In what is no doubt the most anyone has ever talked about radio since…um…I don’t know…jesus radio metaphors are hard…probably because no one cares about radio. Except for the St. Louis sports media who still thinks its really really really really really important.

As first reported today on STLtoday.com, the team announced late this afternoon that it will return its radio broadcasts to KMOX next season after five years at KTRS, where they had been airing after a 51-year run at KMOX.

The Cardinals choose KMOX over the other options of staying at KTRS and moving to sports talk upstart WXOS, 101.1 FM saying “fan sentiment and feedback” was a major factor in the decision. Some would say they choose wrong, that AM radio, despite KMOX’s legendary signal, is somehow more dead than FM radio. True, but our initial guess is that the Cardinals asked that very question and KMOX’s owner CBS Radio had answer.

Our initial guess seems to be lining up with the rumors we have heard after talking to a few people after the news broke. Our guess? CBS promised the Cardinals that they too would be on the more robust FM signal soon. How? By killing KEZK and moving KMOX to 102.5 FM, leaving 112o AM to be a more sports-heavy talk sister station to KMOX, and of course, simulcast Cardinal games on both signals.

With that information in hand, the Cardinals had the perfect answer. Going to KMOX certainly wins by the old-folks crowd, and the move to FM nullifies any benefits that WOXS was offering. No brainer.

…you know what would be super cool though, is if someone could invent a device that also broadcasts video of the game along with the audio. That would really be something! You wouldn’t want Mike Shannon on there though, he gets a little sloppy. You’d want someone smooth, well spoken, but knows when to shut up and, of course, above reproach…eh, screw it. This guy will do:

via STLToday

#1 New York (JFK, LaGuarida, Newark)

#2 Los Angeles

#3 St. Louis

#4 Washington D.C.

#5 Boston

Those are the five worst airports in these United States, as voted on by the readers of “Travel and Leisure”.  Hey, at least its not about crime this time!

Maybe folks just miss TWA: its old home, Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, is dreary to AFC readers on a number of fronts. It ranks last for its airline clubs—you’ll find only one American Admirals Club—and its food and shopping rank 28th and 29th, respectively. Plus, you’ll pay $8 for WiFi.

Can’t argue with most of that. The food does indeed suck and any airport that charges for WiFi access should be taken out back and shot, and we know all too well about the craptasticness of the shopping at Lambert (JoeSportsFan Figures Out Airport Shops Suck Balls).

The good news is that if you are from St. Louis you are probably saying “Eh, its not that bad.” because you have the luxury of never having to be trapped in it, while many people outside of St. Louis don’t even know what Lambert is like because nothing flies through here ever any more. We hear Delta is thinking about just taking Labert out of the equation totally, making St. Louis visitors just jump out of the plane instead of choosing to actually stop here. Granted, that’s Delta where most would rather just jump out anyway instead of being treated to the free, and mandatory, anal rapping service Delta gives out these days when traveling with them.

Ah crap. We told you this news but we weren’t standing in front of Lambert when we did it. Is that OK? Did you still understand it? We know that apparently most TV news thinks your so stupid you can’t get it unless you are told news about something that they are standing right in front of. *cough* KMOV *cough*

“Lambert Airport was rated the third worst airport. This is an airport behind me…actually its Lambert Airport. The thing I’m talking about.”

Ooooooohhhhhhhhh…got it. A first I had no idea what you were talking about, but standing in front of it with all the wind and stuff really helped. I’m still a little confused though, any chance you could show me stock footage of people traveling?

There we go! It’s all so clear now! Can’t wait to hear more tonight at 10.

via Yahoo! Travel

Short version: KSDK reporter Frank Wiley was on assignment and saw someone with a flat tire. He helped them out. Lets all congratulate Wiley on winning the “Way to Not Be A Dick! What Do You Want a Cookie Now?!” Award that KSDK is intent on giving him.

Lets run KSDK’s “story” about the amazing events through our translate-o-tron 3000 here at Punching Kitty HQ:

It’s not really news,

Good, we agree on something.

…but we wanted to applaud the work of our colleague, reporter Frank Wiley.

We filmed it too. Our boss hopes this is a tax write-off.

Frank took time from his hectic day to rush to the aid of a woman in a Manchester neighborhood who had a flat tire on her SUV.

