Radio History: June 16

➦In 1934...Radio pioneer Edwin H. Armstrong transmitted FM signal 70 miles from Empire State Building to Long Island.  Armstrong (1890–1954) was an American electrical engineer who invented wideband frequency modulation (FM) radio.  He patented the regenerative circuit in 1914, the superheterodyne receiver in 1918 and the super-regenerative circuit in 1922. Armstrong presented his paper, "A Method of Reducing Disturbances in Radio Signaling by a System of Frequency Modulation", (which first described FM radio) before the New York section of the Institute of Radio Engineers on November 6, 1935. The paper was published in 1936.

As the name implies, wideband FM (WFM) requires a wider signal bandwidth than amplitude modulation by an equivalent modulating signal; this also makes the signal more robust against noise and interference. Frequency modulation is also more robust against signal-amplitude-fading phenomena.

➦In 1941...Front Page Farrell, a radio serial, first aired on Mutual Broadcasting System from 1941 to March 13, 1942, and on NBC from September 14, 1942, to March 26, 1954. The episodes broadcast on Mutual originated at WOR, making the program the first live serial that Mutual broadcast from New York City.  It was produced by and starred Richard Widmark.

Charles Farrell, Gil Stratton Jr. "Freddie", and Gale Storm

➦In 1952...“My Little Margie” on CBS-TV debuted as a summer replacement for “I Love Lucy” in 1952. The series, starring Gale Storm and Charles Farrell, aired original episodes on CBS Radio concurrently with the TV broadcasts from December 1952 through August 1955.

➦In 1962...Bob Lewis aired his first show on WABC 770 AM, New York. He stayed on for about 8 years.



Lewis died in January 1987 at age 49.

Bob ‘Bobaloo’ Lewis was best known as one of the “All Americans” on 77 WABC. Lesser known was the fact that he was also heard on the FM side. WABC 95.5 FM was a Progressive Rock station.

The format was called “Love” and featured album cuts from Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, The Who, and many more similar artists which would become the staples of AOR and later, Classic Rock stations.

In 1970 he moved to WCBS FM and in `72 to WNEW-FM.

➦In 1968...Jackson Armstrong premiered on CHUM 1050 AM, Toronto.

Jack Armstrong

Big Jack Armstrong, born John Charles Larsh in Durham County, NC, began his radio career at WCHL in Chapel Hill, North Carolina in 1960 at the age of 14 as an after school and weekend job. He also worked at WCDJ in Edenton in the summer when his family would go back home during summer break. At some point, he worked for WSSB in Durham, but the time frame is unclear.

Upon graduating from high school in 1964, Larsh moved to Atlanta, where he got an FCC First Class engineer's license, while working on the radio at WDJK. His parents enrolled him in Guilford College in Greensboro in the pre-med course. Larsh dropped out almost immediately, having gotten a radio job at WCOG.

In early 1966, WAYS-AM in Charlotte had begun 24 hour operatios. The FCC required that any station must have an engineer on duty at all times the station was on the air. When Larsh applied for a job there, the station quickly saw an opportunity to fill two sets of shoes with one person, since Larsh already had a First Class license. He was hired to fill the overnight shift.

Charles Barkley: One More and Done

Charles Barkley Intends To Retire

Charles Barkley, part of the highly popular, award-winning "Inside the NBA" studio show, said Friday night that the 2024-25 season will be his last with TNT and that he won't be joining any other network beyond that, either.

"I ain't going nowhere other than TNT," Barkley said on NBA-TV following the Dallas Mavericks' Game 4 victory over the Boston Celtics on Friday night. "But I have made the decision that no matter what happens, next year is going to be my last year on television. And I just want to say thank you to my NBA family. You guys have been great to me. My heart is full with joy and gratitude."

Charles Barkley says he's done doing TV after next season - he's talked to other networks but he's not going anywhere other than Turner/TNT pic.twitter.com/sH89v0tI1D

— CJ Fogler account may or may not be notable (@cjzero) June 15, 2024

The NBA has been negotiating its next media rights deals, which would begin in the 2025-26 season. While the league hasn't announced what the deals will look like, Disney/ABC/ESPN, Amazon, NBC and Warner Bros. Discovery have been vying for what's reported to be three available packages of games and affiliated content worth an estimated $76 billion to the league over a decade.

