Is it possible the silly games in Athens are finally over, and we can all finally get back to normal?

Yeah, I’m a little ticked off. The IOC demanded that nothing originating from Athens could be netcast…this requirement, and the foolish acceptance of it by international broadcasters, caused the CBC to stop webcasting completely, and the BBC might just as well have stopped as often as they pre-empted.

Even public radio stations (on the whole…some who forgot could be found with patience, thank heavens) stopped webcasting most non-American news programs for fear they might mention the overaged children playing in the ruins. Even a show like As It Happens was blocked, since they might talk to someone in Greece.

Thank heavens the thing is over. Unfortunately, we get to go through it all over again in two years. Unless the broadcasters wise up and stop covering the thing completely…maybe then the IOC will stop acting as if the Olympics has any real importance at all.

We were out later than we should have been last night (my daughter, who has a bedtime of 9:00pm, was enjoying an ice cream at a local establishment at 9:30pm), so I slept in a bit. I hadn’t changed the Internet radio station I was listening to late last night, so that new NPR morning program was playing as I lie somewhere between sleep and awake, when at the top of the hour I was horrified to hear:

Steve (Ken): You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me?

Renee (Barbie): Yes, it’s Robert De Niro’s birthday, he’s 61.

Now look…I expect amateur crap like that from my local television news; Ron and Janelle are routinely performing this insipid nonsense. But I simply could not believe how unprofessional NBR NPR has become in the months I haven’t been listeneing.

Thank bloody heavens my XM radio will be delivered tomorrow, and in only a month-and-a-half Bob Edwards will return to my weekday mornings…

…when I said, “Goodbye” to Bob Edwards on his annual August vacation (”I’ll see you on Labor Day”) and was shocked to hear a two-host format, with the bothersome Renee Montagne and the boringly bland Steve Inskeep. Almost every day, I’d remark to my daughter, or my wife, or to the air around me, “Lord, I can’t wait until Bob gets back and this crap stops.”

It never occured to me that anyone listening to this local-news-clone happy-talk garbage would actually think it was good, so it never occured to me to email the pinstripes at NPR to complain about their assult on my mornings. I mean, geez, even they had to be able to hear for themselves how lame it is, thought I. Apparently, four or five people wrote to them telling them how good this claptrap was, though, and that empowered them to make the change permanent…although at the beginning of September last year, it never occured to any of us that this would be the case, and we would not only have to face this junk every morning, but lose the one bright spot we could depend on, too.
(more…)

From the Lexington Herald-Leader: Louisville native Bob Edwards, who recently left National Public Radio for a new career at XM Satellite Radio, will be inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame on Nov. 6.
http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/state/9378413.htm

So the Radio Hall of Fame agrees with the rest of us, and only the pinstripes at NPR are out-of-the-loop. Yet they still think they are right, and the rest of the world is wrong. Go figure.

From Wired:News of Steve Jobs’ cancer operation has Mac news sites seeing record traffic, forums are bulging with unprecedented numbers of postings, and Apple is being swamped with messages of sympathy.
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,64457,00.html?tw=rss.TOP

Until he’s back at work, I am calling a moratorium on my usual rant that Jobs destroyed all of the advantages of the Macintosh, turning it from a nitch machine to irrelevant. I’ll get back to it in October.

From David Hinckley at the Daily News, on XM’s upcoming “The Bob Edwards Show”: There will be a news component, Edwards says, but the focus will be on in-depth interviews, the kind even NPR can’t accommodate.
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/story/218300p-187792c.html

David Hinkley is a good friend to the Newark Friends of Old-Time Radio Convention, and covers all things radio. It’s a good interview, if a little light; Bob says, “My only rule is that the subject has to be interesting.”

I’d appreciate any and all comments pointing to interesting blogs, great RSS aggregators, and other blog-stuff. I routinely monitor only twelve RSS feeds, and am always looking for more interesting stuff to keep my mind active and my blood pressure up.

Suggestions? Post ‘em in the Comments, please. And don’t forget to mention what category the blog fits in, where to download the aggregator, and any other relevant information.

I don’t know about you, but I am getting really tired of local stations using Bob Edwards to make money, after they didn’t bother to support him when the pinstripes at NPR canned him. It galls me that he’s good enough and popular enough to use in fundraising, but not good enough to support when he’s down.

The latest offender in this area is in Spokane, Washington, where they are raffling off tickets to next April’s Get Lit! Festival where Bob is a “featured author.” You can view the gory details at:

http://www.kpbx.org/membership/

Feel free to tell the folks there, including Dick Kunkel, President and General Manager of Spokane Public Radio (rkunkel@kpbx.org) and Membership Director Mary Cravens (membership@kpbx.org), exactly how tasteless this nonsense is.

(If you’d prefer to remain anonymous, which I think is a mistake but in some cases understandable, just point them to this post. They already don’t like me much… ;)