Frank wasn’t an asshole and helped a completely non-threatening soccer mom with a flat tire. He jumped over 10 line-up homeless guys to “rush to her aid” too! It was amazing!

Even though he was wearing a dress shirt and tie, Frank wasn’t afraid to roll up his sleeves and get a little dirty to help the woman get her tire changed and be on her way.

By that we mean he literally rolled up his sleeves. It’s not a euphemism for something much more difficult. All he really did was roll his sleeves up.

Way to go Frank!

God August is boring.

Personally we liked the charm of the odd little building KDHX’s radio operation has been housed in, but they sure didn’t. A big grant and plans for a fund raiser later and they are moving north up Grand to the Grand Center.

A long-time volunteer and patron made the anonymous gift in honor of the station’s late manager Larry Weir, who passed away in January,said station spokeswoman Birgit Spears.

The move will consolidate KDHX’s radio operations, which have been inside a 100-year-old bakery building at 3504 Magnolia Ave. in south St. Louis for the past 23 years, and its administrative office and TV and film operations at 625 N. Euclid Ave. in the Central West End into one space.

The St. Louis business Journal even included some bitchin Photoshop action as to what the building will look like:

It’s like staring in to the future. A future that clearly includes a society no longer bound to the previous rules of correctly aligned build board antennas. It’s beautiful.

After upgrading the building and doing the actual move to the new building (you think you have a hard time finding enough boxes) they don’t plan on settling in for another 18 months, but when they do the plan is to have a cafe on the first floor and a small concert venue inside suitable for all your hipster concerts where some bearded guy wiggles around for a while and then just stops while everyone in the audience is thinking “Wow. What an incredible artist!” while fingering the holes in their Salvation Army sweater they bought from that check their parents sent them to get them through the next few months they are spending trying to “find themselves”. It’s ok. They’ve got their Philosophy major with a minor in Eastern European Music History to fall back on.

Seriously. Someone explain to us how that is, in any way, entertaining or enlightening. If the floor was electrified…then maybe.

via St. Louis Business Journal

More: Check out when our editor appeared on KDHX radio last month.

The site BestofStLouis.com is gone. There isn’t even a traditional “It’s over” page…it’s just gone. The domain now goes to an all-ad page.

What happened? Lawyers and copyright law happened, and the heat came from the Riverfront Times.

As we’re sure you’re aware, each year the Riverfront Times puts out its “Best of St. Louis” issue and because of that believes it holds the rights to the term “Best of St. Louis”. That seems week to us that someone can own something as generic as that, but we aren’t lawyers and the Riverfront Times’ parent company Village Voice Media didn’t bother to call and ask our opinion, so they went ahead and sent one of those oh-so-fun legal notices to the two guys that ran BestofStLouis.com. They were “graciously” given until September 1st to take their site down.

Just as they should have, BestofStLouis.com posted the letter on their site, but instead of trying to fight this, or at least work with Village Voice Media, they just hung it up claiming they were “hacked”. Pseudo-claiming the hack came from some mysterious Village Voice Media executive order.

[F]aced with the prospect of trying to resurrect our site from its hacked and smoldering ashes only to tear it down by September 1st to comply with a legal order we have no resources to fight, we said “fuck it.”

*Sigh*

You lost us guys.

BestofStLouis.com, run by Max Bemberg, Ben DeMeyer and Alex Luft, were standing on that methaphorical street corner saying the RFT was bullying them and people were feeling it, getting behind the little guy…and then they pushed it…”Oh and we think they had hackers attack our website.” they might as well have said “…once the RFT rolls out their alien news print brainwashing technology their plan will be complete!”

To the Riverfront Time’s credit they did post about this item on their DailyRFT blog last Friday and allowed comments which, overall, carried a mixed sentiment.

Meanwhile at Punching Kitty headquarters (…which is a mountain with a giant kitty-head carved in to it. It’s over by Grand and Natural Bridge Road, you wouldn’t have seen it.)

One more St. Louis website bites the dust and we take a step closer to being that web-version of Boardwalk with 2 big red hotels on it. A few more fake cease-and-desist letters and us, along with our army of hackers, will rule the St. Louis website world!!

Oh, and CityTV with your “Best of STL”?! Nice try. We all know “STL” is just short of “St. Louis”! You’re next.

Though the usually prompt expunging of a jettisoned host from a radio website still hasn’t happened as of this writing, Dan Ceasar of STLToday.com is reporting that his fellow columnist Bryan Burwell has been yanked from his own show on the FM sport talk station, 101 ESPN.

