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Heavy.com is the only one so far who has a picture of the Virginia Beach shooter online, which rules out that DeWayne Craddock might be a white male straight Christian.
The police chief doesn’t want you to even know his name
https://heavy.com/news/2019/05/dewayne-craddock/
Not that anyone cares, but I found out why the WordPress database kept getting clobbered. I have a plug-in installed that allows you up to 5 minutes to edit or delete a comment that you make. It turns out it is incompatible with an older unsupported plug-in that I used occasionally. The combination of the two resulted in clobbering every comment in the database.
It appears to be working now – this version also allows you to delete a comment if you change your mind within the 5 minutes.
Better late than never – Wide Orbit acquired Abacast in 2014. Abacast no longer exists although many players remained unchanged
https://www.wideorbit.com/press/wideorbit-announces-wo-streaming/
I had to do a doubletake. I was thinking of surfernetwork.com – they had streamed many US stations, but all the streams stopped. May be a temporary outage, who knows. As always, you read it here on SRG first. 😉
BTW – Try WCXT, WFJX or KBZN as examples.
Since I don’t actually track the streaming links anymore, at least for the use by visitors, I wouldn’t notice that. Sunday is logically when maintenance happens, or it might be sports related.
I see they are redoing some links, pulling out the surfernetwork part and just being lightningstream.com. I see they actually have a complete directory online, which I might scrape at some point.
The entire domain, surfernetwork.com was down yesterday. It came back up late last night. I had been monitoring it both directly and via sites that tell whether the issue is with you locally of with the site you are trying to reach.
Seems to be working fine today… it streams many stations.
According to Alex Jones, “they” were trying out the internet kill switch over the weekend. Perhaps the Bilderbergers had something to do with it
Challenge of the day – get Alexa to play the song “please don’t play B-17”
I’ll be you already tried speaking the Quote and Unquote. 😉
Yesterday, I got an email from Triton Digital announcing the streaming statistics for February 2019 (checks calendar and sees it is June). I noticed there was much more information about streaming sourced outside the United States.
Down at the bottom it reminded me that Triton Digital is a wholly owned subsidiary of E. W. Scripps, something I did not know. It was acquired by the former newspaper company for $150 million in cash
https://www.radioworld.com/news-and-business/scripps-adds-triton-digital-to-portfolio
Scripps merged with the parent company of the Milwaukee Journal in 2014, then the merged company split into two companies. The Journal Group kept the newspapers and Scripps kept the radio, TV, cable TV and Internet properties (Newsy, Cracked.com…)
The Journal company was then acquired by Gannett. Part of the reason for this change was the heirs broke up the ownership and divided the company stock to the remaining heirs. Hello, three generation rule. Scripps is now publicly traded as SSP.
So where did Scripps get $150 million in cash to buy something they are obviously mismanaging? They sold their radio stations, but the TV spectrum auction is probably the answer (watch for update)
This looks so familiar – company has over $1 billion in intangible assets, is larded up with long term debt, has unfunded pension liabilities and is losing money. They are buying up small market TV stations, I suppose on the theory that you can make money by getting more of what is losing money – volume, volume, volume!
The FCC spectrum sale was not a major factor in their financials
Which TV stations are they buying? The FCC has been reducing the number of over the air channels buy buying them from the TV stations and then selling them to the mobile phone operators.
Here in the NYC area, what had been WOR-TV Channel 9 is now T-Mobile phone traffic. (Channel 9 had moved to 600 MHz area and more recently moved again from 600 MHz for pay.)
Consider that as more people watch video on their phones and less on over-the-air, 500 MHz may be the next to be converted from HD TV to phone.
