Interesting week.

This week, US commercial on-air radio (it's not enough to just say "radio" anymore) proved that it is indeed bouncing off the walls of its box these days. The buzz was all about what Infinity radio's going to do to replace Howard Stern. It's a big deal to Infinity and the non-Infinity stations who carried him--millions of bucks on the line. Even though Stern is a mere thin demographic slice of baloney, delivering maybe three or four percent shares of audience in his markets. Still, in New York or Houston, that's a lot of ciphers, thus worth millions in the grand scheme of radio things. Not only has Infinity found several carousers to try out on the air for a seat on Howard's whoopie cushion, they're flipping several of their Howard stations to talk. Talk on FM. My oh my. Revolutionary, no?

The real news broke yesterday, in the Boston Globe--it'll take a while to reach the radio trades--all those guys were already at whatever got-fired party was on. Radio One, the African-American-owned station group, and Reach Media (Tom Joyner) are starting up an Af-Am talk radio network in January, starring Al Sharpton, among others. What took them so long? I'll venture a guess: they figure, now, they own enough stations to make money at it, and, who knows, with fear and loathing of satellite radio becoming a factor in stick-radio boardrooms, they may even land some Whitey-owned stations to carry their programming. It is dawning on Marconi-radio operators that there may be African-Americans living in their towns, and a few Hispano-Americans as well. Who knew? Besides, this novel phenomenon, Talk on FM, seems to be about to take off.