Tag Archives: Media

It is obvious to anyone who tries to listen to commercial radio – especially stations owned by the huge chains like Clear Channel – that they are stuffed to the gills with ads, so much so that even the advertisers and Wall Street have been complaining. Surprise, surprise! When the …

I’ll be on BBC 5 radio today at about 4:20pm ET discussing the mood of the nation regarding the war on terror, especially as reflected in popular music. Are artists afraid to express dissent? Why aren’t there any anti-war anthems? Would things be different for the Dixie Chicks had they …

Does music reflect or lead the mood of the country? Either way, the tone of popular music regarding the war in Iraq has changed very markedly, according to some fascinating research performed by ace radio monitor Sean Ross: Shortly after the war in Iraq started, and during the height of …

I agree that getting as many people as possible involved in the political process is an unambiguous good, and I also agree that voting is like most habits: the younger you begin, the more likely you are to stick with it. I am also glad to see Republicans are no …

Well, thank God for this because surely hip-hop doesn’t have enough outlets on radio, TV, cable, satellite, etc, etc. Eminem gets his own channel on Sirius satellite radio starting this fall: Sirius Satellite Radio said it has teamed up with the Detroit-area rapper – along with his label, Shady Records, …

Because “sampling popular culture is not a crime,” or at least it damn well shouldn’t be. As I have repeated as nauseum here, I want to see creators get paid for their efforts but I also believe that copyright law in America has swung too far in their favor to …

Former president Bill Clinton (maybe someone was unaware that Clinton is a former president, so I put that in just in case) is live with NPR’s Diane Rehm – she of the spasmodic dysphonia – right now. Clinton is most effective in an intimate setting and Rehm is a very …

Willie Nelson has managed to carve out a niche for himself, not only as one of our foremost interpreters (and writers) of almost every form of American music, but he also has established himself as one of the most iconoclastic “patriots” in the nation, commanding center stage on national holidays …

“Spots” in radio lingo means commercials, and commercial radio (at least they got the name right) is so full of them now that even the advertisers are complaining: The strategy of stuffing commercial radio full of ads has backfired, as a handful of investment banks predicted slower growth, downgrading six …

With blogs turning up in the mainstream media virtually every day, it astounds me that there are still vast swaths of the population that haven’t heard of them. So the more coverage the merrier, evne if it’s the same story over and over again. NPR’s Talk of the Nation did …