To demonstrate our WY-centric station carriage, mentioned in post prev, our graphics team has prepared this map:
That’s right, there’s a new toy in town, Google Charts: online generation of graphs, charts, and data-driven maps. Thanks, Jon, for telling me about it and making me waste my morn — you know I can’t resist to trying new tech. Or as Jon graphically points out:
The 14-station Wyoming Public Radio network just added our weekly hour to their sked. Which means we now have more stations in WY than all other stations in the universe combined. Our thanks to the Cowboy State for more than doubling our carriage.
Hearing Voices from NPR®
003 Her Stories: For Women’s History Month
Host: Dmae Roberts of Stories1st.org
Airs week of: 2012-02-29 (Originally: 2008-03-19)
“Her Stories” (52:00 mp3):
The Kitchen Sisters go to “Tupperware®” parties.
A supermarket checker checks out her life, in ZBS‘s radio soap Saratoga Springs.
Jenifir returns “Home From Africa” with all 13 Symptoms of Chronic Peace Corps Withdrawal, produced by Jake Warga.
Host Dmae Roberts has a collage of and about “Sisters.”
In a new syntax of whispers and words Susan Stone tells the story of “Ruby” and her husbands.
And Sonia Sanchez (produced by Steve Rowland of Shakespeare Is), Tracie Morris, Jill Battson and Meryn Cadell perform short poems.
Music from Tara Key’s Ear & Echo.
John and Abagail Adams played by Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney. Nuff said, no? Parts 1 & 2 of the HBO 7-week mini-series “John Adams” rocked, rolled, tarred, feathered, cannon fired, and created a nation. “He United the States of America.” Based on the David McCullough 900-pager, “John Adams (HBO) full-length trailer”:
From the March/April 2008 Issue of The Believer, a conversation between two great filmakers: “Errol Morris talks with Werner Herzog.”
I was a private detective for years after I started as a filmmaker. I like to think, of course I could be completely wrong, that there’s this detective element in everything I do. My movies start from interviews. Everything that I’ve really done. —EM
Wait for the afterthought. Be patient. Don’t say, “Cut.†Just let them do it. The unplanned, the unexpected, the afterthought. —WH
via Zak Rosen- WDET.
The Thermopolis transmitter of Wyoming Public Radio was off-air. To fix it they needed to get up past three feet of snowdrifts, over three inches of ice, and into 40-mph winds blowing snow sideways across a cloud-covered hilltop. A four-wheel drive wouldn’t make it; a rental Sno-Cat would have taken days to find; and snowmobile travel would have been dangerous with the weight and bulk of the gear and parts needing transport. So how did Chief Engineer Reid Fletcher and Program Director Roger Adams make their mid-winter ascent? Hint: “Giddyup.”
C’mon, bait your line. Let’s go smelt fishin’ on the ice. Ten shacks on a frozen river are filled with ice fishermen for ten weeks each year. Owner Steve Leighton provides the bait; his patrons bring the beer; and the fish take care of the rest. Produced by Grant Fuller of the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, premiered on Weekend America, “What Are You Gonna Do with 400 Fish?” (5:13 mp3):
While you’re listening, check the photos of Sarah Breul, also of SALT, who tagged along to Leighton’s Smelt Camp on the Abagadasset River in Bowdinham, Maine, and took these Image of Ice Fishing…
© Sarah Breul
James Brown (May 3, 1933 – December 25, 2006) and Luciano Pavarotti (October 12, 1935 — September 6, 2007) perform live on stage in Modena, Italy on May 28, 2002, “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World:”
MySpace has pages for people, places, and now things. Composer Peter Traub has started ItSpace, a participatory sound project. “ItSpace pages feature everyday household objects. Each page has a photo of the object, a description, and most importantly, a 1-minute piece of music composed of recordings of the object being struck and resonated in various.” A story by Jesse Dukes on NPR Day to Day, “Objects Sing at Itspace” (5:04) mp3):
Hearing Voices from NPR®:
002 Visiting Hours— In Hospital
Host— Ceil Muller of KQED Public Radio
Airs week of— 2009-03-11 (Originally: 2008-03-12)
Visiting Hours (52:00 mp3):
“The Kiss and the Dying” is host Ceil Muller’s (of KQED) etiquette list for those who may be dying, and for the soon-to-be survivors.
“Fire and Ice Cream” is from Brent Runyan’s book “The Burn Journals,” and Jay Allison’s Life Stories radio series. Brent’s nurse in the burn unit asks the 14-year-old out for ice cream… and a date?
In “Our Father” Brian Brophy documents his dad’s passing, with recordings of his family, the chaplain, the hospital and hospice staff, and the wake.
Carmen Delzell helps heal her “Grandmother’s Hip.”
And Nancy Updike watches patients pass the time with TV in “Channeling Health.”
Music by Pete Fountain, Brave Old World, Peter Ostroushko, Jimmy Smith, and Rotterdam Ska Jazz Foundation.
NPR is back into radio drama, at least for a couple minutes. Today’s NPR Day to Day premieres the ZBS series, 2 Minute Film Noir. An American private eye falls in love with a French woman who is more than mysterious, she’s ethereal, in “Chez Tootsie” (3:26 mp3):
PRI’s Fair Game asked Andrew W. K. to write a rocker based on words from TV’s shout-fest The McLaughlin Group, “The McLaughlin Groove” (0:47 mp3):
“The next man on the moon will be Chinese.” Who know the pundit was a poet?
Gotta say, tho, Msr. W.K. has fallen mightily in subject-matter, reduced to covering shlock like TV’s punditocracy; especially considering his previous high-culture accomplishments, not least of which is Jackass’s “We Want Fun:”
via Current.
