Bin Laden's Death Sparks Wisecracks On The Radio

Shannon, Pettengill, nydaily news photo

While much of the Osama Bin Laden talk on entertainment radio Monday morning was reflective or celebratory, it didn't take long for wisecracks to begin, according to a story by David Hinckley at
nydailynews.com.

Scott Shannon and the morning team on WPLJ (95.5 FM) were talking about how Bin Laden's body was buried at sea when Todd Pettengill said, "Wouldn't it be weird if they landed him on 'The Deadliest Catch'?"

Charlamagne, co-host on WWPR (105.1 FM), said Bin Laden's real problem was leaving seclusion for a house in the suburbs.

"He pulled a Frank Lucas," said Charlamagne, referring to a famously ostentatious city drug dealer. "Instead of sleeping with the goats, he was selling goats on his iPhone. He decided to sit in the front row of the fight wearing a big mink coat. Now he's dead."

Cubby Bryant

On the Cubby Bryant show over WKTU (103.5 FM), new producer Mike Ryan ticked off a round of Osama jokes, including:

"They should have made him spend the rest of his life going through airport security."

"Apparently he gave out his address on PlayStation."

"Once again: location, location, location."

Bryant's sidekick, Cindy Vero, said, "Normally, you wouldn't celebrate someone's death. ... But this is not a normal situation."

No, it wasn't.

Craig Carton and Boomer Esiason of WFAN (660 AM) interspersed sports talk with calls about the legacy of Sept. 11.

Dan Taylor

"This is a special moment," said Carton.

Chunky, sitting in for new father Nick Cannon on WXRK (92.3 FM), said: "We got the bastard and I'm glad. This is our day."

WCBS-FM (101.1) took listener requests, and host Dan Taylor said Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the U.S.A." was No. 1.

Taylor also took calls from listeners. They generally expressed pleasure at the news, with some saying they hope it hastens the end of the Mideast wars.

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Letterman: Top Ten Final Words of Osama bin Laden

WSJ: A Radio Broadcast Rose Won't Forget

From Jason Gay, wsj.com:

It began as a low rumble on a cool spring night—a "murmur" is the word Howie Rose chose. It pulsed along the third-base line at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, swelling in other sections until it became a clear, familiar chant.

U! S! A! U! S! A!

In the Mets' radio booth, they knew why it was happening. A short while before, WFAN producer Chris Majkowski had told Rose that President Barack Obama was going to address the country late Sunday evening. It was an unusual, unsettling event. Then came the stunning flashes: Osama bin Laden was dead, killed by U.S. forces.

Rose, working with partner Wayne Hagin, didn't want to say anything on-air until they knew for sure. Everyone agreed: No need to rush and make a mistake. This was a baseball game, and a close one, between National League East rivals.

But now the "U! S! A!" chanting was rolling around the stadium. "Like a verbal wave," Rose said Monday morning. "You had one section of the park begin to chant, and given the age we're in, where everyone's got smartphones and instant access to information, all it took was someone sitting next to someone else to ask, 'What's that about?' "

By then, news organizations were reporting bin Laden's demise. Rose felt comfortable enough to go on the air with the news during the top of the ninth inning, when New York second baseman Daniel Murphy was at the plate.

"I'll tell you what's going on," Rose said calmly to his audience. "The crowd is chanting, 'U! S! A!' And the reason for that is that there are reports circulating—I am not sure if they have yet been confirmed by the White House—that Osama bin Laden is dead. How that's happened, we don't know. But this crowd now knows it."

Rose turned back to the action. "Fastball on the outside, for a called strike two," he said. The juxtaposition was bizarre. "This is becoming an almost surreal evening."

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Williams: TWH Told Me Obama Was Dead

Rush Limbaugh: 'Thank God for President Obama'

Rush Limbaugh began his radio show Monday praising President Obama for his leadership in the demise of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.  In his nationally syndicated radio show, Limbaugh who has been one of Obama's fiercest critics, gave the commander-in-chief all the glory in the successful mission that ended the life of Public Enemy No. 1.

RUSH:  Ladies and gentlemen, we need to open the program today by congratulating President Obama.  President Obama has done something extremely effective, and when he does, this needs to be pointed out.  President Obama has continued the Bush policies of keeping a military presence in the Middle East.  He did not scrub the mission to get Bin Laden.  In fact, it may be that President Obama single-handedly came up with the technique in order to pull this off.  You see, the military wanted to go in there and bomb like they always do. They wanted to go in here and drop missiles and launch bombs, a number of totally destructive techniques here.  But President Obama, perhaps the only qualified member in the room to deal with this, insisted on the Special Forces.  No one else thought of that.  Not a single intelligence advisor, not a single national security advisor, not a single military advisor came up with the idea of using SEAL Team 6 or any of the Special Forces... 

