Radio

In an annual rite known as Upfront Week, NBC, Fox, ABC, CBS, and the CW just presented their lineups for the 2012-13 TV season to advertisers in New York. The ceremonies took place in some of the city's most august concert Halls (Carnegie, Avery Fisher, Radio City Music) over four days. The broadcast companies introduced only 20 new series for the fall (down from 27 last season). NBC led the pack with six new shows. Fox and the CW had half that many. Like it or not, an awful lot of familiar faces will be returning in the fall.

This summer, hair weaves are taking a turn for the kinky, the curly and the wavy. Why is this news? When black women first started sewing hair onto their scalps during the 1990s en masse, the resulting shoulder-length bobs were as much about achieving a smooth texture as it was about having length. Fabulous hair was defined as long and straight. However, as more black women have come to terms with their natural curl pattern, store-bought tresses are trending toward the fuzzy rather than the flat-ironed.

When Mark Levin was a teenager, he loved coming into Philadelphia from Elkins Park and visiting Independence Hall. In the room where the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were debated, he would imagine the founding fathers designing a nation. "My parents always taught me to be thankful that I lived in this country and to appreciate the people who created such a marvelous society," Levin recalls. Even at a young age, Levin (pronounced luh-VIN) realized that the cardinal aim of the men who composed our nation's sacred documents was to preserve liberty and repel tyranny.

Anchorwoman Alycia Lane's future with KYW (CBS3) is uncertain after her arrest early Sunday on charges of slugging a plainclothes New York City police officer. The station announced that Lane, 35, would begin a planned two-week, end-of-year vacation a week early, effective yesterday. Her name and image were stripped from station promos, and her work on the station's holiday special, airing tonight, was edited out. Observers say her return to her $700,000-a-year anchor job hinges not only on her legal case - a felony charge of second-degree assault that could take months to resolve - but the court of public opinion.

FOR A POLITICAL movement that serves as a 50,000-watt boogeyman for conservative talk radio in America, finding your local representative of the New Black Panther Party is not easy. There's no party headquarters and no membership roll — just a doorbell at a modest brick home in the lawn-checkered, rebuilt stretch of North Philadelphia between the Temple campus and Center City. When King Samir Shabazz, the Philadelphia chairman of the New Black Panther Party, emerges, he agrees to an interview only if it can be conducted while he paces up and down the sidewalk out front.

The world is a bad place, a bad place, / A terrible place to live, oh, but I don't wanna die. / All my sorrows, sad tomorrows, take me back, to my old home. - "Reflections of My Life" by the Marmalade IT WAS JUST a little green radio with a big clear-plastic tuning dial. In the late 1960s, my big brother Mike found a small piece of wood paneling and used it as a shelf for the green radio, on the wall above his bunk bed. There were four of us in that room, and every night we would fall asleep with the radio on. We'd listen to WFIL and WIBG ("Wibbage" as we called it)

SO FCC chief Michael Powell has decided to do something about the Super Bowl halftime entertainment. The only thing Janet Jackson is going to do is plead her case that she's innocent. Janet, you're not Penny on "Good Times" - you're an adult. Act like it. But there's never a cry when a radio jock (Howard Stern or Wendy Williams) uses language like b----, n----- and a-- to describe and demean individuals. Can somebody please tell me when b---- became socially acceptable? You have broadcasters who protect their interests by hiding behind the First Amendment and put the blame on "parents not monitoring what their kids listen to. " Mr. Powell: Take the rose-colored glasses off and use a Q-Tip to remove the wax. Maybe you'll hear something offensive.

A RECENT column ("Pay for Play," Aug. 25) treated readers to a generous amount of record-label spin regarding legislation in Washington that would require local radio stations to pay an additional licensing fee - a performance tax - for every song aired free to listeners. While characterizing the debate as one between stations and musicians, you glossed over the fact that the group bankrolling this campaign is none other than the Recording Industry Association of America, which represents the four largest record labels in the world.

Since arriving in Rwanda six months ago, I have learned a lot about the power of radio. On a recent Wednesday, I looked up from my Facebook page to watch six teenage girls leave my office in Kigali. They were off to the local radio station to produce Urungano (the local word for generation), a program addressing the trials and tribulations of Rwandan girls. The girls typically begin their program with a teenage chat and then work their way into discussions of such issues as underage marriage and child labor - both real problems in Rwanda.

What's in a Z? There are dozens of stations across the country that identify themselves with the letter Z plus a frequency number. Such a statio ID is considered easy to hear and recall, especially critical when listeners fill out radio ratings diaries. (The letter Q with a frequency number is also judged a memorable combination, as are the words "Power," "Magic" and "Kiss" plus a dial number.) Still, WHTZ-FM in New York is now claiming exclusive regional rights to its identification as "Z-100," and demanding that Philadelphia's newly turned contemporary-hits format WKSZ-FM stop identifying itself the same way. WHTZ has issued a threatening "cease and desist" letter to our Z-100, which up to a couple of weeks ago went by "Kiss 100" and played easy listening.

