Yep... and EA's now in a big bind because there isn't much of a "game" to The Sims Online beyond allowing people to express their wacky virtual personalites. They can't limit expression too much without killing the point of the product, but they've got to do something to prevent anarchy from developing... what a mess that they'll either have to find a way out of, or lose the project to failure.
This is the relationship between a services provider and a client, and the political concepts of censorship or free speech have nothing to do with it.
Oh, there's plenty to be discussed about it. In a virtual world, the owners of the servers are the government. People can chose whether or not to immigrate into the community, or whether to leave the community... and those decisions are based heavily on how the virtual government rules the virtual world.
Virtual world admins have god-like powers... they can smite whomever they want to instant "death" within the community, they can award things, they can tax, they can do whatever they want. If they use their powers too much, however, they create a police state that's not much fun to be in. Users move out, that online community's not fun anymore.
However, if the admins don't use their power at all, lowlifes will take over the place, and you'll have whatever levels of porn and spam the software platform allows. The bulk of the users move out, that online community's not fun anymore.
So, there's a balance that needs to be achived. Creative expression has to be tolerated somehow in order for the "game" to be fun, but too much creates an anarchy. How is EA, or any other game owner supposed to manage that? That's a big topic for debate...
"Non-Prophets" is a nice play on words for an anti-CC group. "Phrophet" is the name of the automation software used by nearly all Clear Channel stations.
Right, the break he might have been refering to is from having to lead with the same top story for three consecutive days while he's in sunny Florida...
With apologies to Mr. Cronkite - And that's the way it is - according to news feeds, the internet, and my web cam.
Cronkite let the CBS News underlings do the dirty work for him. When a sub anchor reported that he was "on assignment", that often should have been written as "on Assignment"...
The difference? "Assignment" was the name he gave to a boat he owned. If he was spending his vacation fishing, the sub anchor would begin the newscast by saying "Walter Cronkite is on Assignment." as the explanation as to where he went. Sounded like he was working, but really he was fishing.
Correct, and if he says "it's 20 below outside the WBZ studios" and it really is, he's telling the truth. One might think that the only way for him to know that exact number is to be at the studios, but they're flat-out wrong... anybody who can download WeatherBug can get the realtime temperature reading from a unit installed outside of the WBZ studios.
I'd think he was well aware to not use "here in Boston" phrase constructions when he was broadcasting from his house in Florida. Technically, he's almost always wrong when he says "here in Boston" because WBZ's main studios are actually in the community of Allston, MA... and their transmitter is actually in Hull, MA. The station is actually licensed to serve the community of Boston, but a radio station doesn't actually have to be located in it's city of licensed, just close enough so that it covers its city with a "city grade" signal quality.
It's been known for quite a while that what you dream about is usually whatever you were thinking about just before you went to sleep. Staring at a photograph is one way to make sure you're thinking about the person you want to dream about... so who needs the gadget?
Actually, he says he's in Boston all of the time, and 100% of the time he says that he's telling the truth. He avoids using "here" phrase constructions when he's in Florida, but that's only four weeks out of the year. (The station likely chose the remote setup instead of giving him 4 extra weeks of vactation...)
I've got to say, sitting here in the Boston media market, I've only seen this story reported nationally. The Boston Globe published the article that started this thread, but it wasn't anywhere near the front page. From that, it got mentions hre on/. and on MSNBC... seems like there's more national interest while us locals know that Gary's always been smart...
They've got several indicators at their disposal...
1. Radio play causes sales, but there's formulas that can convert radio play to an expected quanity for sales... if somebody's getting more sales than the airplay dictates, they're hot. If somebody's getting less, they're not.
2. Radio play causes requests, but again, there's a way to convert what you've played to what you should be getting for requests. Exceed that, you're hot. Fall below that, you're not.
3. Just go out and ask your listeners. Many stations have rate-a-song slots in their nighttime shows where the DJ plays a new song they've just got in and asks the listeners to call in to vote on it. Songs that win instantly join the rotation, songs that lose may never be played on the station again. (Note: I remember hearing that annoying Titanic song get played in such a segment, and get deemed a flop... the station eventually had to add the song when it went mega-hit, but they were notably late in doing so because they had first-hand knowledge that the song wasn't that good, it was just tied to a hit movie.)
4. Just plain common sense comes into play sometimes. Stations very rarely get "negative requests"... somebody calling up to ask that they not play a song. When there are ex-fans of the Dixie Chicks doing that, you don't have to look too far to see that they are not as popular as they were yesterday. They've gotta move down in the rotation, it's just a judgement call whether to drop them completely or just cut their airplay down to a fraction.
