Radio Stations

Along with the Drifters and Jeanette "Baby" Washington came newsman Ernie Boston.Mr. Boston was Baltimore's melodic town crier, on black radio and later on television, from the 1960s through the 1980s. His talent and dedication would eventually carry him to the top editor's job of a black-owned newspaper group in Maryland.Mr. Boston died of congestive heart failure Thursday at his home in Baltimore. He was 59."First, Ernie had great pipes, a beautiful announcer's voice," said Jonathan Compton, a disc jockey known in Baltimore radio as Sir Johnny O. "He was a true gentleman, modest.

Here is an excerpt of an editorial from the Los Angeles Times, which was published yesterday.SINCE 1996, when Congress lifted caps on the number of radio stations a single network could own, broadcast chains have snatched up so many local radio stations that commercial radio formats sound the same from San Diego to Schenectady, N.Y.Fortunately, FCC Chairman William Kennard is now pushing a plan that could return color to radio's barren commercial landscape.He...

Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. said yesterday that it has revised its financial outlook downward for the last quarter of 1999 because of weaker advertising prospects in medium-size television markets.In September, the Cockeysville-based television broadcaster said its late-1999 numbers would be dragged down by an ambitious investment program, through which the company hopes to bolster its stations nationwide.Yesterday's announcement marked a further diminution of expectations. Sinclair's shares fell $1.6875 to $10.375 yesterday.

If you're looking for good music on the Internet, you don't have to look far. And you don't have to break any copyright laws.While the recording industry has been engaged in a noisy battle with pirates who use a technology called MP3 to compress popular album tracks and post them online, the World Wide Web is host to two additional sources of music that are perfectly legal and easy to find.The first is Internet radio, which allows traditional broadcasters and Web-only stations to transmit directly to your computer - regardless of your location and theirs.

WERQ-FM (92.3) retained its top spot among Baltimore radio stations for the three-month period ending Sept. 30, but a series of changes at the urban contemporary station, as well as the decreasing margin between it and runner-up WPOC-FM (93.1), suggests the longtime powerhouse may be hearing footsteps.Ratings for the quarter just ended showed WERQ with an overall drop in listenership of nearly 5,000 listeners in an average quarter-hour, from 33,500 to 28,800. That's still enough to keep the station at No. 1, but only 2,200 listeners now separate it from WPOC.

Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc., a Baltimore broadcasting company that has become a significant national owner and operator of radio and television stations, said yesterday that it is considering selling or spinning off its radio properties.In a statement released after the close of the stock markets, Sinclair said it is "actively exploring options with respect to its group of radio stations." The company said it would consider an outright sale of Sinclair's radio stations or the creation of a radio-only subsidiary.

Radio One landed an impressive one-two punch last quarter, garnering both the top and runner-up spots among Baltimore's most-listened-to radio stations.For the seventh straight quarter, Urban Contemporary station WERQ-FM (93.2) finished atop the ratings board, with an average 8,000 more listeners than Baltimore's No. 2 station.But as if that weren't good-enough news for Cathy Hughes' Radio One network, the No. 2 operation among listeners 12 and older for the quarter ending June 30 was another one of its stations, WWIN-FM (95.9)

Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. said yesterday that it is selling three radio stations in Norfolk, Va.,to Barnstable Broadcasting Inc. for $23.7 million in cash.The Baltimore broadcasting company said it is shedding WFOG-FM and WGH-FM to comply with Federal Communications Commission rules that allow a company to have only four FM radio stations in a single market.As a result of earlier acquisitions, Sinclair found itself with six FM stations in Norfolk. The company plans to keep its other four Norfolk FM stations.

Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. said yesterday that it has completed the sale of 41 of its radio stations to Entercom Communications Corp. The $700.4 million cash deal effectively marks the end of Sinclair's run as a radio-station owner.Cockeysville-based Sinclair decided to shed its radio holdings in order to focus on television. In recent years, the company has waged an aggressive campaign to buy up television stations nationwide, becoming one of the largest and most prominent television broadcasters in the country.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Yahoo! Inc. planned to stop using RealNetworks Inc.'s software to play audio and video on its broadcast site before reversing its decision, according to radio stations featured on the No. 1 Internet search service's site.The site, which allows users to hear programs from a large number of radio stations, planned to drop RealNetworks' software in favor of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Media software by tomorrow, said Christa Wessel, Web services director at station WCPE in Wake Forest, N.C. She said the station's contact at Yahoo!