Already closed
WLEX, the NBC affiliate in Lexington, Kentucky
KOAA, the NBC affiliate in Colorado Springs, Colorado
KATC, the ABC affiliate in Lafayette, Louisiana
KSBY, the NBC affiliate in Santa Barbara-San Luis Obispo, California
KRIS, the NBC affiliate, and KAJA, a Telemundo affiliate, in Corpus Christi, Texas
KPAX and KAJJ, the CBS affiliates in Missoula, Montana
KTVQ, the CBS affiliate in Billings, Montana
KXLF and KBZK, the CBS affiliates in Butte-Bozeman, Montana
KRTV, the CBS affiliate, and KTGF, the NBC affiliate, in Great Falls, Montana
KTVH, the NBC affiliate, and KXLH, the CBS affiliate, in Helena, Montana
Nexstar / Tribune divestiture
WPIX (CW) in New York City
KASW (CW) in Phoenix (which joins the Scripps ABC affiliate there)
WSFL (CW) in Miami–Fort Lauderdale (adjacent to the Scripps NBC affiliate in West Palm Beach, Florida)
KSTU (Fox) in Salt Lake City
WTKR (CBS) and WGNT (CW) in Norfolk, Virginia
WTVR (CBS) in Richmond, Virginia
WXMI (Fox) in Grand Rapids, Michigan
Per Wiki, WLEX is digital channel 39, moving to digital channel 28. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WLEX-TV
And per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_high_frequency “512–608 MHz: Medium-band TV channels 21–36” implies that the highest UHF channel will be 36. I expect that WLEX either did or will get a cash payment for the channel move and possibly reduction in transmission power.
I am not going to check each one of them one by one, but the idea is to buy them to get a check for moving to a lower UHF frequency as the mobile data band expands into what had been UHF TV.
In an interesting twist, radio couldn’t resist turning this into a free money grab. Because many FM transmitters are located on TV towers that might move because the TV station is moving to be multiplexed on an HD subchannel of another TV station in town, some FM stations are demanding to be paid to move their transmitters. Because the FM station originally decided to not build their own tower, the FCC has agreed to pick up the moving bill. The reality is many of these towers are owned by third parties who routinely add and remove transmitters from their towers.
There are two groups of TV stations – the big money ($10 billion total) went to those who agreed to surrender their spectrum by either going off the air completely or moving to a subchannel of another TV station. This applied mostly to major markets like new York City. WNBC got $214 million, PBS WNJN got $200 million to go away and channel share with themselves on another tower.
https://www.njtvonline.org/about/announcements/
In small markets like Lexington, the reverse auction flushed out the outrageous bids – WLEX originally wanted $162 million, but eventually dropped out when bidding got to $10 million. When the carriers refused to pay the outrageous amounts, the FCC cut back their hoped for 144 MHZ of freed spectrum to only 84 MHZ, so in many small markets like Lexington, there was no need for any licenses to go away.
Congress allocated another $1.7 billion to pay for moving the losers to finish the repack. Staying in the UHF band is nothing more than changing a software setting in the transmitter, since TV is all digital now. Once the frequency is changed, viewers have to rescan to pick up where the virtual channel moved.
https://auctiondata.fcc.gov/public/projects/1000/reports/reverse-winning_bids
WLEX said in their opening bid that they wanted $162 million to turn in their license. They got nothing.
They appear to have borrowed 700 million dollars in medium term debt. The major assets of Scripps were put into Scripps Networks Interactive in 2008 which was merged into Discovery Networks for over $14 billion dollars last year. Food Network/HGTV, etc. were worth a lot more than these TV stations or the dying newspapers.
Or to phrase it a the different way, Wall Street is so focused on short term metrics that it was beneficial to the Scripps Networks part to separate from the lower-performing TV stations. At least in 2008, that would have meant the Scripps heirs had interest in both companies. The spin-off stock purchase for a little over $60 a share in cash along with roughly one share of discovery channel stock. Scripps was not a player at all in the international entertainment market, which is where the big money is starting to come from. The audience for an American movie in China is now driving content production in the United States.
So it was the TV portion that is still called Scripps that is larding up on debt to buy yet more mostly smaller market stations. WPIX in NYC was on the list
To clarify, Scripps earns an income from Cable TV retransmission rights. To many stations, that is just guaranteed income regardless of ratings.
Scripps says 33% of their local revenue is from cable retransmission and over-the-top fees.