"I hope the NBA stays with TNT, but for me personally, I wanted you guys to hear it from me ... I wanted to tell my NBATV and TNT family that I'm not going to another network, but I'm going to pass the baton to either Jamal Crawford or Vince Carter or you Steve (Smith)," Barkley said.

"But next year, I'm going to just retire after 25 years, and I just wanted to say thank you. And I wanted y'all to hear it from me first."

InfoWars Final Liquidation

Alex Jones’ personal bankruptcy has been converted to a formal liquidation, meaning a trustee will decide how Jones will pay down $1.5 billion in defamation judgments.

Jones and families of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims who he defamed have for months been unable to agree on how he will pay them. The families won their state defamation judgments against the right-wing conspiracy theorist and his media platform, Infowars, after he repeatedly called the 2012 school shooting a hoax.

Bloomberg reports US Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez on Friday said Jones’ case doesn’t trigger any exceptions to the law that would bar it from being converted to a Chapter 7 liquidation. Lopez declined a request from Sandy Hook families to include provisions laying out how the handover of Jones’ case to a trustee will proceed.

The judge said he would issue a “very clean order’’ on the matter.

A trustee could determine the future of Infowars’ bankrupt parent, Free Speech Systems LLC.

Even if Infowars is liquidated, Jones could potentially start a successor broadcast, Kyle J. Kimpler, of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, said on behalf of some of the Sandy Hook families during the hearing.

NFL Vetoed Less Expensive Sunday Ticket

The National Football League chose to distribute its Sunday Ticket package for "out-of-market" games though a satellite TV provider rather than a cable network to limit distribution of the bundle, an economist testified this week at the league's antitrust trial.

Courthouse News reports Daniel Rascher, a sports economist at the University of San Francisco, was called as an expert witness by Sunday Ticket subscribers who claim they had to pay inflated prices to watch their favorite teams play on Sunday afternoon because the NFL colluded with CBS and Fox, the networks that show the games for free over-the-air, to minimize competition for their broadcasts.

If the NFL had partnered with a cable TV provider for its Sunday Ticket package, it would have been available to as many as 90 million potential customers instead of the 13 million DirecTV subscribers, Rascher told the jury in downtown Los Angeles.

Instead, the league made an exclusive deal with DirecTV to protect CBS and Fox's ratings for the popular Sunday afternoon games, he said. The more people who watch the networks' broadcast, the more money they can demand for advertising slots on the telecast. This in turn means that the NFL can extract a premium from the networks for their exclusive right to show the live games.

FCC Proposes To Decrease Regulatory Fees

The FCC has proposed to decrease annual AM and FM radio regulatory fees for the second year in a row.

This move is part of the FCC’s strategy to align fee collection with its $390,192,000 budget while adapting to changes within the agency1. Broadcasters have until October 1 to pay their annual fees, following a public comment period ending on July 29. Late payments may result in additional charges, and pending applications could be delayed. 

Here are the proposed regulatory fees for this year:

• AM stations: $0.10 per $1,000 of assessed value
• FM stations: $0.15 per $1,000 of assessed value

Additionally, the FCC is reconsidering a 1993 policy that assumes broadcast stations that are dark or silent are experiencing financial hardship and therefore merit a regulatory fee waiver without needing to provide evidence. 

Moving forward, the FCC proposes requiring all stations requesting fee waivers to submit detailed financial documentation to demonstrate actual financial hardship. The proposal also revisits fees for various service providers, including space and earth station operators, reflecting broader shifts within the regulatory landscape and previous fiscal reallocations.

Taylor Swift's Eras Tour Has An Official End Date

Swifties are going to be feeling down bad with this news. During Taylor Swift's Liverpool concert on Thursday, she revealed that her Eras Tour will officially end in December, according to Entertainment Tonight.

Before playing "All Too Well (10 Minute Version) (Taylor's Version)," Swift marveled over the fact that the Liverpool show marked the 100th stop on her Eras Tour.

"Absolutely, that blows my mind," Swift said. "That doesn't feel like a real statistic to me because this has definitely been exhausting, all-encompassing, but the most joyful, most rewarding, most wonderful thing that has ever happened in my life, this tour."