Now, there are outside influences that can cause a PD to have to do something non-popular. For example, nearly every big station runs one or two charity benefit concerts per year... the idea being that the station can keep a big chunk of the tickets for themselves to give away free as a contest prize after the show sells out. Typically, a record company will send one hit artist, but also send two or three other acts they want to promote as well. In this situation, the PD's got no choice... they've got to build up the value of the artists that are coming. The star moves up in the rotation, and those two or three other artists have to be played as well... you can't have an act nobody in your town has heard of showing up at your concert, so that's the easiest way to fix that. Want an easy way of guessing who's coming before it's announced? See who jumps in the rotation in a way that isn't being matched by similarly formatted stations in town... those are the guests that are about to be announced.
It's true what you say about requests. Usually, when a good request call comes in, they go to their computer and find the song that they were going to play in the next few hours anyway, and moves it up to be the next song. Nothing added or deleted, just re-arraged. Then they take one of their talk blocks, and move it to just before the song, in which they playback the call, which is edited to fit the allotted time slot. If a song isn't scheduled in their shift, then the DJ is going to have to spend one of their self-selected slots to get the song on the air... which means you have to hope the DJ likes the song too, and also that the DJ you called has enough credibility with his PD to even be granted self-selected slots, most rookies don't have any. Request a song that's not on the station's main playlists... even if they have a song they're not gonna play it for you.
As for mornings, I'd recommend XM. History shows that the majority of listeners like talk-heavy shows in the morning, because they need the news, traffic and want the alleged humor. Usually, after a morning show team has been fired, stations resort to a "More music in the morning!" ad campaign to cover up the hole in their lineup. Never has a station seen a ratings increase from doing that, so inevitably they have to hire another morning zoo.
Cokie Roberts tried something similar (putting on a coat and reporting in front of a blue sceen of Capitol Hill) years ago and got reprimanded for it. I think she may have made a remark about the weather there too. If she got reprimanded I think the radio reporter should too. The difference here is that Cokie didn't tell the bosses what she was doing in advance, Gary's remote setup was promised to him as a perk in his contract. He agreed to anchor from Florida a few weeks a year instead of insisting on having those weeks completely off.
And funny you should mention Dan Rather, he got in a controversy too for reporting in front of a digitaly altered Times Sqaure, link. That wasn't Dan's decision, that was the network. The situation was the New Year's celebrations between 1999 and 2000, and Dan's anchor position overlooked times square, but had the famous Jumbotron in plain view. The CBS bosses didn't like that... because NBC controls the programming on that screen, and there's a nice big NBC logo on top of that screen. The network was afraid that NBC would have the opportunity to flash whatever message they wanted on that screen during CBS live programming, and they were going to run the risk of accidently promoting NBC programs. Therefore, the digital alteration created an animated CBS News sign that covered up the Jumbotron...
What do they use for voice transport? Digital over modems? Typically, it's G.722 over ISDN.
What kinds of applications distribute the various "paper" bits to people at remote locations? Whatever applications are being used in the studio... typically the remote broadcaster logs in using a data channel on the ISDN setup. Basically, there are specialized "show control" software packages for TV and radio that associates scripts with timeslots and estimated reading times.
Does Gary's screen have reminders so that he knows what the temp is in Boston and doesn't slip up? Most likely yes. Most broadcast control programs have a slot on the main screen for the official time and temp at the station's studios, but a cheaper workaround that sometimes is used (even in the main studio) would be WeatherBug. Since WBZ-TV is AWS's Boston TV partner, it'd be easy for him to get a free copy of the no-popup version and then just set it to monitor the WBZ Studio readings. He could then with absolute authority say "It's 6 degrees outside our WBZ studios on Soldiers Field Road."... he didn't say he was there, he just said what the temperature was there.
Does he have a remote console so he can control equipment that's in Boston? Yep, the typical interface is touchscreen-based. Of course, the days of tape playback are practically over in major market radio. It's likely that every element in his show that needs to be recorded has been stored digitally and the system knows where to find it on various hard drives. There is also usually an easy-to-hit 2 or 3 inch button on his desk that is tied into the system, used to indicate that a "live" element has finished and that he wants the next element to begin immediately. (Of course, the next element will only come if it's recorded or opens up the connection to another studio. Network elements that come in live are marked as "hard" start times that can't be moved, only skipped.) Usually, in a complex news show, the same touchscreen interface is duplicated for the sports anchor in his own studio, so he can have direct control over his segments in the program, and there's also an interface for the producers to use.