The Scripps Family trust terms also applied to the spin-off until last year. The spinoff is super valuable because of the world content growth you spoke of. When I was in the Philippines, all kinds of HGTV and Food Network (and Cartoon Network and History Channel) content from the US was on the cable channels over there, but with Asian or Philippines versions of the channels. It was shocking to see people showing their toy cars from Michigan, etc. when I was over there, often with parts in English and parts in Tagalog. There is a French version of TV5 that just shows the cheap unpopular low budget shows from the Francophone world (and the news) while the US version of the channel has more popular movies and animated shows and is an expensive addon channel where it is available. They stream the cheap channel for free throughout asia on the internet, but you can’t even buy streaming in the US.
The NPR story about radio deregulation (in the news list) has so much wrong. It attempts to make big radio the villain, especially iHeart for “Dixie Chicking” music talent. What the author apparently doesn’t know is iHeart opposes the NAB deregulation proposal.
They also don’t know that Westwood One is owned by Cumulus.
Speaking of Monopoly power, while NPR does not directly own public radio stations, its Morning Edition and All Things Considered are heard on almost 800 radio stations, far more than Rush Limbaugh.
It is 58 degrees in Juneau AK, you know?
I know it’s only 57 here in northern Michigan. Coldest June I can recall… we’ve had the heat on almost every day since our return. Even the Yoopers are cold.
Proof of global climate change!
The creator of Pepe The Frog settled his lawsuit against Alex Jones for $15,000, probably less than the attorney fees. The copyright was filed after Jones made his profit, so the recovery was only for a portion of the revenue, not punitive damages.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/legalentertainment/2019/06/11/infowars-and-alex-jones-settle-pepe-the-frog-copyright-dispute/
Forbes relies heavily now on contributors who have an axe to grind, not trained reporters
Neither of the “oil tankers” damaged today in the Gulf of Tonkin… errr…. Oman was carrying oil. One was carrying methanol and the other naphtha
Naptha Tanker just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
WMAL-AM is switching to ESPN on July 1st. Now that Cumulus has sold the land underneath the transmitter, no reason to pretend they’re interested in keeping the station going. The conservative programming will remain on FM, which appears to have better coverage
All you need to know about the Nationwide electricity blackout in Argentina – “Energy Secretariat”
Triple Crown! 😉
This might be a sign of the End Times – New York Times doing a positive story about Michael Savage
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/18/us/politics/michael-savage-trump.html
As they say in the Middle East, the enemy of my enemy is my friend
According to a Russian radio station in New York City, there are between 6.5 and 7 million Russians living in the United States. That’s a lot of votes for Donald Trump!
Haven’t paid your FCC fees since 2005? Just invoke the “minority” defense
http://www.insideradio.com/free/fcc-gives-two-am-owners-a-second-chance-to-renew/article_73ad8610-8b4f-11e9-b4b9-6b81214dfc00.html
“Separate but Equal”, long live “Separate but Equal” despite the Supreme Court ruling.
While I don’t advocate treating people differently because of their skin color, I do advocate it based on their personal choices. For example, if the Dems want to eliminate choice and force everyone to sign up for government schools, and VA healthcare for all, then that should be for all their party members and not for anyone that does not join. Let them run and finance a separate system.
If it is the fourth weekend in June, that means it’s time for ARRL field day!
There seems to be a correlation between percentage of radio stations that stream, and the probability the state votes for Democrats for President
https://streamingradioguide.com/radio-station-list-by-state.php
What does the county by county analysis say?
😉
The answer is 42
Why SRGuide is becoming Google invisible
Google is the force that got most of the internet to switch to the secure https:// protocol. So I complied
The problem is Google considers https://streamingradioguide.com to be an entirely different thing – so when googlebot is redirected from http:// to https:// it ignored the page. I am in the Google Search console to correct Googlebot’s understanding
On the other hand, could it be the conservative ideas?
I can never rule that out. I think you have been here long enough to remember when polldaddy banned me for an offensive answer to an Obama question. The result was I just spent a few hours and wrote my own polling system. I will know in a few days Google is actually very transparent at how googlebot considers your website and indexes it. The danger is if you are logged in as the owner of the website, the search results are going to be very different from what is seen by other people and people who are not logged in, or are on mobile devices.
Back in the day, the number one reason people wound up here was searching for Rush Limbaugh streaming. That seems to no longer be a concern for people.