Hearing Voices from NPR®:
001 Street Map— The People Next Door
Host— Katie Davis of Neighborhood Stories
Airs week of— 2009-03-04 (Originally: 2008-03-05)
“Street Map” (52:00 mp3):
A walk around the block:
Scott Carrier walks around the Salt Lake City blocks, talking to people in “The Neighborhood.”
Host Katie Davis, of Neighborhood Stories, contemplates changes at the “Corner Store” on the DC street where she grew up and still lives.
Larry Massett helps his friend bid “Goodbye, Batumi” to his hometown in the Republic of Georgia.
And a modern day Romeo and Juliet is staged, amidst a growing number of homicides, in “Oakland Scenes: Snapshots of a Community” by Youth Radio and poet Ise Lyfe.
Music by Eva Cassidy, James Brown, and Parazitii.
Hearing Voices is now a new weekly hour series. We’re calling it The Best of Public Radio; a sixty-minute stream of “driveway moments†all connected by a weekly theme. We listen to broadcasts and podcasts; we dig through audio archives; and we scour the web to find the best stories, sound-portraits, slam poets, docs, radio dramas, features, and found-sound.
Each week a new Guest Host steers the show home. About 15 stations all already on board — broadcast schedules coming soon. Here’s a sample from our very first hour, airing next weekend, and hosted by Katie Davis of Neighborhood Stories; it’s called “Street Map” (9:24 mp3):
Good news: Last week we signed a deal w/ NPR®. They take care of our distribution and podcast. We take listeners for wild weekly radio rides. Good deal, huh? Reminds us of Car Talk’s disclaimers, “And even tho Robert Siegal spills his soy cappuccino over his Opera Divas Disrobed calendar every time he hears us say it, this is NPR, National Public Radio.”
So we ask you a simple question; which you, in turn, might pose to your local station: “Are your Hearing Voices?”
HV Series Promo 1 (0:30 mp3):
HV Series Promo 2 (0:30 mp3):
Say, today the HV News blog is one year old. Sez WordPress: we have 491 posts and 119 comments, with 168 radio-related 168 mp3s and 77 audio-related videos.
We’ll introduce a new icon today, this linked HV-logo to the left. That means it’s something produced by us, a radio story, a web-work, or an episode in our new weekly series(!!!). That’s right a new weekly HV hour. More on that in moments.
Day 1 of the Iditarod is tomorrow. One of the qualifying races was held a few weeks ago, is the John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon, named for the son of a Chippewa chief who delivered mail by dog sled along Lake Superior’s rugged North Shore in the late 19th century. Launched in 1981, the Beargrease draws world-class sled dog teams from around the globe. The Beargrease is the longest, and most challenging, of sled dog events in the lower 48: almost 400 miles and 4000 spectators, starting in Duluth, Minnesota on the last weekend of January. Field-recordist Curt Olson gathered the sounds of the dogs, the mushers and the fans, “Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon” (7:00 mp3):
Curt has more sounds at Track Seventeen. And a shorter version ran on Weekend America with a photo gallery. 
(Photo: © Kit Larson) Keith Ali on the trail on the second day of the 2006 Beargrease Sled Dog Race.
Marvin Granger:
• formerly of MPR stations (he gave a young GarrisonK his first radio job);
• first GM of Spokane Public Radio;
• former GM of WBFO-Buffalo (where Terry Gross got her start);
• former GM of WDET-Detrioit;
• for two decades GM of Yellowstone Public Radio, whose signal now saturates more territory than any other pubradio net in the nation.
Yes, that Marvin Granger tells me his last day in public radio is this Friday, the day of his call-in show Your Opinion, Please — Friday Feb 29 6:30-7:00 pm MT (which streams so anyone anywhere can listen & call 800.441.2941… hint, hint.)
Marvin recently received the 2007 Montana Governor’s Humanities Award. Hear the “Homeground” interview (30:00 mp3):
A couple excerpted quotes from Marvin’s career; about pubradio, he told Spokane Magazine:
“We can play music which is ‘culturally important but commercially weak’ in nature, such as chamber music and contemporary experimental music. It’s one of the few places creative people gain exposure.â€
And his early participation in the debate over the value of Arbitron is discussed in the report (pdf) “Guys in Suits with Charts: Audience Research in U.S. Public Radio.” His opinion: PDs’ concerns for radio ratings “collided with the art of programming commercial radio.”
MG has been a boon to our broadcast buddy Chrysti the Wordsmith; a friend to our little local college station KGLT — even tho we share the same dial as his station; and an adviser to us at HV (he won’t be entirely off-air: later this year he’ll be hosting HV’s Winter Solstice hour).
Marvin, we all wave you a hearty and appreciative aloha. If just half of us in this biz contribute half as much as you did, pubradio will soar.
YPR stations
The New York Times profiles Jersey City’s WFMU in “Put the Radio On”.”
“Hands down, WFMU is the greatest radio station on the planet.†–Jim Jarmusch
“This is the kind of place that shouldn’t exist but somehow does.†–WFMU DJ Tom Scharpling
There’s some priceless airchecks (left column of the NYT article), including “How to Be a WFMU Disc Jockey,” “Death-Defying Radio Stunts: Harassing Toll Booth Attendants” and this many Louie-Louie mashup from “Music to Spazz by” (5:32 mp3):
In response to will.i.am’s obama-nation, here’s john.he.is with a viral video response, “McCain 08, Like Hope But Different:”
yet again, via Puddles of Thought.