Show Host

If you have ever spilled a cup of coffee onto your computer keyboard, you need to listen to this recording of 98 Rock's morning team as it reacts to Mickey Cucchiella after he knocked a cup of coffee onto the console in the station's studio Friday morning. The station was off the air for 20 minutes, according to the show hosts. I called Dave Hill, program director for 98 Rock and WBAL-AM, Friday afternoon about 3 p.m. in connection with another story -- WBAL's coverage of two big trials this week.

Dick Clark, who died Wednesday at the age of 82, is rightfully being hailed as a pioneer of popular culture. And that's fair enough. In the 1950s, '60s and '70s, the reach of his daily"American Bandstand"show and his myriad prime-time special productions was enormous. He was one of the most powerful producers in Hollywood, particularly in terms of his perceived ability to deliver a white, suburban, teenage audience to advertisers. His power was all the more valued on Madison Avenue because he was one of TV's first personalities associated with teen viewers at the very time that advertisers first started conceiving of teens as a lucrative audience with disposable income in its own right.

Does anyone in charge at NBC News have any sense of journalistic standards? How about any sense of shame? I have been banging away at NBC News since at least the days of the suck-up White House interview the network's bowing anchorman, Brian Williams, did with President Obama. You remember the one when they "spontaneously" went out for hamburgers in the middle of the day. (Loved the celebration of special correspondent Chelsea Clinton the last few months as well.) But the double whammy this week is just too much for me to keep quiet - even though I'm on vacation.

Update 2 p.m. Monday: Preliminary Nielsen ratings say 3.5 million viewers watched Winfrey's interviews Sunday night. That is more than twice the previous high of 1.6 million for any program ever on her OWN channel. And she rated highest with the target demo of women 25 to 54. Read on for my overnight rave of Winfrey's interviewing performance. There is no reason to whine about missing Oprah's syndicated show when she is doing work like this on OWN. Oprah Winfrey 's OWN cable channel might still be underperforming, but the legendary talk TV host showed in an interview with members of Whitney Houston's family Sunday night that she can still bring it like few others on television.

Some radio changes over the weekend... Michael Eric Dyson has left his NPR show that's produced at Morgan State University, and the production will go off the air altogether at the end of the month. For the next three weeks, guest hosts will fill in on "The Michael Eric Dyson Show," according to Richard Prince's "Journal-isms" blog. Read it here . Dyson, a prominent social critic and Georgetown University professor, has been hosting the interview and talk show produced for NPR by Morgan State University's radio station on a grant of $505,000 from the Corporation for Public broadcasting.

The whole dustup surrounding Rush Limbaugh is decidedly not rated G. Slut this. Prostitute that. So when confronted by a critic, the station that airs the Limbaugh show locally understandably attempted to point to something even worse than a talk show host that calls a Georgetown law student a "slut" on air. What could be worse? In the opinion of Bob Petitt, the general manager of WCBM 680 AM, it might be 98 Rock's "Jugs for Plugs" feature, where women eagerly volunteer to flash themselves before the morning disc jockeys in exchange for air time to promote their businesses.

Game-show host Pat Sajak, who sent the Internet all aflutter this week when he acknowledged taping an occasional "Wheel of Fortune" episode while drunk back in his younger days, isn't fazed by his newfound online notoriety. "It's the nature of the Internet," Sajak said Friday, predicting that the furor over his remarks wouldn't outlast the weekend. "I think something else will be out there Monday. " Sajak, who splits his time between homes in the Los Angeles area and Severna Park, became a top trending topic on Google earlier this week after saying in an interview on ESPN2 that he and letter turner Vanna White would sometimes down a few margaritas between tapings.

WBAL radio will launch its new post-Ron-Smith lineup Monday, and it will feature more news and less daytime talk, according to Dave Hill, program director for WBAL and FM sister station 98 Rock. "Maryland's Morning News" will now run for five hours from 5 to 10 a.m., while the station's afternoon newscast anchored by Mary Beth Marsden will start at 2 and end at 6 p.m. It had been starting at 3 p.m. The only daytime talk show will be hosted by Clarence Mitchell IV, known to WBAL audience as C4, who will now start his four-hour program at 10 a.m. The station will offer an expanded 15 minute newscast at noon, and Mitchell will then continue to 2 p.m. Smith, who hosted talk shows on WBAL for 26 years, died this month of pancreatic cancer.

Ron Smith, who came to Baltimore 38 years ago as a weekend TV anchorman but found his greatest success on radio as WBAL's "Voice of Reason," died Monday night of pancreatic cancer at his home in Shrewsbury, Pa.. He was 70. Mr. Smith spent more than 26 years on WBAL's airwaves, most of it in the afternoon drive-time period until a move to mornings last year, passionately talking politics from a conservative point of view. But it is not his politics for which he will likely be remembered as much as the informed conversation he helped create on Baltimore radio — and the way he publicly shared his final days with listeners of WBAL and readers of The Baltimore Sun. On Nov. 28, after continuing on-air for more than two months despite having been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer that had metastasized throughout his body, Mr. Smith signed off at the 50,000-watt news-talk station for the last time in his signature straightforward, no-nonsense, radio style.

When Zane Lamprey travels, his version of sightseeing involves barhopping and trying out the local specialties in beer and cocktails. Lamprey is the host of "Drinking Made Easy," a travel show on HDNet that does for bar crawls what Anthony Bourdain's "No Reservations" did for dining and Brooke Burke's "Wild On!" did for international partying. In each episode, Lamprey explores the drinking traditions of an American city, and in an episode that airs Wednesday, he finally explores Baltimore, where he visits Abbey Burger Bistro and Mr. Rain's Fun House, among others.