Not related, but I just today learned how to make the virtual keyboard on my Android based fire tablet float using gboard
Making things even uglier, an Amazon tablet is tightly bound to a specific email account. The chrome browser only lets you use the email address for your Amazon tablet to log into chrome for syncing, and Google in general.
So to interact with the Google search console as streaming radio guide, I have to log out of chrome and I lose access to saved passwords. It’s all pretty stupid. I’m not going to have a separate device for each email account. If you clear the email account from your Amazon device, it resets back to factory defaults. I made that mistake only one time. Perhaps I can convince Amazon that I have a child named streaming radio guide so that chrome will allowme to add a second email account.
So Google’s chrome will not disclose saved passwords to a device that is not protected with a PIN. So if you happen to become in possession of an Android device that does not have a PIN on the main screen, just go into the settings and set a pin and then Chrome gladly divulges every password you have.
Nothing new there. A Ouija Board with a séance can make any keyboard float, especially if the lights are off and George Noory is streaming. 😉
I had to make mine stream to get that special character over the “e” in “séance”. 😉
So now the Google has recognized the secure site is part of the domain, here is what things look like for those who are curious. It is nothing like the good old days, but still worth spending my time on
So in the spirit of transparency, here is what people search for and wind up here. It is a point of confusion that people think I am a hard core Conservative because that’s the people who arrive here. I learned a decade ago that it was pointless to put any effort into sports or NPR.
(Click image to read)
Another streaming provider has ended its operations. They presumably are blaming the Music Modernization Act from last fall. Former customers are being directed to live365 which is going to play the role of David going up against Goliath. Live365 had previously closed in 2016.
Radionomy has also gone under.
Why do radio people still refer to themselves as DJ’s? that would be as silly as me driving a car and describing myself as a buggy-whip operator
Let me dial an expert and tape the answer for you.
Why would anyone say they are going to “dial up” John Catsimatidis and ask him why he bought WABC? 😉
https://nypost.com/2019/06/27/john-catsimatidis-acquires-77-wabc-radio-for-12-5-million/
If you are an avid listener of WABC, it might be time to “touch that dial”. 😉
Well, it is a newspaper, after all.
We had talked about the TV station auction to make more spectrum available for the cell phone digital streams. Saw an announcement on the screen this morning that KYW-DT was moving on August 1 at 1 PM and viewers without cable will need to rescan. Did some quick research and found a long list of Philly stations that are moving on that day. In the interest of the many NJ readers here, I am sharing it
https://www.phillyvoice.com/local-tv-stations-are-changing-channels/
From the list provided and searching, I found that many are lower their power slightly on their new frequency. I used this FCCInfo search page (evidently not the FCC itself) to investigate. (That page also has info about AM and FM stations and may be useful to non-TV viewers.)
http://www.fccinfo.com/cmdpro.php?New=New+Search
Streaming competition with SiriusXM heats up
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/la-et-ms-siriusxm-satellite-radio-west-coast-scott-greenstein-20190701-story.html
Having only been a brief subscriber to the SiriusXM streaming service, I have been disappointed that as the revenue growth has increased, it didn’t seem like SiriusXM was plowing money back into developing better content. Howard Stern is going to retire someday.
Noteworthy was there was no mention of streaming terrestrial radio, just Pandora, Spotify and the like. No mention of iHeartradio or TuneIn.
The communications expert who put forth the notion that the world revolves around Los Angeles clearly doesn’t understand live radio. The three-hour time difference is incredibly important and why no major syndicated show is based in California.
Pat Boone is not going to get up at midnight LA time in order to be on the air at 3 a.m. in order to reach drive time on the East coast. Likewise if the performers are jamming in the studio at 9 at night, most of the east coast is asleep. If all the content is just voice tracking and “taped” content, that is not competition to “on demand”.
If Pat Boone and the hottest Hip-Hop star happened to meet in the bathroom, who will be the better from the chance encounter? Over the last 20 years, terrestrial radio has been going away from having people show up at a central location, preferring rather to do their show in a studio in their house, very often in a state that does not have an income tax.