Are there open source programs to do the job? Nope.
Could you do it over the Internet -- talkers in six cities doing a single interactive broadcast? The Internet is always avoided in such setups. IP protocol is okay, but the public internet has far too much variablity in lag times, and possible unreliablity to be used in broadcasting. That's why ISDN is the weapon of choice, it's a direct-dialed digital connection to the ISDN number of whatever studio you wish, which means the same home-studio can be used for more than one station, and the bandwidth is sure to be circuit-switched on the way there.
Clear Channel never put out a "Banned Songs List" from corperate. What sparked that rumor was the fact that local PDs started contributing song names on a "Songs that it would be a bad idea to play right now..." thread that formed on their intranet message boards. That thread circulated as PDs were rushing to reprogram their computers to avoid playing songs that would either be too depressing or had gained a second meaning because of 9/11. A parellel list of songs that were better to play also got spread arround, and some instant-hits such as a remix of Enya's Only Time with news quotes inserted got created and spread as a result.
There wasn't any order from corperate as much as there was an online groupthink session among the people who had all been tasked with the same responsiblity.
The "ban" on playing the Dixie Chicks was requested by their own fans. See, they lost a lot of fans when their lead singer made a dumb comment in Europe that got reported stateside. Requests and album sales plumeted immedately, and as a result of those drops, they started falling off of radio playlists. You can't be on a Top 40 station if there are 40 songs more popular than you...
When was the last time Dan Rather traveled to be in a hurricane? He used to do that years ago, but now, he sits at his nice calm anchordesk in NYC, and introduces some kid who's actually in the storm area.
Um...Rush Limbaugh doesn't claim to be a local news anchor.
Yep, Rush Limbaugh is not a news anchor. He doesn't report the news, which is the main reason why for the first five minutes of every hour he steps to the side so that a newsbreak can be inserted that does actually report the news. He's a commentator who talks about the news and what his opinions about it are. People can agree or disagree with them, even a person who thinks he sucks but still listens gets counted in the ratings...
Local Clear Channel stations make their own music decisions. We all share our local research, but the company NEVER dictates which songs we play. Period.
Yep. People are all up in arms about the DJs being from out of town, but DJs have had little to no say in what songs get played for years. The computer generates a playlist, with maybe a few holes for requests or DJ selections... any deviations from the computer-asigned schedule are logged and subject to review by the PD after it happens, override the schedule the wrong way and the PD will want to have a talk with the DJ...
Yep, he's been a reporter in the past... but last week he was functioning at an anchor who is never expected to see things first hand, just process and present the reports that other people are producing to make a complete show.
Such slips happen all of the time with small-name radio personalities on small market stations. The most common slip-up is when a planned major event gets canceled at the last minute, while the DJ has already locked-in comments about how great the event was. Really messed up when the DJ says how great a concert was when everybody who had tickets knows it didn't happen...
Nope. Gary's rarely in the same room with most of the reporters he talks with on his morning show, the sports reporter works in another room in the same building, the traffic reporter is somewhere accross town, the weatherperson is from AccuWeather in PA, and any field reporters are of course out in the field.
The content decisions are still being made by editors in Boston... and there's no need to hand pieces of paper to the lead anchor anyway because it's all done on computers anyway. The technology exists to push all of the "data on his desk" to Florida, and for him to send back his voice in high quality...
Yeah, Clear Channel can "cross the line" when Jane from Houston who actually wins the contest gets reported as Jane from Orlando on another station. I don't quite understand why they bother to do that... what's wrong with saying that the "Kiss-FM Radio Network" is what's actually giving away the million...
WBZ's weather reporters never experience our weather either. Gary is the main anchor, he always gets his weather information from an AccuWeather personality, and AccuWeather is centered in PA.
There is another major weather-radio service called Weather Services Corp. That's based out of the Boston area, which like AccuWeather provides weather forcasts delivered by personalties who don't ever actually visit the station's studios, but they never use a national-trademark brand, and they will call their studio anything the station wants them too, such as the "Kiss-FM WeatherDesk".
So, this has actually been going on for decades, it's just that nobody has noticed...
Slashdot Mirror
Yep... and EA's now in a big bind because there isn't much of a "game" to The Sims Online beyond allowing people to express their wacky virtual personalites. They can't limit expression too much without killing the point of the product, but they've got to do something to prevent anarchy from developing... what a mess that they'll either have to find a way out of, or lose the project to failure.