IT HAPPENS every May: The broadcast networks announce their schedules for the following season and it's as if we're seeing double. It usually takes three to declare a trend, but TV seasons tend to get filled like Noah's Ark, with new (or recycled) ideas arriving in pairs. A year ago, it was '60s dramas — NBC's "Playboy Club" and ABC's "Pan Am" — and shows in which fairy tales turned out to be true — NBC's "Grimm" and ABC's "Once Upon a Time. " If there was any surprise, it wasn't that the "Mad Men" wannabes didn't make it to Season 2, but that the other two did. (And that CBS ordered its own '60s drama, "Vegas," for this fall.)

Look out Non-Comm, here comes Bob Lefsetz. Bob who? Non-what? Non-Comm is the shortened term for the annual radio industry gathering officially called the Non-Commvention, which is hosted by WXPN-FM (88.5-FM) and starts Thursday in University City. It will bring an assortment of high-wattage and up-and-coming names to World Cafe Live over the next three days, including Willie Nelson, Norah Jones, Beth Orton, Brandi Carlile, and the War on Drugs. (Tickets for all those artists are sold out, but piano man Rufus Wainwright highlights a free Saturday afternoon show at the new Penn Park, at 31st and lower Walnut Streets.)

The husband of April Kauffman, a South Jersey radio personality and advocate for veterans' causes who was found fatally shot in her master bedroom last week in Atlantic County, has hired a well-known defense attorney, who said his client had "cooperated fully" with authorities. James Kauffman, an endocrinologist, has retained Edwin Jacobs, the Atlantic City lawyer said in an interview Tuesday. "He met the county prosecutor's investigators and answered all their questions," Jacobs said.

A South Jersey talk radio personality was found fatally shot Thursday in a bedroom of her Atlantic County home, authorities said. County Prosecutor Ted Housel said a worker called 911 around 11:30 a.m. after he discovered April Kauffman's body in the home on Woodstock Drive in Linwood. Kauffman, 47, who lived about three blocks from Mainland Regional High School, was shot several times, authorities said. No arrests had been made as of Thursday afternoon, authorities said.

FOR A POLITICAL movement that serves as a 50,000-watt boogeyman for conservative talk radio in America, finding your local representative of the New Black Panther Party is not easy. There's no party headquarters and no membership roll — just a doorbell at a modest brick home in the lawn-checkered, rebuilt stretch of North Philadelphia between the Temple campus and Center City. When King Samir Shabazz, the Philadelphia chairman of the New Black Panther Party, emerges, he agrees to an interview only if it can be conducted while he paces up and down the sidewalk out front.

DROP-ped CouncilmanFrank Rizzo is hoping that Thursday's fill-in shift on Talk Radio 1210-AM, on which he will host 10 to midnight, leads to a regular job at the station. "My intention is to show my value and become a permanent part of the team," Rizzo, who formerly hosted talk shows on WWDB and WPEN-AM, told us yesterday. 1210-AM recently dumped Rush Limbaugh and says it's going to an all-local format. Out and about "Jersey Shore" star Deena Nicole Cortese caught Tuesday's Nickelback/Bush concert at the Wells Fargo Center with her boyfriend and her parents.

They made a lot of kids late for school. Brian Carter and his sidekick, Dave Sanborn, thrilled morning radio in Philly as entertaining yakkers and disc jockeys on Power 99 from 1987 to 1999, and later on WDAS. Carter, the brasher and funnier of the mixed-race duo, died Sunday of a heart attack at home in his native Baltimore. He was 54. "You and Sanborn raised me," a fan wrote on 99FM's Facebook page. "I listened to you guys all through middle school and high school.

HARRISBURG - He is not at war with women. He does have a heart. And he really did a lot of work on that trade mission in March to France and Germany. So said Gov. Corbett on Wednesday when he made his monthly radio talk show appearance on WPHT-AM (1210) in Philadelphia. The governor weighed in on everything from former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum's decision to suspend his Republican presidential bid, to who he thinks would be a good running mate for Mitt Romney, to why he supports legislation pending in the Capitol that would require women who want abortions to get ultrasounds first.

He was basically a West Philly kid who never really forgot the life of the corners and the playgrounds and the camaraderie of the streets. But Steve Fredericks rose from that environment to become one of Philadelphia's best-known sportscasters, a man who raised sports broadcasting above the ordinary with his wry sense of humor and his erudition. "Live," he would intone on opening his Sports Line show, "from the palatial, but not overly ostentatious, studios of WCAU Radio.

Medford Township officials are furious at Gov. Christie for suggesting on a radio show this week that they are trying to scare voters into approving a tax increase that exceeds the state's 2 percent cap. Christie urged voters to "call the bluff. " Councilman Jeff Beenstock fired off an e-mail Tuesday to the governor saying, "I do not believe your statement last night with respect to Medford was accurate or fair, and is likely to result in people voting against the referendum without understanding the situation we are in. " Beenstock did not receive a reply.