Couriers were needed by Osama to receive and send information. In order to keep him alive, in order to keep him safe, they couldn't allow any communication.  There was no television. There was no Internet. There were no telephones, no satellite, nothing in or out.  It required couriers.  Detainees who may have been waterboarded, and again we need to never forget that President Obama deserves praise for continuing the policies established by George W. Bush which led to the acquisition of this intel that led us to the enlarged hut in Pakistan that led to the assassination of Bin Laden last night.  The detainees, many of them started talking, and the couriers were identified.   

The couriers were then tracked and followed by intelligence operatives, and it was learned as far back as last summer where Bin Laden was.  Last summer it was suggested that we go in and get Bin Laden, and Obama even then, knowing full well and the only one in the room knowing that the military's way going in there and bombing this thing wasn't the way to work.  Thank God for President Obama.  If he had not been there, who knows what woulda happened.  It was only Obama who understood the need to get DNA, to prove that this was Bin Laden that we had assassinated.

Most Americans Unwilling to Pay for Online News

Harris Poll finds number is even lower than 15 months ago

Newspapers and other traditional media outlets have spent a lot of time and money trying to figure out how to sock their online readers, who they perceive are getting a free ride when they read online news content.

But, according to a story by Truman Lewis at consumeraffairs.com,  the latest Adweek/Harris finds a large majority of Americans (80%) say they are willing to pay exactly “nothing” to read a daily newspaper online.
Of the one in five who would pay, 14% said they would pay between $1 and $10 per month while very few said that they would be willing to pay between $11 and $20 (4%) or more than $20 per month (2%).

The New York Times recently put up a paywall, charging online readers who view over 20 articles per month.

But while online paywalls are becoming more common, fewer people say they would be willing to pay to read content online now, than said so in late 2009 — 20% say they would be willing to pay for a daily newspaper's content online today, compared to 23% who said so in December 2009.

Other findings of the recent poll include:

• Younger adults are more likely than those older to pay for a daily newspaper's content online — over a quarter of adults aged 18-34 say they would (26%) compared to between 15% and 18% of all other age groups;
• Men are more willing to pay than women are — a quarter of men say they would (25%) with 18% saying they would pay between $1 and $10 per month, while only 15% of women say they would pay anything to read a daily newspaper's content online; and,
• The more education a person has the more likely they are to be willing to pay to read a daily newspaper's content online — over a quarter of college graduates say they would pay (28%) compared to one in five people who have attended some college (19%) and just 15% who have not attended any college at all.

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Page One: Inside The New York Times

Official Trailer 2011 HD

Director Andrew Rossi's riveting documentary Page One: Inside The New York Times had its World Premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, and was acquired by Magnolia Pictures and Participant Media for theatrical release this June.



In the tradition of great fly-on-the-wall documentaries, the film deftly gains unprecedented access to the New York Times newsroom and the inner workings of the Media Desk.

With the Internet surpassing print as our main news source and newspapers all over the country going bankrupt, Page One chronicles the transformation of the media industry at its time of greatest turmoil. Writers like Brian Stelter, Tim Arango and the salty but brilliant David Carr track print journalism's metamorphosis even as their own paper struggles to stay vital and solvent, while their editors and publishers grapple with up-to-the-minute issues like controversial new sources and the implications of an online pay-wall.

Meanwhile, rigorous journalism is thriving--Page One gives us an up-close look at the vibrant cross-cubicle debates and collaborations, tenacious jockeying for on-record quotes, and skillful page-one pitching that brings the most venerable newspaper in America to fruition each and every day.

ABC News: Inside Bin Laden's Compound

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Opinion: Bin Laden's Death Creates Generational News Moment

Demonstrates Digital Shift
From Ryan G. Murphy, RTDNA Digital Media Editor:

After a 10-year hunt for the man responsible for the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, U.S. forces have killed Osama bin Laden, in what may be considered one of the biggest news stories of this generation, which has, without question, created a "where-were-you-when?" moment and demonstrated the extraordinary digital shift that news organizations have made in the last10 years.

With blurry contact lenses still in after  falling asleep early Sunday night, I found out just after 6:30 a.m. EDT Monday morning while in my bed checking my iPhone as I do every morning to see if something big has happened overnight. I never expected something this big.

I soon made my way onto my personal Facebook page, which is fairly New York centric. (It's where I grew up and now live.) Virtually every post in my newsfeed was related to Bin Laden's death and carried with it a wide range of emotion, with some posts including the pictures of relatives killed on September 11, 2001, or in combat. 

Similarly, my Tweetdeck was, and still is, scrolling with bin Laden updates by the second. Twitter said that it had recorded more than 4,000 Twitter messages per second at some times during President Obama’s address on Sunday night delivering the news, the New York Times reported. Here's how the news of bin Laden's death unfolded on Twitter, according to Mashable.

The Huffington Post also did an excellent job of summarizing the scrambling some networks did to confirm and broadcast the news after it initially broke on Twitter.

