music. It'll never crack Casey Kasem's Top 40, but is featured in buttons and on both the "All Songs" CD and Episode 7 of the Web show.<br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Exposure Increased Sales, Musician Says</b></span></span><br />
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"NPR has just been the best friend of musicians in my class that I can imagine. It's our culture's best friend," said Masley, 48, who added that every exposure increased sales of his CDs and traffic on his Web site (<a href="http://www.artistgeneral.com/">www.artistgeneral.com</a>). "I feel like I'm getting an audience educated to my particular sound.<br />
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"The fact that my music occupied 20 seconds of sonic space on all these millions of speakers--it's uniquely satisfying," he said. "Much more satisfying than being on a commercial station in a given region."<br />
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Boilen knows the feeling well. Eighteen years ago, he was a keyboard player trying to get his music played on "All Things Considered," eventually succeeding: "It meant the world to me. It changed my life.<br />
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"That's the thing that drives me crazy -- every CD I get in, it's somebody's life. It's not glass and plastic, it's their dream," Boilen said, while auditioning a disc he'd just received from a New England bluegrass band. "This is their life's work, and I've given it three minutes. 'All Songs' is one window, but there should be more outlets.<br />
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"I'm this fortunate guy--people send me great music, and I want to share it," Boilen said. And he hopes, now that "All Songs" has gotten more established and is nearing a regular schedule, "there will be a great place every week or so where people can listen and watch and get turned on to new music."Chiliconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14734411484092454332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5231631451206019267.post-48340941129912699792001-05-25T01:47:00.000-07:002014-07-20T02:47:56.989-07:00Strolling Through the Headlines<br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">For 30 Years, 'All Things Considered' has savored the news, walking listeners around the world.</span></b><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>All Things Consered</i> hosts Robert Siegel, <br />Noah Adams and Linda Wertheimer. <i>(source: NPR)</i></td></tr>
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<br /><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">By Steve Carney, Special to the Los Angeles Times</span></span><br /><br />WASHINGTON — A radio show that broadcasts silence from an Alaskan glacier and has a host watching sparks in a darkened closet might not be expected to hold listeners 30 seconds, much less 30 years. But this month, "All Things Considered" on National Public Radio enters its fourth decade with the same recipe of news and novelty.<br /><br />The show debuted May 3, 1971, with a report from a student war protest here as police teargassed the group. Since then, "All Things Considered" has dispatched correspondents from the peak of Mt. Everest to the killing fields of Rwanda to a yoga class for preschoolers in Massachusetts, along the way building a passionate audience now numbering nearly 10 million listeners a week.<br /><br />"They expect the news, but they expect more than that," executive producer Ellen Weiss said of the fans. "They expect somehow to connect on a very personal basis with what they're hearing."<br />
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<a name='more'></a><br />The two-hour weekday show, hosted by Linda Wertheimer, Robert Siegel and Noah Adams, airs locally on KPCC-FM (89.3) 3-6:30 p.m., and on KCRW-FM (89.9) 4-6:30 p.m., with each replaying part of the broadcast.<br /><br />"We are essentially the same people as the audience--curious Americans who really want to hear a radio show about what's going on that day," said Siegel, 53, a co-host since 1987. "It's a very unusual and special place. I wish in broadcasting it were not so unusual."<br /><br />In July, the show begins a nationwide tour as part of its anniversary, with Siegel coming to Los Angeles on Oct. 3. Though details are still being finalized, the stops will include receptions at which fans cans get a glimpse of the daily behind-the-scenes frenzy that goes into the creation of "All Things Considered" captured in a short film, hear from and meet hosts and listen, once again, to clips from the show's vast archives.<br /><br />"It's amazing the way people connect with the program, and by extension, with us," said Wertheimer, 58, who began hosting the show in 1979. "They have a sense that they know us. I think it has something to do with the intimacy of the setting."<br /><br />When the show debuted, Adams said, almost all radio news consisted of announcers shouting at the audience, "Give us 15 minutes and we'll give you the world!" Instead of sprinting through the headlines, "All Things Considered" takes its listeners on a stroll through the world, taking the time to stop and examine the vital and the whimsical, the compelling and the entertaining.<br /><br />On May 3 the show celebrated with a reception here for about 400 listeners and public-radio workers, hosted by Ted Koppel, himself a fan of the show.<br /><br />"I'll get home and be in the middle of one of your stories, and 10 minutes later my wife sends one of the kids out," to find him still sitting in the car, listening to the end, Koppel said, eliciting laughs and knowing applause from the audience.<br /><br />NPR and "All Things Considered's" "appetite for longer stories and more detailed stories was almost unquenchable," even at times when print and other broadcast media were cutting back, said William Drummond, professor of journalism at UC Berkeley. But he fears the show's long, compelling stories may still be endangered by time constraints and a concentration-deprived audience.<br /><br />"There's a lot of pressure to make pieces shorter and to the point," he said. But "I'm still saying this is the best thing on radio."<br /><br />"It came along at just the right time in the early '70s. A lot of people felt alienated from the media and wanted to know more," Drummond added. And instead of same-sounding announcers bleating an East Coast perspective, "All Things Considered" features commentators and essayists from around the U.S. and the world.<br /><br />"All Things Considered" broke ground in other areas, as well. Susan Stamberg, co-host from 1972-1986, was the first woman to host a nightly national news show. And Wertheimer was the first person to broadcast from the floor of the U.S. Senate, during the Panama Canal treaty debates in 1978, and in 1976 was the first woman to anchor network coverage of a presidential nominating convention and an election night.<br /><br />To leaven the serious news, Weiss said they want to make listeners laugh at least once every show. One example was Stamberg's 1979 piece on whether Wint-O-Green LifeSavers cause sparks when bitten in the dark. For this, she accompanied NPR science reporter Ira Flatow into a closet.<br /><br />"I see it! I see it!" Stamberg exclaimed as Flatow bit into the candies. And, in a sense, so could the audience, which applauded in appreciation when that piece was replayed at the anniversary reception.<br /><br />Adams joined Stamberg as co-host in 1982, and that year he broadcast live from Alaska for a week, ending one segment from a glacier on Mt. McKinley with a few moments of silence.<br /><br />"It was the only place I've ever been that I think I couldn't describe adequately," he said. "I felt that it would draw a listener in more."<br /><br />Adams, 59, was working construction in Kentucky in 1971 when he first heard "All Things Considered," while getting a ride home from a carpenter.<br /><br />"He said, 'I want you to hear this program, but don't tell the other guys on the job I listen to this,' " Adams said, pricking at the stereotype of the show's audience as Volvo-driving yuppies. "It was so different from commercial radio. It was conversational, and respectful of the audience."<br /><br />And, Siegel added, "there are a lot more carpenters out there than you think."<br />Chiliconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14734411484092454332noreply@blogger.com0