The radio trade press was full of praise for the San Diego radio stations as the awful Southern California wildfires ebbed. As always — well, as most of the time — local radio managers rose to the challenge and turned their stations from music/talk money machines into real-time information helpers for their city. Clear Channel, the Big Dog of corporate radio operators, simulcast its news station on all its five or so other radio stations. Another station, an FM alternative music station, even turned off its own programming and its transmitter over to public station KPBS, which had lost its own transmitter to the fires, for the duration. Smart move, though it was an open admission that it was incapable of anything but jukeboxing. Nevertheless, the station got raves from the radio biz for its selflessness in the face of imminent apocalypse. There were probably other stations that performed well under fire, and probably others that stood there with their hands in their pockets. But it would be ungenerous in the extreme not to join the applause for those who did what they were supposed to do. Good job, people.

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• BROWSE / IN Radio Biz
• « LOCAL? YOKELS?
• » KNDO-TV LISTENS, GETS AN EARFUL; A CAUTIONARY TALE.