Barrett joins OC Register

When longtime Orange County Register radio reporter Gary Lycan passed away a few weeks ago, everyone knew it would be hard to fill his shoes. Some questioned whether the paper’s coverage of radio would continue at all.

Enter Don Barrett.

Barrett, the longtime operator of a radio water cooler fans know as LARadio.Com, had just a short time before shut down the site to move on to bigger and better things. More books, projects. But nothing directly related to radio, he assured us.

Funny thing, though. He couldn’t give it up. LARadio.Com was still being updated, though less often than normal, when important radio news came up. So upon Lycan’s passing, the obvious question came to the managers of the Register: Would Barrett consider taking over the column?

“They called me on a Friday and asked if I might be interested,” Barrett explained. “I told them I was open to pretty much anything.” The conversation lasted for about an hour, culminating with a request for Barrett to submit a sample column. By Monday he had the job.

“I had some things to think about. For example, how do you break with the past while acknowledging and showing respect for the 40 years of Gary’s work,
 Barrett told me.

Personally I can’t think of a better replacement. Like Lycan, Barrett loves radio and it shows in his writing. And it gives the water cooler another reprieve.

Calling it Quits

While great in theory, the difficulty of doing radio on anything other than real airwaves is a real issue. Tom Leykis has been mentioning tough financial issues in his emails for his show on the New Normal Network (www.newnormalnetwork.com), as has Brad Chambers with adult standards internet station www.MartiniInTheMorning.com. The general consensus is that, for now at least, you certainly are not going to get rich running an internet radio station or internet radio show. It is a labor of love.

AOL apparently doesn’t love it that much: the onetime division of media giant Time-Warner that has tried various incarnations of a music service since 1999 has thrown in the towel, according to RadioInfo.Com. 

“Although AOL is not commenting officially, the demise of AOL Music” and related services “was documented over the weekend by staffers who tweeted and posted Facebook messages about their exits from the company,” the site reported.

This doesn’t necessarily mean the company is exiting online music completely, but it does appear that it will not be continuing in its current “radio-like” form.

Roasted

KROQ (106.7 FM) has announced the lineup of bands taking part of the 2013 Weenie Roast concert beng held May 18 at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine.

Jimmy Eat World, Twenty One Pilots, The Neighborhood, Capital Cities, The Black Keys, Vampire Weekend, Atlas Genius, C2C, Imagine Dragons, New Politics, The Neighborhood, Fitz and the Tantrums, AWOLNation, Of Monsters and Men and Thirty Seconds to Mars are scheduled to perform at the 21st annual event. If you haven’t heard of these bands, you aren’t listening to KROQ.

The concert this year will benefit the Surfrider Foundation and Heal the Bay, both of which work to maintain clean beaches and waterways; Surfrider works to protect and expand recreational surf areas. Tickets are unfortunately available officiallyonly through Ticketmaster at Ticketmaster.Com; for more info on the concert head over to www.KROQ.com.