This is the relationship between a services provider and a client, and the political concepts of censorship or free speech have nothing to do with it.
Oh, there's plenty to be discussed about it. In a virtual world, the owners of the servers are the government. People can chose whether or not to immigrate into the community, or whether to leave the community... and those decisions are based heavily on how the virtual government rules the virtual world.
Virtual world admins have god-like powers... they can smite whomever they want to instant "death" within the community, they can award things, they can tax, they can do whatever they want. If they use their powers too much, however, they create a police state that's not much fun to be in. Users move out, that online community's not fun anymore.
However, if the admins don't use their power at all, lowlifes will take over the place, and you'll have whatever levels of porn and spam the software platform allows. The bulk of the users move out, that online community's not fun anymore.
So, there's a balance that needs to be achived. Creative expression has to be tolerated somehow in order for the "game" to be fun, but too much creates an anarchy. How is EA, or any other game owner supposed to manage that? That's a big topic for debate...
"Non-Prophets" is a nice play on words for an anti-CC group. "Phrophet" is the name of the automation software used by nearly all Clear Channel stations.
Right, the break he might have been refering to is from having to lead with the same top story for three consecutive days while he's in sunny Florida...
With apologies to Mr. Cronkite -
And that's the way it is - according to news feeds, the internet, and my web cam.
Cronkite let the CBS News underlings do the dirty work for him. When a sub anchor reported that he was "on assignment", that often should have been written as "on Assignment"...
The difference? "Assignment" was the name he gave to a boat he owned. If he was spending his vacation fishing, the sub anchor would begin the newscast by saying "Walter Cronkite is on Assignment." as the explanation as to where he went. Sounded like he was working, but really he was fishing.
Correct, and if he says "it's 20 below outside the WBZ studios" and it really is, he's telling the truth. One might think that the only way for him to know that exact number is to be at the studios, but they're flat-out wrong... anybody who can download WeatherBug can get the realtime temperature reading from a unit installed outside of the WBZ studios.
I'd think he was well aware to not use "here in Boston" phrase constructions when he was broadcasting from his house in Florida. Technically, he's almost always wrong when he says "here in Boston" because WBZ's main studios are actually in the community of Allston, MA... and their transmitter is actually in Hull, MA. The station is actually licensed to serve the community of Boston, but a radio station doesn't actually have to be located in it's city of licensed, just close enough so that it covers its city with a "city grade" signal quality.
It's been known for quite a while that what you dream about is usually whatever you were thinking about just before you went to sleep. Staring at a photograph is one way to make sure you're thinking about the person you want to dream about... so who needs the gadget?
Actually, he says he's in Boston all of the time, and 100% of the time he says that he's telling the truth. He avoids using "here" phrase constructions when he's in Florida, but that's only four weeks out of the year. (The station likely chose the remote setup instead of giving him 4 extra weeks of vactation...)
I've got to say, sitting here in the Boston media market, I've only seen this story reported nationally. The Boston Globe published the article that started this thread, but it wasn't anywhere near the front page. From that, it got mentions hre on /. and on MSNBC... seems like there's more national interest while us locals know that Gary's always been smart...
The "Dixie Chicks SUCK!" phone calls started the moment the comment was reported... and that was the main cause of the instant radio drops.
They've got several indicators at their disposal...
1. Radio play causes sales, but there's formulas that can convert radio play to an expected quanity for sales... if somebody's getting more sales than the airplay dictates, they're hot. If somebody's getting less, they're not.
2. Radio play causes requests, but again, there's a way to convert what you've played to what you should be getting for requests. Exceed that, you're hot. Fall below that, you're not.
3. Just go out and ask your listeners. Many stations have rate-a-song slots in their nighttime shows where the DJ plays a new song they've just got in and asks the listeners to call in to vote on it. Songs that win instantly join the rotation, songs that lose may never be played on the station again. (Note: I remember hearing that annoying Titanic song get played in such a segment, and get deemed a flop... the station eventually had to add the song when it went mega-hit, but they were notably late in doing so because they had first-hand knowledge that the song wasn't that good, it was just tied to a hit movie.)
4. Just plain common sense comes into play sometimes. Stations very rarely get "negative requests"... somebody calling up to ask that they not play a song. When there are ex-fans of the Dixie Chicks doing that, you don't have to look too far to see that they are not as popular as they were yesterday. They've gotta move down in the rotation, it's just a judgement call whether to drop them completely or just cut their airplay down to a fraction.