Sources said the move was ratings-related and not tied to any other issue, and that Burwell still could be involved in Rams game day programming. It is not known who – or if anyone – will replace Burwell alongside Bob Stelton in the 9-11 a.m weekday slot.

Stelton is expected to be off the show next week as fill-in hosts man the slot before a re-tooled program in unveiled after that.

The midday show has been the shakiest of any of the 101 ESPN shows from the very beginning with the odd hire and pairing of Fox Sports Midwest’s Pat Parris with Byran Burwell. Parris was later let go, leaving Burwell to his own devices with a smattering of co-hosts for a while until they found a “permeant” solution which ended up being out-of-towner Bob Stelton. Now Burwell himself appears to be out and its hardly a surprise. What is a surprise though is that his management doomed him to this fate with an ill-advised show change.

Burwell was always the standard “overbaring voice” that people like to experiment on air with and usually that meant teaming him with someone that tones him down (enter Pat Parris) since he, despite being a nice guy personally in our interactions with him, comes off as overly douchey on the air. It’s tough to tone down the constant name dropping and condescending blather, but that’s the right instinct since Burwell can be counted on to at least get a conversation going despite what you think of his side of the argument.

Recently though, with the pairing of his current partner, Bob Stelton, the direction seemed to have changed. It seemed as though he was being told to amp up his superiority act with joke setups by Stelton about Burwell’s ego and even the show’s imaging (sound bytes and bumpers) reenforcing the role. Bad move. The chances we had to listen to the 9a-11a broadcast were admittedly slim, but we did give it a chance on more than few occasions and to say it was “unlistenable” would be overly nice.

Stelton seems to have some talent though, despite being drug in to this SNL-sketch of a sports show. Hopefully they can go a different direction when the show returns and chill out on the self-inflated importance schtick for a mid-day “everyone just got to work so no one is listening” broadcast.

Maybe 101 ESPN can dust off that JC Corcoran silhouette again!

Friday afternoon the word started trickling out that local group, Grand Slam Sports’ bid to buy the “other” sports talk radio station in town, KFNS (590 AM), became official. Not only that, Grand Slam Sports also announced they had purchased the local sports blog JoeSportsFanSTL.com. Their bid to buy the other other sports talk station you haven’t heard of KSLG (1380 AM) is still in the works.

Grand Slam Sports, which consists of a group of local investors, bought KFNS from Big League Broadcasting for $1.4 million.

Greene also announced Friday that Grand Slam Sports acquired JoeSportsFanSTL.com and will partner with site founders Josh Bacott and Matt Sebek to provide St. Louis sports content on a daily basis. The content from JoeSportsFanSTL.com will appear daily on KFNS.

The announcement was all but official about buying KFNS especially since the Atlanta-based group Big League Broadcasting has been trying to unload that property for some time now. Also, it was great to hear the guys from JoeSportsFanSTL.com getting some well-deserved jack to be officially apart of KFNS, but this development wasn’t shocking since Grand Slam Sports’ face-man Dave Greene has had a long-standing relationship with JoeSportsFan’s Josh Bacott and Matt Sebek.

What is surprising is the amount of money the Grand Slam Sports team is throwing around these days.

$1.4 million for KFNS…throw in a few grand for JoeSportsFanSTL.com…KSLG is in the crapper, sure, but even the price for the “stick” (the rights and hardware to broadcast) alone will be quite a bit, currently rumored to be in the $350k neighborhood. Throw in the STL Sports Magazine, and you’re looking at a lot of money invested in radio and magazines.  Two of the crappiest areas to have money in.  Anyone know if Greene has any interest in buying this steam engine factory I have for sale?

Kidding aside, his ventures must be doing well enough to fund his 1+ Million purchases last week, we just couldn’t ge comfortable being in that boat, even with one-third of the sports radio dog fight out of commission. 101 ESPN has clamped down on the sport radio market and their grip might tighten if they get the rights to co-broadcast Cardinal games next season. Greene has said all along though, that its money that is the measure, not ratings. Ratings may not matter today, but don’t they predict tomorrow? Greene’s efforts to get bloggers and the InsideSTL partnership aboard show he’s at least aware of the fact that radio and print alone don’t make much of an empire, a sinking radio ship (that can’t be heard come nightfall) needs more than just a couple of internet life vests.