According to the report: "The cable networks, which at times leap too fast into a breaking story and misreport early on, were restrained in waiting until their reporters confirmed the news. As a result, they seemed a step or two behind the latest bit of information available on Twitter. Several TV journalists jumped back and forth between appearing on air and updating over Twitter."

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President Obama: Osama bin Laden Dead

Also Read:

NYTimes: bin Laden Obit

NYTimes:  How The Osama Announcement Leaked Out

Comcast Prefers 'Symphony' Not 'Synergy'

While Rivals Streamline, Burke Pushes Cross-Marketing Project at NBCU

From Jessica E. Vascellaro and Lauren A.E. Schucker, wsj.com

As he eases into the role of chief of Comcast Corp.'s NBCU, Steve Burke is doubling down on an idea that's fallen out of favor in the media business: synergy. 

While other media companies are breaking apart to streamline, Mr. Burke is fixated on strengthening ties between assets as diverse as theme parks and cable channels like CNBC to pump up interest in NBCU's franchises. 

He's ordering executives to lend their support to company-wide projects, starting with the animated Easter film "Hop" from Universal Pictures and NBC's new singing competition show "The Voice." 

The result: promotions ranging from a golf-club swinging Bunny from "Hop" on the Golf Network to dousing Comcast's online-video site with clips of belting wannabe pop stars. 

He calls the strategy "Project Symphony"—a play, on synergy, a word he resisted because it evoked cost-cutting and had become a derided term. "As the world fragments, it becomes harder and harder to promote anything," he said in a recent interview. To get people's attention, "you have to take this approach."

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Oldies Redefined at KKSF

From Ben Fong-Tores, sfgate.com:

Dan Dion photo for NYTimes

KKSF (103.7), longtime purveyor of smooth jazz, switched to a classic-rock format almost two years ago, playing familiar hits and posing a challenge to KFOG (104.5) and its sister station, KSAN ("The Bone" at 107.7). But with the entrance of another strong classic rocker, KFOX, into San Francisco, "The Band" soon found the dance floor overcrowded, and, on April 8, it switched to all-out oldies, playing pop, rock and R&B hits from the '60s to the '80s. 

Wait a sec. The '80s? Yep. "Oldies" no longer means "Earth Angel," Elvis and the Beatles. "Oldies 103.7" considers Blondie, David Bowie and John Cougar Mellencamp oldies, a label that until recently radio avoided. "Oldies" sounded ... well, old. But it has been rehabilitated, and it hasn't hurt that "old school" has been used successfully to describe classic R&B hits on stations such as KISQ ("Kiss" at 98.1). 

"Listeners always referred to them as oldies, and it was a positive term," said Ricci Filiar, program director of both KKSF and KISQ. It was the industry that branded oldies as "classic hits."

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Bidding For Erie Signal Resumes Monday

Bids for new Erie-area radio signal reach $1.4 million

Erie is a hot market in the struggling broadcast-radio industry.

According to a story by Ed Palatella at the Erie Times-News, the bids for the region's newest FM signal continue to outstrip, by far, the offers for any of the other 143 FM frequencies up for sale by the Federal Communications Commission.

At the end of Friday, the third day of bidding in the current FCC auction, the high bid for a permit for 92.7 FM was $1,413,000, from First Channel Communications, co-owned by Fairview Township advertising executive Richard Rambaldo.

The next highest bid for any station was $506,000, for a frequency in Coosada, Ala., near Montgomery.

First Channel's only competitor for the 6,000-watt 92.7 FM is Connecticut-based Mini Me Media LLC, which is part of Connoisseur Media LLC. Connoisseur already owns six radio stations in the Erie market, or the FCC-mandated maximum number of stations.

Connoisseur bid $1,346,000 for 92.7 FM in the final round on Friday, only to have First Channel bid more. The bidding started Wednesday at $100,000.

Bidding on 92.7 FM resumes Monday at 10 a.m. and is expected to last several days. The FCC generally closes an auction of a signal when the competing bidder does not raise its offer by the minimum of 10 percent.

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K-Earth’s Charlie Tuna Becomes 'Luna' For TV Series

K-Earth 101 FM (LA) weekend DJ Charlie Tuna, a legend in Top 40 and Classic Hits radio for five decades, has landed a dream television role – literally. He stars as afternoon drive jock "Charlie Luna" in the new KCET-TV series "The Dreamsters," debuting at 8 p.m. Sunday, May 8 – Mother's Day.

"It's perfect timing for me, since I've got a beautiful 7-month-old granddaughter who's only going to grow into the target demo," Tuna tells Gary Lycan at ocregister.com in an interview. After the series May 8 debut, it will roll out in June as part of KCET's morning children's block, said Steve Syatt, creator-songwriter of the 26-episode program.

"Steve's been a fan of mine since he was a kid in Boston. Then he moved out here and found me in L.A. He wrote a part for me in this series and called me out of the blue to ask if I would be interested. I thought it was just voiceover stuff, but he wanted me on camera, too," Tuna said.

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