BILL DRAKE, 71 Popularized music-centered radio format Bill Drake, who set the tone at hundreds of pop stations with a radio format that placed music - rather than disc jockeys - at the center of the broadcast, died of cancer Saturday at West Hills Hospital in the San Fernando Valley of California, his domestic partner, Carole Scott, said. At the height of his career as a radio programming consultant in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Mr. Drake championed a streamlined format that came to be known as "Boss Radio," which made announcers' personalities secondary to the Top 40 hits they were spinning.

WASHINGTON - Federal regulators appeared poised yesterday to give final approval to the merger of the nation's only two satellite radio operators, which would bring together the struggling companies after a 17-month quest. Deborah Taylor Tate, a Republican who held the swing vote on the five-member Federal Communications Commission, reportedly was ready to vote in favor of the $3.9 billion merger if Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. and XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. agreed to new conditions.

Radio stations open in county As Harford County increased in population, the need for dissemination of local news and business advertising gave rise to three radio stations within the county. The first was WASA-AM with 5,000 watts of power and was managed by the Chesapeake Broadcasting Corporation near Havre de Grace. The second station, WASA-FM with 3,000 watts of power under the same management, went on the air June 19, 1960. The Bel Air Broadcasting Corporation, launched the third station, WVOB, on June 11, 1965 with 250 watts of power.

Months of tumult at public radio station WYPR, beginning with the Feb. 1 firing of veteran talk-show host Marc Steiner, have not led to a decline in its audience. In fact, the number of people listening to the station in the first three months of year has increased over the same period last year, from 153,600 to 166,800, ratings from Columbia-based Arbitron Inc. show. But they also show the station has lost a significant portion of its younger listeners. In the noon-2 p.m. time slot, where Sun columnist Dan Rodricks took over for Steiner beginning Feb. 25, the weekly average of listeners ages 25 to 54 declined 44 percent, from 25,300 to 14,100.

Brian Billick said yesterday that he still has never been given an explanation for why he was fired as Ravens coach by owner Steve Bisciotti on Dec. 31, a day after the Ravens finished their 5-11 season. In his first expansive local interviews since being fired, Billick told two Baltimore radio stations - WBAL and ESPN 1300 - "it was a shock" to be dismissed because he got a commitment from the team that he would return for the 2008 season. "It did change, and it changed in a day," Billick said.

Continuous Christmas music. Celebrities recalling their favorite holiday moments. Reports from the heartland of America, filled with snow and mistletoe and loads of good cheer. All are fine and good ways to commemorate Christmas, but what do they have to do with celebrating the season here in Maryland? That's what WBAL-AM's John Patti remembers thinking about two years ago, as his radio station was about to broadcast the same hourslong Christmas Day program available to stations across the country.

In The World Without Us, Alan Weisman asks a deceptively simple question: What would the Earth be like if we humans suddenly vanished from its face? Gathering information from scientists, naturalists, engineers and maintenance workers, he leaves neither mammoth nor microbe unconsidered in his search for the answers. There may be no humans left in his book, but there are plenty reading it. The World has been on best-seller lists for weeks and has ranked as high as No. 6 on Amazon. Why has it struck such a chord?

Turn the radio dial these days and hear show host Troy Duran talking up buying opportunities in stocks of little-known companies that mine gold, uranium and more obscure minerals like molybdenum. Or hear Bob and David Hanson on another program saying that now is the time to buy that vacation home or investment property. But Duran is not an investment professional, and the Hansons aren't impartial experts. Their shows are paid advertisements. Increasingly, this is the sound of talk radio.

WASHINGTON -- The songs remained the same on Internet radio yesterday, as many stations continued to stream music while their representatives negotiated to lower a controversial royalty increase that took effect over the weekend. With talks progressing, SoundExchange, the organization that collects royalties for musicians and record companies, indicated to Web casters that it wouldn't seek immediate payment of the higher rates. That amounted to a reprieve for Internet radio stations, some of which had warned they would have to shut down Sunday when a major increase in music royalties and fees kicked in. "Each company has had to decide how they want to act on their own, but I think it's pretty clear that SoundExchange is not going to go after people providing they are trying to work it out," said Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora Media Inc., which operates one of the largest Internet radio sites from Oakland, Calif.

For many people, getting away for a holiday means sitting in traffic while listening to radio reports about rubbernecking delays and cascading backups. But during the next few days, as Americans extend their Fourth of July celebrations, tens of thousands of motorists around the country will receive up-to-the minute accident alerts and guidance on end runs around bottlenecks -- without having to turn on a car radio. In the latest incarnation of traffic reporting, information gleaned from cameras, road-top sensors, electronic tollbooths and eyewitnesses is edited in Mission Control-style command rooms and sent out via personalized text or voice messages to subscribers' cell phones or BlackBerrys, often at no charge.