Whfs

You want some good statistics about the Orioles? I can't pass along anything that shows improvements in RBIs, ERA or WHIP. Then again, I'd have to know what WHIP is. (You, in the back, with your hand up. Yes? Walks and hits per inning pitched. Thank you.) The happy numbers in this case have to do with Orioles television and radio broadcasts in their new homes. Comparing this April with April 2006, Orioles games on Mid-Atlantic Sports Network drew an average 3.8 cable rating as opposed to the 3.0 Comcast SportsNet got. That means 3.8 percent of the Baltimore audience with cable TV was tuning in, an increase of 27 percent.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, the HFStival was a summit for area alt-rock lovers. Organized by the late WHFS-FM, the festival boasted acts such as the Violent Femmes, Foo Fighters, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Coldplay, as well as myriad local and regional bands. It was many firsts for many people: Their first concert, their first time crowd surfing, their first time in a mosh pit. Saturday, the HFStival returns to Merriweather Post Pavilion , the site of the last HFStival in 2006.

FOR A SMALL TOWN, Annapolis has had some of the nation's most interesting radio stations. Credit two men: Morris H. Blum, 87, whose WANN is still controlled by the same family that started it in 1946, and Jake Einstein, who may be 79 but has been a trailblazer in rock programming.Mr. Einstein has now signed off, selling his two Annapolis stations, WRNR-FM and WYRE-AM. The buyer of the former -- for $2 million -- is Empire Broadcasting, a firm headed by the boss of shock-jock Howard Stern.

Johnny Miller owns one of the most famous rounds in the history of golf's major championships - the 63 he shot at Oakmont on the last day to win the 1973 U.S. Open. With the Open back at Oakmont this week and NBC there to chronicle it, the topic of Miller's performance 34 years ago was bound to come up. But, in typical Miller fashion, the network's No. 1 golf commentator won't say that marks him as a player to rank with Tiger Woods. "If anybody studied my career, I was like Jekyll and Hyde," Miller said, according to highlights of a conference call this week.

Contemplating the sports media landscape while recalling that Bruce Springsteen's "57 Channels (And Nothin' On)" was written before the days of Versus and Fox Soccer Channel: So maybe if my column ran in the back of The Sun sports section I'd get a big salary? Rick Reilly, whose back-page column has long been a staple of Sports Illustrated, is leaving the magazine for ESPN, it was announced earlier this week. He will write for ESPN The Magazine and espn.com and appear on various ESPN programs, starting in June.

NATIONAL Iraq debate shaping up President Bush's latest strategy for Iraq is shaping up as the start of a bruising debate with Congress over the course of the war and an early test of how far Democrats are willing to go to block Bush's plans. pg 1a Wildfire ravages Malibu A wildfire fanned by Santa Ana winds destroyed four seaside mansions and damaged two others as it spread over more than 20 acres in the celebrity enclave of Malibu, Calif., authorities said. pg 3a WORLD Somali suspects hunted Under cover of the Ethiopian move into Somalia, U.S. officials launched an intensive effort to capture or kill three key suspects in the bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa more than eight years ago that killed 224 people.

JAKE EINSTEIN, the 79-year-old hippie who has long enjoyed the status of radio cult god for creating progressive, free-form rock stations in Maryland, sold his WRNR-FM (103.1) in Annapolis Friday. Einstein says the sale was finalized in 15 minutes at his kitchen table. Empire Broadcasting, which bought WRNR along with Einstein's WYRE-AM for $2 million, is headed by Steve Kingston, program director at K-ROCK in New York City. He's Howard Stern's boss! (If there is such a thing.)In a sense, it's the end of an era.Back in 1967, Jake Einstein won over discerning rock lovers by turning a Bethesda easy-listening station into ""that hippie station," WHFS.

They had heard the news and wanted to hear the music, maybe catch some uptempo salsa to start their day for a change. In the Baltimore office of the Mayor's Hispanic Liaison, staff members yesterday tuned into WHFS 99.1 FM - which Wednesday had dropped an atom bomb on its alternative rock listeners by switching to a Spanish-language format. They found a station called El Zol. Siempe De Fiesta ("always partying") is the station's new sunny slogan, but apparently it's not partying quite yet. "We called over there to make a request," said Jose Ruiz, the mayor's Hispanic liaison.

Gooooooooooooooood morning, Baltimore!Four hours a morning, five mornings a week, their voices splash through shower radios, command beltway commutes and perk up offices around town with music and musings. At night, they ease our loneliness and coo us to sleep.Disc jockeys -- the aristocracy of the airwaves -- determine what, when and how we listen to music (not to mention the number of times we are subjected to Natalie Imbruglia's pop-whine about being "Torn").But like everyone else, DJs fiddle with their own radios in their off time.

Last Monday, one of the most famous sets of call letters in the history of Baltimore radio was resurrected on local airwaves. And so far, listeners are split about the new HFS. Broadcasting on 97.5-FM, the newest incarnation is patterned closely after the influential alternative rock station once found at 99.1 on the dial — until its abrupt switch to Latin pop station El Zol in 2005. "The music made popular by HFS has lived on long after the station went off the air," CBS Radio senior vice president Bob Philips said last week when announcing the new station, noting that the brand had been kept alive as a streaming Internet station over the past six years.