CE0s: Trump Lacked Focus

Former President Donald Trump failed to impress everyone in a room full of top CEOs Thursday at the Business Roundtable’s quarterly meeting, multiple attendees told CNBC.

“Trump doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” said one CEO who was in the room, according to a person who heard the executive speaking. The CEO also said Trump did not explain how he planned to accomplish any of his policy proposals, that person said.

Several CEOs “said that [Trump] was remarkably meandering, could not keep a straight thought [and] was all over the map,” CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin reported Friday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

Among the topics on which Trump offered scant details were how he would reduce taxes and cut back on business regulations, according to two other people in the room who spoke to CNBC.

Meeting attendees and people who spoke with them were granted anonymity in order to speak freely about the private event.

The same CEOs who were struck by Trump’s lack of focus “walked into the meeting being Trump supporter-ish or thinking that they might be leaning that direction,” Sorkin reported.

Trump’s energy in the meeting was also noticeably subdued, according to two people who were in the room. At no time during his remarks was there any noticeable applause for Trump, two attendees told CNBC.

This was in contrast to Trump’s meeting earlier in the day with House Republicans on Capitol Hill. Attendees at that meeting told CNBC that the former president was animated and engaged and that Trump received several rounds of applause in separate meetings Thursday with both House and Senate Republicans.

“These were people who I think might have been actually predisposed to [Trump but] actually walked out of the room less predisposed” to him, Sorkin said.

FNC's Pete Hegseth Tops NYTimes Book List

A Fox news host has crushed Jen Psaki in book sales despite the former White House press secretary's book coming out weeks before his.

The Daily Mail reports Pete Hegseth's book 'The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men who Keep us Free' has sold 60,000 copies since it was released on June 4.

By comparison, ex-Biden spokeswoman Psaki's 'Say More' which was released May 6 has sold less than 22,000 total copies to date according to Bookscan.  Her MSNBC colleague Joy Reid's 'Medgar and Myrlie' has sold 28,469 copies since being published in early February. And Hegseth has also hammered CNN host Jake Tapper's 'All The Demons Are Here', which has sold just 15,427 copies in the 11 months it has been on sale.  

Hegseth's debut went to number one on the New York Times bestseller's list, his fourth time making an appearance on the weekly rankings.

It comes despite research by the Economist which suggests the newspaper's iconic bestsellers list is less likely to include works by conservative authors, even if they sell the same amount of copies as other works. Tech mogul Elon Musk is among those who sounded the alarm over potential political bias.

He tweeted that the NYT is 'pure propaganda' after the book 'Troubled', the book which exposes the hypocrisy of the American elite by social critic Rob Henderson. failed to dent the listing despite healthy sales in its first week.

The NYT has never disclosed the metrics behind its weekly rankings leading other conservatives to believe they too have been targeted. Other alleged victims include Ted Cruz, radio host Clay Travis and former White House press secretary under George W. Bush, Ari Fleischer.

TV's Greatest Dad? Happy Father's Day

By Adam Buckman

Long ago, I was a party to the creation of an innocuous “fax poll” aimed at enlisting reader participation in a vote for “The Greatest TV Dad Of All Time.”

It was a pre-Father's Day contrivance not unlike this TV Blog.

To the amazement of us all, the winner was Al Bundy, patriarch of the dysfunctional Bundy family on “Married … with Children,” the great Fox comedy series from the 1980s and ’90s.

Played by Ed O’Neill (photo above), Al was the quintessential anti-Dad -- at the time, a new concept in TV dads.

Al was a Chicago-area shoe salesman who struggled with financial issues, his uncooperative family (Katey Sagal, Christina Applegate and David Faustino) and his life in general.

The other candidates in this poll were more or less predictable. All were archetypal, well-known icons of TV fatherhood.

They included (if memory serves) Ward Cleaver (Hugh Beaumont, “Leave It To Beaver”), Jim Anderson (Robert Young, “Father Knows Best”), Cliff Huxtable (Bill Cosby, “The Cosby Show”), James Evans (John Amos, “Good Times”), and possibly others such as Dan Conner (John Goodman, “Roseanne”), Herman Munster (Fred Gwynne, “The Munsters”) and Gomez Addams (John Astin, “The Addams Family”).

But Al Bundy possibly won precisely because he was the anti-Dad -- a character who readers and viewers of “Married … with Children” could relate to more than the others.