Small radio station forced to go silent after ‘unbelievable’ theft of giant tower, which would cost over $100,000 to replace
An Alabama radio station has been forced to temporarily shut down after thieves stole a 200ft radio tower.
WJLX, a station in Jasper, Alabama, was ordered to go off air by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) after thieves took the station’s AM tower last week, the Guardian first learned.
Continue reading...Rt Rev Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani tells Desert Island Discs how she came to UK at 14 after deadly ambush of elder brother
The Bishop of Chelmsford has told of how her brother was murdered in the aftermath of the Iranian revolution, leading her to flee to Britain as a child.
On Sunday, the Rt Rev Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani will tell BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs about the day her brother Bahram, 24, was killed in an ambush on 6 May 1980, when she was 14.
Continue reading...Sacking of star presenter over pay scandal stirs debate about his treatment by Irish broadcaster
Ireland’s national broadcaster faces an uncertain future after axing its star presenter, Ryan Tubridy, in a scandal over under-declared payments.
RTÉ surprised the public and divided opinion by announcing Tubridy would not return to the airwaves, capping two months of turmoil over accounting and governance practices that has cast doubt on the organisation’s future funding.
Continue reading...From next Monday, listeners can relive songs from the past three decades including Denis Leary’s Asshole, the first winner
The ABC’s youth broadcaster Triple J has found a home for its archive of 30 years’ worth of its beloved annual music countdown – a whole new radio station.
The station, Triple j Hottest, will play on repeat the songs Australians voted into the hottest 100 since it began counting down the most popular songs of the previous 12 months in 1993.
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Continue reading...Writer of comic medical memoir This is Going to Hurt reveals surrogacy on BBC’s Desert Island Discs
Adam Kay, the author of This is Going to Hurt, the bestselling “secret diary” of a junior doctor, is now the father of two babies, he has revealed.
Kay, who was portrayed by Ben Whishaw in the Bafta-winning BBC1 adaptation of his comic memoir, said life with his husband, TV producer James Farrell, has been “absolutely transformed for the better” by the arrival through surrogacy of their two children.
Continue reading...The broadcaster left Radio 4’s Saturday Live in March after 12 years
The Rev Richard Coles has said he “felt rather hurtled towards the exit” after leaving the BBC this year.
The broadcaster, 61, stepped down from his Radio 4 programme Saturday Live in March after 12 years.
Continue reading...The actor, now recovered, tells BBC’s Desert Island Discs he became ‘very sneaky’ about his drinking in the early 2000s
Simon Pegg faced his own mission impossible, tackling both his addiction and eventual recovery, while working on the major Hollywood film franchise alongside Tom Cruise, he will explain in a revealing radio interview on Sunday morning.
Speaking of a secret reliance upon alcohol that he hid while working on film sets in the early 2000s, Pegg admits: “You become very sneaky when you have something like that in your life.”
Continue reading...Comedian broke down in tears live on air as he told listeners his friend was involved in serious road accident
Frank Skinner told listeners to his Saturday radio show that his friend and former co-host Gareth Richards is fighting for his life after a car crash.
The 66-year-old comedian and broadcaster broke down in tears as he revealed that Richards was in a “very big road accident” on Monday.
Continue reading...League of Gentlemen star’s two programmes are part of a rich seam of shows about the supernatural this year
This year’s Christmas TV and radio schedules feature more spooky and supernatural content than before the pandemic, reflecting a hunger for answers during uncertain times or grief for loved ones.
That’s according to Sherlock and League of Gentlemen writer and actor Mark Gatiss, who will be appearing in two ghostly programmes over the Christmas period.
Continue reading...Long-time presenter will share her thoughts on the Queen’s funeral in BBC festive schedule highlight
The turntables will be turned on Kirsty Young this Christmas Day, the BBC has revealed, when the former Desert Island Discs presenter is to be asked to choose eight of her favourite pieces of music as a castaway on the famous show.
Young, who has marooned almost 500 other guests on the fictional island in her time, revealed this weekend that she found it strange to be at the other end of the famous Radio 4 format: “It was a slightly discombobulating and thoroughly enjoyable experience,” she said, adding: “Although making anyone narrow down their favourite discs to just eight is frankly unreasonable. It’ll never catch on.”
Continue reading...Kyle & Jackie O Show radio host reveals on air she is ‘struggling with this fatigue’ and has received medical advice to stop working
Radio host Jackie O is stepping away from her long-running breakfast show with co-host Kyle Sandilands in order to recover from health issues months after contracting Covid-19.
While presenting the Kyle & Jackie O Show on KIIS FM on Monday, Jackie O, real name Jackie Henderson, said she had been struggling to recover after she contracted Covid-19 earlier this year, and that she had received medical advice to stop working in order to address an enduring cough and fatigue.
Continue reading...Exclusive: cost-cutting plans would leave local stations in England with hardly any programmes made for their own listeners
BBC local radio stations could be left with just a handful of programmes specific to their area under proposals set to be announced this week.
