Weird Wonderful World

Regular radioinfo contributor Ian MacRae posts industry news that comes into the categories of rumour, gossip, scandal and radio people behaving badly. Macca encourages you to submit anything you think fits and is keen to receive any feedback on stuff you see here. You can contact him at [email protected]
The UK government has cancelled its initial plan of completely discontinuing the use of FM and AM radio stations and replacing them strictly with DAB digital radio. Licenses for analogue radio stations will now be given an extension of 10 years, according to a government statement.
This will allow older cars with radio systems...
A North Texas radio station that the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles determined had call letters that were too "vulgar" to put on a personalised license plate finally has those formerly vulgar letters proudly affixed to its one station vehicle.
Late last year KGAF station manager Steve Eberhart started the process, applying to have KGAF on a...
In a complaint filed in Cook County Circuit Court in Illinois, WLS-AM, Chicago morning drive personality Erich “Mancow” Muller is being sued by James MacDonald, the former pastor of the Harvest Bible Chapel church. MacDonald is seeking $50,000 in compensatory damages and punitive damages to be determined at trial.
...
U.K.community radio station Fiesta FM, which broadcasts to the Latin American, Spanish and Portuguese communities in Southampton, issued an on-air apology four months after playing a song that contained the F-word.
Finding the station in breach of the Ofcom code, the regulator reports that it had played the album version of The Beautiful South’s ‘...
A community radio station which broadcast an advert for a supermarket’s new sandwich in its news bulletin has been ruled in breach of the Ofcom code.
Radio St Austell Bay in Cornwall included promotion for Morrisons’ new ‘Ham, egg and chips’ flavoured sandwich in the 11am bulletin with the newsreader saying: “Supermarket...
Classic FM’s breakfast host Tim Lihoreau completed his challenge to pull a 400lb (182kg) piano almost five miles across central London.
Tim pulled the upright piano from Classic FM’s studios in Leicester Square to the Royal Albert Hall, which was hosting the station’s Classic FM Live concert.
At 10am, Tim was waved off...
The annual planting of flags representing each of the lives lost in the 9/11 terrorist attack was threatened this year by the city of Des Moines claiming a lack of enough flags and volunteers.
Confronted with the city's claim, afternoon host on news-talk WHO, Simon Conway, determined not to allow anything to stand in the way of the...
TuneIn has announced that the BBC was pulling its domestic streams from its service. The change will only impact UK listeners of live radio streams and won't effect BBC Podcasts.
The BBC's departure from TuneIn is just one of many recent actions it's taken this year to control how listeners consume its content. Earlier this year, the BBC left Google's...
The UK’s Capital network has been found in breach of two Ofcom rules for broadcasting a pre-recorded offensive item twice in the same breakfast show.
Content with the offensive language, (an F bomb), was broadcast in a segment at 6.10am, for which the breakfast presenter apologised.
The exact same content, a prank call, was then broadcast again at 8.15...
Three radio stations in Panama City, Florida, classic rock WRBA-FM country WKNK-FM and adult hits WASJ-FM, will broadcast portions of speeches by President Trump each hour through the 2020 election, says owner Samuel Rogatinsky.
The stations were all knocked off the air after Hurricane Michael damaged...
A Florida radio station is in the news again thanks to a controversial contest.
For the second year in a row, Fort Myers's 103.9 is giving away a round of in vitro fertilization for a couple struggling with infertility.
The man behind the giveaway, host Jason “Big Mama” Jones said that he and his wife came up with the...
John Humphrys was given the shock of his life on BBC 4 as he interviewed a Cambridge University economist who suddenly stripped naked in the Radio 4 studio.
Dr Victoria Bateman, (partially pictured), a fellow in economics at Gonville and Caius College, who regularly delivers lectures in the nude, surprised the veteran host...
A British radio presenter who left her show while it was on air and was found dead at home hours later had taken her own life, an inquest has heard.
Vicki Archer, 41, left work mid-shift during the BBC radio drivetime show.
She had emailed a colleague at BBC Radio Shropshire to say she was feeling upset and left about...
Two men have been arrested for the murder of British radio presenter Gavin Ford (pictured) in Lebanon.
Mr Ford, 53, was reportedly found bludgeoned and strangled with his hands tied behind his back at his apartment in a mountain town close to the capital Beirut.
The suspects, both Syrian, were arrested in...
Deke Duncan (pictured) has been broadcasting his radio station to an audience of one for 44 years.
As a 29-year-old, Duncan began running his radio station from a garden shed in Hertfordshire in the 1970s. His set-up began broadcasting as Radio 77 and featured its own jingles. He called in friends to help maintain its dawn-to-midnight weekend...
Presenter Jeremy Vine (pictured) says BBC Radio 2's “Drivetime” show should be renamed because it celebrates "a form of transport that kills 1,700 people a year.
Sara Cox is set to replace the current co-presenters as host of the show, which runs between 17:00 and 19:00 GMT, in 2019.
Vine, who hosts his own Radio 2...
BBC Radio 1 DJ Charlie Sloth (born Ian Paul Rouillon) has left the station after jumping on stage and swearing at a fellow presenter during an awards ceremony.
He had been due to leave his weekday evening show The 8th in the coming weeks but his time with the station has come to an immediate end after the incident....
A local BBC presenter said he has received death threats online after being mistaken for a French rapper who was accused of racism.
Radio Norfolk presenter Nick Conrad, shares a name with a provocative French rapper, who released a music video called Pendez Les Blancs - which translates as "hang the whites".
The...
There's another job for a radio reporter just opened up in Somalia. The job is no longer held by Abdirizak Said Osman (pictured), because he's been stabbed to death by unknown attackers at around 11 p.m. as he left Voice of Peace, a local radio station in the city of Galkayo.
Apparently Osman had recently done several...
The Global group has been found in breach of two Broadcasting Code rules for playing a song containing two offensive words a total of seven times in one week on Heart Extra.
The song in question – "All the Stars" by Kendrick Lamar – was only taken off rotation when the station was alerted to the broadcast of offensive language by a listener. The...