Posted on 07/13/2003 5:58:57 PM PDT by ConservativeMan55
UPDATE: 2,100 WORD CORRECTION: NOT AGAIN: NEW YORK TIMES PREPARES TO EXPLAIN ERRONEOUS STORY; PAPER CLAIMED MUSIC CHIEF DEFAULTED, LOST CONTROL OF LABEL...
XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX SUN JULY 13, 2003 17:09:28 ET XXXXX
2,100 WORD CORRECTION: NOT AGAIN: NEW YORK TIMES PREPARES TO EXPLAIN ERRONEOUS STORY; PAPER CLAIMED MUSIC CHIEF DEFAULTED, LOST CONTROL OF LABEL
It's "We're Sorry!" time at the NEW YORK TIMES -- again -- on Monday, newsroom sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT.
The Business Desk is preparing to retract a story which claimed TVT Records founder and president Steven Gottlieb "lost control of his company" after "Mr. Gottlieb defaulted on loans totaling $23.5 million."
The correction will run more than 2,100 words, an insider tells DRUDGE.
MORE
In a profile of Gottlieb last Monday, the TIMES, quoting "court documents," made the damning charge.
But now, upon further review, the paper has learned the loan dispute between Prudential Securities and TVT Records, one of the nation's largest independent record companies, has had no impact on the control or management of the label.
In fact, Gottlieb was never personally responsible for the defaulted loan and remains in full control of his company.
The original TIMES report was filed by Lynette Holloway. But the paper has assigned Diana Henriqes to fix the mess on the front of tomorrow's business section.
Beyond the inaccuracies arising from the original article's mistaken premises, there were other factual errors, the NEW YORK TIMES will state.
Gottlieb graduated from Harvard Law School in 1984, not 1985, and his office is in Manhattan north of Houston Street, not in SoHo.
He started his company with $125,000, not $250,000. The theme song from "The Brady Bunch" was part of the second volume of Gottlieb's album "Television's Greatest Hits," not the first.
[FOXNEWS.com all-star Roger Friedman detailed the case late last week.]
Developing...
|
|
|
 |
FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
|
|
It is in the breaking news sidebar! |
|
BLINK AND YOU'LL MISS THE STORY
by Wayne Robins
The news that one-time rock radio pioneer WNEW-FM was switching from its failed talk format to focus on "Free-Form Music" got big play in the Metro section of Thursday's New York Times. But the hope that the new format would in any way resemble the anything-goes, free-form format that made the station's reputation in the late 1960's was immediately dashed. And it raises questions of a reporter's gullibility.
It seems that east coast music business reporter Lynette Holloway bought the hyperbole, and lacked the awareness or skepticism to question what "free-form" really meant. And where were the editors who should have been watching her back?
Holloway reports the station will sport new call letters: BLINK. That's very doubtful. Radio stations can nickname themselves whatever they want, so WRKS-FM/92.3 in New York calls itself "K-Rock," and WHTZ-FM is known as Z-100. But it would be a violation of international radio treaties for the FCC, which has the sole authority to assign call letters, to name a station BLINK. Radio stations in the People's Republic of China are authorized to have a call letter beginning with "B" or "BL," but in the United States, broadcast stations get a prefix beginning with "W" east of the Mississippi River and "K" West of the Mississippi. (Which is why Southern California's original 'K-Rock' was KROQ-FM). It's been that way since 1923.
Just wrong...
I'm sure we can all breathe a great big sigh of relief to know that they cleared this one up.
TVT, by the way, was one of the few record labels to agree to be a part of Napster's ill-fated pay-by-the download site.
I am with you. If they take 2,100 words to say that they are sure wasting ink.
b4its2late: Where's Drudges siren? I sure miss that thing.....Oh, you mean the one he used when he posted "Bush's drunken wedding party video?" Or the three times he has announced that a supreme court justice was retiring in 24 hours? Or better yet, "Mag has proof that Clinton fathered a pickaninny baby!" Maybe he has given the siren a rest. It most often accompanies a leaked story that fizzles fast.
The radio treaties we signed so long ago simply assigned the entire letters K and W to the United States. (We also have the entire letter N, as well as the range AAA through ALZ. But the FCC only assigns calls beginning with N and AA*-AL* to other radio services like ham radio, government stations of all types, airplane and maritime radios, etc. TV and radio broadcast call letters always begin with a W or a K.) The FCC made the decision to make the Mississippi River the dividing line between W- and K-stations, and could change the rules on that any time they wished.
The reason Dallas has WFAA and WBAP is because those stations got their call signs before the FCC came up with the Mississippi River idea. (WFAA first went on the air in 1922, WBAP in 1923.) Those are what are called "grandfathered call letters"; at the time the FCC came up with the W-means-east/K-means-west plan, they said, "Those of you that already have the 'wrong' call letters for your side of the country can keep them until you decide to apply for new calls." And stations like those two in Dallas have simply never applied to change their call letters.
There are quite a few other stations around that don't "fit the plan," such as KDKA in Pittsburgh (assumed by many to be the first commercial broadcast radio station in the world, though others would argue that point) and KYW in Philadelphia. (KDKA got their call letters because, at the time, the only radio stations that existed were for ship-to-shore communications - think of the morse code operator on the Titanic - and the Department of Commerce kept a tiny little list of call letters that they handed out to these new stations in alphabetical order. KDKA was just the next set of available calls on that list when the station applied for its license.)
Any of these stations could apply for new call letters anytime they wanted to (though they'd have to be nuts to do so after spending 80+ years building and maintaining a public identification and reputation based on those call letters; it would be like NBC itself changing its name), but they could only apply for call letters that begin with the "right letter" for their side of the country.
The situation is similar with three-letter calls like KYW, WLS in Chicago, etc. Stations that had three-letter calls when the FCC decided to go all-four-letter calls can keep them as long as they want, but if they're ever stupid enough to apply for new call letters, they'll have to take one that's four letters long.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.