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Saturday, July 2, 2005
Impactful viewing 
| | Although Deep Impact is scheduled to smack into Comet Tempel 1 at 1:52am Eastern time on July 4, it won't be visible from that time zone. |
| | But we might get to see the show here on the West Coast. Time: 10:52pm. Or 2252, in more official terms. |
| | The comet is too small and far away to see with the naked eye, but the mess it will make of the comet might be visible with naked eyes or binoculars, as a blast of white haze near the planet Jupiter (the brightest object in the Wetern sky) and the bright star Spica. |
Why not the best?
| | While the 'sphere goes nuts over suggestions that Karl Rove was the source of the Plame leak, I want to make a suggestion for President Bush on an unrelated matter: Nominate a top-quality judge, rather than an ideologue, to fill the Supreme Court seat being vacated by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. |
| | President Bush has said he is "a uniter, not a divider". Here's his best chance to prove it. While all the pundits (including countless bloggers) expect a "war" to break out over what nearly everybody expects to be an ideological choice, the president would commit a healing act of immeasurable significance just by appointing a jurist with impeccable legal credentials rather than ideal political ones. |
| | For nominations, I'd like to ask Glenn Reynolds, Eugene Volokh and other leading blawgers for their recommendations (if they haven't given them already — maybe I missed them). I'm not looking for the best political choices, but rather for the best candidate, period. |
New news
| | Two years ago this month we lost KEYT/1250, our last local news station here in Santa Barbara. KEYT was one of the local graces that made moving to Santa Barbara easier: a real home-town radio station, with all-local programming. KEYT covered parades and festivals, carried programs on the local wine scene, reported on cheap gas prices, as well as the requisite local traffic and weather reports. It was a little bit goofy, but not bad at all, considering. But the owner, Bob Smith, who also owned KEYT-TV3, was dying of cancer, and the ratings sucked anyway, so he sold it — first to Lazer, which runs a chain of Spanish-formatted stations, then to Mapleton, which runs a chain of edgy local stations, including the legendary KPIG. Mapleton promised to keep the format; but in a settled dispute Lazer got the channel. (Check the Bob Smith obit here for more backstory on the owner and his stations, which were both remarkable.) |
| | We got encouraging news in September 2003, when we learned that Wendy McCaw, owner of the Santa Barbara News-Press, would be buying another local station, KZBN/1290, from comedian Bob Newhart. KZBN is a lesser station, technically (just 500 watts by day and 122 watts by night, compared to KEYT's 2500 and 1000 watts, respectively). The day signal has a bit of reach going south along the coast; but the night signal barely gets outside the city limits. Still, it's done pretty well in the ratings, with its nostalgic music format and a morning talk/music program featuring local radio legend "Baron" Ron Herron. |
| | Earlier this year, the News Press carried a story by Wendy McCaw herself, promising that the new news station would come on the air soon. (I think she said by April, but the paper has an unforgivably lame Web site, with no search feature — that I can find. And it puts all old stories behind a paywall anyway.) |
| | Soon as I read the story, I tuned in the station to finde it carrying Gabe Saglie's Grapevine show. Gabe is a utility infielders on the local media scene, working at Channel 3 (the remaining KEYT namesake) and other stations around town. Hard to keep track. But he really does know his wine. Think of Gabe as the real Miles Raymond. |
| | Now the station is carrying live BBC coverage of Live8. BBC news will be a staple on the station, the news story says. So will CNN. The station will get most of its local news from the newspaper. "More than 80 hours per week of local ly produced and news and live talk shows," says station manager Les Carroll. The Baron will stay on as a "newscaster," the story says; although I hope he'll be more than that. |
| | The story says KZSB and KJEE/92.9 are "the only two independently owned and operated English-language stations on the South Coast that are not linked to a broadcasting giant." Not quite true. Classical KDB/93.7 is owned and operated by the Santa Barbara Foundation, as a result of a rescue effort. Far as I know, there are no more local commercial classical stations in the country. Jazz either. Lots of noncommercial ones, of course. |
| | We still don't have a local public station, but that's an old story that's not likely to change. |
| | Meanwhile, KZSB doesn't appear to have a website. Nor is there a pointer to one from the newspaper's site, or its story today (no surprise there). I suppose they'll put one up eventually. (kzsb.com goes here.) It would help if they did. |
| | Hmm. Maybe they could work something out with edhat, which often gives better local news than the newspaper, plus lots of other stuff that puts the paper's website to shame. |
| | So, what did the station sell for? The story says Bob Newhard got $750,000 for the station from Dennis Weibling of Seattle, who owns Santa Barbara Broadcasting, Inc. (Try to find a house selling for that little.) By current FCC rules, the News-Press can't own a local radio station. (Although Clear Channel can, and does, own a pile of local radio stations.) The News-Press owned KTMS (which later became KEYT) from 1937 to 1985. KTMS' two towers down on the beach were a local landmark until the transmitter was moved out to a site near the airport in Goleta. The call letters stood for T.M. Storke, who owned and ran the paper for those same years. They are now attached to a Rush & Laura talker at 990am — naturally owned by Clear Channel. |
| | So I wonder why Wendy didn't name the station KWMC... |
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