…unless they wanna buy us. Then forget that crap. Go AM radio!

via St. Louis Business Journal

KSDK made one hell of a production effort for one of their lovely little in-house stand-ups during a recent local news broadcast about the recent might-have-happened-but-who-knows school “shooting” incident involving Parkway Central at the little moron’s Facebook page. They even went to the trouble of bringing up that very Facebook profile in question, blowing it up on the large video monitor beside the reporter.

One thing though: He’s an uncharged minor. You aren’t supposed to be blasting his name everywhere!

It’s cool though, they thought about that little fact…about 5 seconds too late.

Reporter: [Points to screen left of camera] Now this is the profile page in question.

[Camera pans to screen showing full view of profile, including name and photo]

Reporter: …actually, lets come back to that because…uh…come back to me.

[Camera returns to reporter]

Reporter: We are going to protect this student’s name…uh…because he has not been charged.

Thanks KSDK. That’s probably all the “protecting” the kid can take today.

We aren’t sure of the ramifications for their quick legal blunder, but even it amounts to nothing, this is still pretty bad. We also still can’t figure out why they would put the profile up on the big screen if they knew they shouldn’t be showing it. In our mind, everything was cool until the minute they showed that boy’s name and some old guy in the back that’s worked there for years and hasn’t talked in months yelled out “You can’t do that! It’s agains the law!” Old guys always know the law better than anyone. Probably why the always vote and read the news and stuff. We don’t have time for that crap because of all the loud music we listen to while we horseplay.

What?! Transcripts are good enough you say? Good thing our eagle-eyed tip-daddy managed to grab a little video evidence of the “minor” mistake (Click through the jump to see the video)

Read the rest of this entry »

Starting Wednesday, the native son of St. Louis and rapper, will be the drive-time DJ on Hot 104.1 for anywhere from 10 to 16 weeks.

In a related, but up until now completely unreported, story Nelly has also invented a time machine. Probably. He must have. Why else would he think being a DJ is still cool?!

We talked to a scientist about this bizarre move and amazing technological discovery.

Punching Kitty: Dr. Scientist, do you think Nelly has successfully made a rift in the time-space continuum?

Dr. Scientist: Yes. He must have. There’s just not other reasonable way to explain it.

PK: That’s a pretty bold claim. Do you have any actual proof.

Dr. Scientist: To be under the assumption that being a DJ or Disk Jockey is still cool, Nelly must have traveled to the 70s, which is wear we started our research. Sure enough, after only initial research, we found this old still from the show WKRP in Cincinnati that clearly shows Nelly in the background soaking up the cool DJ vibes.

Nelly also managed to get in to the original version of “The Longest Yard”. No one seemed to notice however.

PK: Amazing! One question arrises though. If Nelly is now back in the “present” time, why hasn’t he realized this idea sucks yet?

Dr. Scientist: It appears a side-effect of time travel that although your body comes back right away, your brain can be “left behind” so to speak. This appears to be what is happening with Nelly. It’s really sad and only going to get sadder when the children of St. Louis hear this and just won’t be able to figure out how to get “104.1″ on their iPod.

PK: Yes, that will be sad. Thank  you Dr. Scientist.

Dr. Scientist: You’re welcome. Also you are awesome.

PK: Thanks, we know.

Dr. Scientist: You are way cooler than STLToday. Those asshats steal ideas and never source anything.

PK: Totally.

via STLToday

We know what you are thinking: “Gosh I wish there were more shows about football on, and specifically shows about the worst team in the league.”

Well buddy, we have a surprise for you!

KSDK-TV said Tuesday that it will launch a new, half-hour Sunday morning sports program in September as part of a new agreement with the St. Louis Rams.

Tentatively titled “Rams Tailgate,” the magazine-type program will showcase the lives of Rams players and coaches both on and off the field, the television station said, and “go beyond the traditional X’s and O’s of typical football pregame programs.”

See the marketing magic here is telling everyone it won’t be the same football show and then just make what we all know they will make: 30 minutes of Frank Cusumano blathering on about how excite Mike Martz was.

The need for this show arrived when KSDK realized that once the Cardinal’s season was over they had no way to interrupt good sports coverage with the crappiest sports coverage as possible just long enough to ruin the sporting event you can only watch on their station.

Well played.

via St. Louis Business Journal