A fresh round of BBC cuts is due to be announced on Monday, with sources telling the Guardian it will herald the end of most local radio stations as truly distinctive standalone outlets.
Continue reading...DJ, whose last track on his ‘big show’ was Queen’s Radio Ga Ga, will continue to broadcast on the BBC
Steve Wright has signed off from his final Radio 2 afternoon show with the DJ thanking his listeners for tuning in for the last 23 years.
He played out with Queen’s Radio Ga Ga and its final lyrics: “You had your time, you had the power, you’ve yet to have your finest hour.” As the music faded, Wright said: “Those are the closing moments of Steve Wright in the Afternoon on Radio 2.”
Continue reading...Presenter also admits the reason for his departure was new BBC schedule for Sunday afternoon show
Paul O’Grady thanked his listeners and said he can now “run free” as he signed off from his final BBC Radio 2 show on Sunday.
O’Grady, 67, had hosted the Sunday afternoon programme for nearly 14 years, before a schedule shake-up meant he shared the hosting role with comic Rob Beckett, swapping every 13 weeks.
Continue reading...Rise in listening hours down to BBC budget cuts and rivals’ investment in marketing
Radio fans spent more time listening to commercial stations than the BBC over the first part of the summer – for the first time since the 1990s – as deep-pocketed rivals invest heavily in marketing, poaching talent and launching new services.
Continued budget cuts at the BBC have hampered the corporation’s ability to invest in its own services and retain talent with big names from Chris Moyles, Chris Evans, Eddie Mair and, more recently, Andrew Marr, Jon Sopel and Emily Maitlis signing lucrative deals to move to commercial radio rivals.
Continue reading...Was it a protest by staff or marketing for a change of programming? Listeners to Kiss Radio 104.9 FM had plenty of time to wonder
Early on Wednesday morning, someone at a pop and soft rock station in Vancouver, Canada, began playing the song Killing in the Name by Rage Against the Machine.
Then they played it again.
Continue reading...Website reportedly available at only 17% of normal levels in Russia, hours after broadcaster revives radio technology to reach Ukraine and parts of Russia
Access to BBC websites has been restricted in Russia, hours after the corporation brought back its shortwave radio service in Ukraine and Russia to ensure civilians in both countries can access news during the invasion.
State communications watchdog Roskomnadzor restricted access to BBC Russia’s online presence, as well as Radio Liberty and the Meduza media outlet, the state-owned Russian RIA news agency reported on Friday.
Continue reading...The unique Gladys Palmera archive may cross the Atlantic from Madrid to secure a permanent base
On a hillside an hour from Madrid, not far from the sepulchral splendour of the Escorial monastery, with its royal tombs, imperial maps and sacred relics, lies another, rather less austere, treasure house.
The Gladys Palmera collection, kept in a sprawling, tropical-hued complex crammed with 1950s Mexican film posters and prowled by the odd decorative monkey and jaguar, is the largest private archive of Latin American music in the world.
Continue reading...He was the shellshocked genius who channelled his anarchic brilliance into The Goon Show. Ian Hislop and Nick Newman explain why they’ve written a play about Spike Milligan – while comedians remember a legend
The tortured lives of comedians form a biographical genre all of their own; there’s always an audience for the tears of a clown. No wonder Nick Newman and Ian Hislop chose Spike Milligan as the subject of their new play. Milligan, who died 20 years ago next month, is the troubled comedy genius to end them all. Shellshocked in the second world war, repeatedly admitted to hospital for mental ill health, subjected to electroconvulsive therapy, and increasingly embittered as his career failed to deliver on early promise – the Spike Milligan sad-clown drama writes itself.
“But we didn’t want to do that,” says Newman. “We wanted to ask: how did he come to create these brilliant things?” Their play – a cheerful act of ancestor-worship by by Private Eye’s editor and its eminent cartoonist – is about the first three years (1951-54) of The Goon Show, as its chief writer Milligan battles the BBC to get his vision on air. “It’s: will he survive the fallout from the war?,” says Newman, “and will he crack radio?” And, “spoiler alert!,” chimes in Hislop. “Milligan wins! We just wanted to have a play where he wins.”
Continue reading...Did the iconic three-note sequence come from Stravinsky, the Muppets or somewhere else? Our writer set out to – dun, dun duuuun! – reveal the mystery
There’s surely only one thing that unites Russian composer Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, the 1974 comedy horror Young Frankenstein and The Muppets’ most recent special on Disney+. Regrettably, it is not Kermit the Frog. The thing that appears in all of these works has no easily recognisable familiar name, although it is perhaps one of the most recognisable three-beat musical phrases in history. It starts with a dun; it continues with a dun; it ends with a duuun!
On screen, a dramatic “dun, dun duuun” has appeared in everything from Disney’s Fantasia to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air to The IT Crowd. In 2007, a YouTuber scored a video of a melodramatic prairie dog with the three beats, earning over 43m views and a solid place in internet history. Yet though many of us are familiar with the sound, no one seems to know exactly where it came from. Try to Google it and … dun, dun, duuun! Its origins are a mystery.
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