The recession is over and the motto of radio

Years ago one of the major market radio stations I programmed used syndication tapes from Drake Chenault.

Every week at our studios off City Line Avenue near Philadelphia, a master tape arrived from Canoga Park, CA with the new week

Cumulus and Lew Dickey sure have a way of making people think that their eyes are bigger than their stomach.

Perhaps you

Social media is on the verge of a meltdown in consumer confidence that could totally redefine its role in traditional and new media.

The crisis stems from recent and increasingly numerous revelations that Facebook, MySpace and even Google have played foot loose and fancy free with privacy issues that turned out to matter to hundreds of millions of social network users.

Facebook was recently outed for giving heretofore thought to be private user data to companies for advertising purposes

You often hear me lament the shortsightedness of today

Over the course of each month, many of my readers have a chance to check in with paranormal radio stories that can be so bizarre that they belong in Ripley's Believe It Or Not.

These are real stories from real radio people about unbelievable things that have actually happened in the radio industry.

To give you a comparison, in the book

The last battle is coming between good and evil before the day of judgment.

I call it Armageddon Radio.

For years now I have been warning that the radio industry would forever decline if it did not embrace the digital beyond.

Many of you agree.

Radio CEOs do not.

But now even they cannot dodge the mounting evidence that just running on-air stations will not be good enough to sustain a growth industry.

Don

What a world this is when radio companies file for bankruptcy, turn shareholder investments into worthless paper and then, with the blessing of a judge, start all over again as if nothing happened.

I recently saw Tom Friedman, The New York Times columnist and bestselling author on Charlie Rose the other night.

Friedman said that we have now entered an era when politicians for the first time in history will be taking things away from their constituents rather than giving something to them.

Friedman

The charmed career of Cumulus CEO Lew Dickey may have hit a big bump in the road.

Several current and former Cumulus employees have told Robert Ottinger, the attorney leading a separate employment class action suit against Cumulus for what Ottinger terms

Steve Meyer, who as I have often said is the smartest observer of the record industry, knocked my eyes out in a recent issue of his publication Disc & DAT (Digital Audio Technology).

Yet another study that exonerates filesharing as the culprit in today

Yesterday, I wrote a commentary about Citadel using content from Peak's KMJ, Fresno on its KSFO in San Francisco.

As I pointed out in my piece, Fresno news, weather and even traffic was allegedly being aired in San Francisco unfiltered.

This info came from a radio man -- a good one at that -- with no horse in the Bay Area race who made an honest mistake.

He explains:

"I discovered that an error was made and that my AM in home non-digital studio radio was picking up a multi path of KMJ right next to the KSFO frequency. I live in Marin County and it just didn

Imagine not having to tune in to a terrestrial radio show from 5 to 10 am but still hear the things about radio you used to love.

Instead -- a personality or team of personalities making content available on mobile devices like the iPod, iPad, iPhone, smartphones, car entertainment centers and whatever other technology may surface in the months and years ahead.

This terrestrial show does not exist on-the-air. Just as a cornucopia of features for your favorite mobile Internet device.

You

If we

I got a kick out of some of the radio industry comment that Apple was shuttering recently acquired Palo Alto-based Lala

My wife and I waited by the door for the FedEx delivery late last week.

We were expecting our 3G iPads. Birthdays seem to come so quickly but iPads seem to take forever. That

So, if we are to believe the announcement yesterday, Regent CEO Bill Stakelin and CFO Tony Vasconcellos have been shown the door.

Don't get me wrong -- it was all nicey nice. "They have chosen this moment to move on" is what the new owners said.

Regent emerged from bankruptcy with a group of investment capitalists running the show. After all, they traded debt for equity and became the owners -- a familiar scenario in radio these days.

Steven Price (industry veteran Bob Price's son) is the new CEO and chairman.

Stuart Rosenstein the new CFO.

Thus, Oaktree Capital has installed its own management with the&hellip

So what is Lew Dickey up to?

Get the feeling that there is an end game going on and the industry, shareholders and Wall Street are being distracted?

Try this one on for size.

That new Cumulus Investment Partners, the currently unfunded, publicly touted new venture with Crestview, is a smokescreen for eventually retiring Cumulus debt and taking the company private.

Private is in -- Jeff Smulyan finally worked a deal with investors and shareholders last week. But more on Emmis in a moment.

Dickey, who has earned the nickname "Tricky" Dickey, looks around at buying Salem and/or Radio One with play money --&hellip