Now, there are outside influences that can cause a PD to have to do something non-popular. For example, nearly every big station runs one or two charity benefit concerts per year... the idea being that the station can keep a big chunk of the tickets for themselves to give away free as a contest prize after the show sells out. Typically, a record company will send one hit artist, but also send two or three other acts they want to promote as well. In this situation, the PD's got no choice... they've got to build up the value of the artists that are coming. The star moves up in the rotation, and those two or three other artists have to be played as well... you can't have an act nobody in your town has heard of showing up at your concert, so that's the easiest way to fix that. Want an easy way of guessing who's coming before it's announced? See who jumps in the rotation in a way that isn't being matched by similarly formatted stations in town... those are the guests that are about to be announced.
It's true what you say about requests. Usually, when a good request call comes in, they go to their computer and find the song that they were going to play in the next few hours anyway, and moves it up to be the next song. Nothing added or deleted, just re-arraged. Then they take one of their talk blocks, and move it to just before the song, in which they playback the call, which is edited to fit the allotted time slot. If a song isn't scheduled in their shift, then the DJ is going to have to spend one of their self-selected slots to get the song on the air... which means you have to hope the DJ likes the song too, and also that the DJ you called has enough credibility with his PD to even be granted self-selected slots, most rookies don't have any. Request a song that's not on the station's main playlists... even if they have a song they're not gonna play it for you.
As for mornings, I'd recommend XM. History shows that the majority of listeners like talk-heavy shows in the morning, because they need the news, traffic and want the alleged humor. Usually, after a morning show team has been fired, stations resort to a "More music in the morning!" ad campaign to cover up the hole in their lineup. Never has a station seen a ratings increase from doing that, so inevitably they have to hire another morning zoo.
Cokie Roberts tried something similar (putting on a coat and reporting in front of a blue sceen of Capitol Hill) years ago and got reprimanded for it. I think she may have made a remark about the weather there too. If she got reprimanded I think the radio reporter should too.
The difference here is that Cokie didn't tell the bosses what she was doing in advance, Gary's remote setup was promised to him as a perk in his contract. He agreed to anchor from Florida a few weeks a year instead of insisting on having those weeks completely off.
And funny you should mention Dan Rather, he got in a controversy too for reporting in front of a digitaly altered Times Sqaure, link.
That wasn't Dan's decision, that was the network. The situation was the New Year's celebrations between 1999 and 2000, and Dan's anchor position overlooked times square, but had the famous Jumbotron in plain view. The CBS bosses didn't like that... because NBC controls the programming on that screen, and there's a nice big NBC logo on top of that screen. The network was afraid that NBC would have the opportunity to flash whatever message they wanted on that screen during CBS live programming, and they were going to run the risk of accidently promoting NBC programs. Therefore, the digital alteration created an animated CBS News sign that covered up the Jumbotron...
What do they use for voice transport? Digital over modems?
Typically, it's G.722 over ISDN.
What kinds of applications distribute the various "paper" bits to people at remote locations?
Whatever applications are being used in the studio... typically the remote broadcaster logs in using a data channel on the ISDN setup. Basically, there are specialized "show control" software packages for TV and radio that associates scripts with timeslots and estimated reading times.
Does Gary's screen have reminders so that he knows what the temp is in Boston and doesn't slip up?
Most likely yes. Most broadcast control programs have a slot on the main screen for the official time and temp at the station's studios, but a cheaper workaround that sometimes is used (even in the main studio) would be WeatherBug. Since WBZ-TV is AWS's Boston TV partner, it'd be easy for him to get a free copy of the no-popup version and then just set it to monitor the WBZ Studio readings. He could then with absolute authority say "It's 6 degrees outside our WBZ studios on Soldiers Field Road."... he didn't say he was there, he just said what the temperature was there.
Does he have a remote console so he can control equipment that's in Boston?
Yep, the typical interface is touchscreen-based. Of course, the days of tape playback are practically over in major market radio. It's likely that every element in his show that needs to be recorded has been stored digitally and the system knows where to find it on various hard drives. There is also usually an easy-to-hit 2 or 3 inch button on his desk that is tied into the system, used to indicate that a "live" element has finished and that he wants the next element to begin immediately. (Of course, the next element will only come if it's recorded or opens up the connection to another studio. Network elements that come in live are marked as "hard" start times that can't be moved, only skipped.) Usually, in a complex news show, the same touchscreen interface is duplicated for the sports anchor in his own studio, so he can have direct control over his segments in the program, and there's also an interface for the producers to use.
Are there open source programs to do the job?
Nope.
Could you do it over the Internet -- talkers in six cities doing a single interactive broadcast?
The Internet is always avoided in such setups. IP protocol is okay, but the public internet has far too much variablity in lag times, and possible unreliablity to be used in broadcasting. That's why ISDN is the weapon of choice, it's a direct-dialed digital connection to the ISDN number of whatever studio you wish, which means the same home-studio can be used for more than one station, and the bandwidth is sure to be circuit-switched on the way there.
Clear Channel never put out a "Banned Songs List" from corperate. What sparked that rumor was the fact that local PDs started contributing song names on a "Songs that it would be a bad idea to play right now..." thread that formed on their intranet message boards. That thread circulated as PDs were rushing to reprogram their computers to avoid playing songs that would either be too depressing or had gained a second meaning because of 9/11. A parellel list of songs that were better to play also got spread arround, and some instant-hits such as a remix of Enya's Only Time with news quotes inserted got created and spread as a result.
There wasn't any order from corperate as much as there was an online groupthink session among the people who had all been tasked with the same responsiblity.
The "ban" on playing the Dixie Chicks was requested by their own fans. See, they lost a lot of fans when their lead singer made a dumb comment in Europe that got reported stateside. Requests and album sales plumeted immedately, and as a result of those drops, they started falling off of radio playlists. You can't be on a Top 40 station if there are 40 songs more popular than you...
When was the last time Dan Rather traveled to be in a hurricane? He used to do that years ago, but now, he sits at his nice calm anchordesk in NYC, and introduces some kid who's actually in the storm area.
Um...Rush Limbaugh doesn't claim to be a local news anchor.
Yep, Rush Limbaugh is not a news anchor. He doesn't report the news, which is the main reason why for the first five minutes of every hour he steps to the side so that a newsbreak can be inserted that does actually report the news. He's a commentator who talks about the news and what his opinions about it are. People can agree or disagree with them, even a person who thinks he sucks but still listens gets counted in the ratings...
Local Clear Channel stations make their own music decisions. We all share our local research, but the company NEVER dictates which songs we play. Period.
Yep. People are all up in arms about the DJs being from out of town, but DJs have had little to no say in what songs get played for years. The computer generates a playlist, with maybe a few holes for requests or DJ selections... any deviations from the computer-asigned schedule are logged and subject to review by the PD after it happens, override the schedule the wrong way and the PD will want to have a talk with the DJ...
Yep, he's been a reporter in the past... but last week he was functioning at an anchor who is never expected to see things first hand, just process and present the reports that other people are producing to make a complete show.
Such slips happen all of the time with small-name radio personalities on small market stations. The most common slip-up is when a planned major event gets canceled at the last minute, while the DJ has already locked-in comments about how great the event was. Really messed up when the DJ says how great a concert was when everybody who had tickets knows it didn't happen...
I mean really, does it?
Nope. Gary's rarely in the same room with most of the reporters he talks with on his morning show, the sports reporter works in another room in the same building, the traffic reporter is somewhere accross town, the weatherperson is from AccuWeather in PA, and any field reporters are of course out in the field.
The content decisions are still being made by editors in Boston... and there's no need to hand pieces of paper to the lead anchor anyway because it's all done on computers anyway. The technology exists to push all of the "data on his desk" to Florida, and for him to send back his voice in high quality...
Yeah, Clear Channel can "cross the line" when Jane from Houston who actually wins the contest gets reported as Jane from Orlando on another station. I don't quite understand why they bother to do that... what's wrong with saying that the "Kiss-FM Radio Network" is what's actually giving away the million...
Nope. He's usually in Boston when he does his radio newscasts, but notice that he didn't turn up on WBZ-TV 4 at all last week.
WBZ's weather reporters never experience our weather either. Gary is the main anchor, he always gets his weather information from an AccuWeather personality, and AccuWeather is centered in PA.
There is another major weather-radio service called Weather Services Corp. That's based out of the Boston area, which like AccuWeather provides weather forcasts delivered by personalties who don't ever actually visit the station's studios, but they never use a national-trademark brand, and they will call their studio anything the station wants them too, such as the "Kiss-FM WeatherDesk".
So, this has actually been going on for decades, it's just that nobody has noticed...
WBZ Boston is owned by Infinity Radio, WTTK Boston is owned by Greater Media... it's not just ClearChannel, everybody's doing it.