Radio Stations

March Madness and spring training seem to be making sports the reason for this season. They are also good reasons to keep your smartphone loaded with key applications that follow baseball, basketball, and other spectator passions. At Bat 12 is Major League Baseball's latest official app. When I started up the old app that had been sitting dormant on my iPhone since the fall, it prompted me to download this 2012 version. Though the app is free, you'll be urged to subscribe to one of the optional plans that make available on the app live video of a "Game of the Day" and play-by-play radio broadcasts of games, including those during spring training.

March Madness and spring training seem to be making sports the reason for this season. They are also good reasons to keep your smartphone loaded with key applications that follow baseball, basketball, and other spectator passions. At Bat 12 is Major League Baseball's latest official app. When I started up the old app that had been sitting dormant on my iPhone since the fall, it prompted me to download this 2012 version. Though the app is free, you'll be urged to subscribe to one of the optional plans that make available on the app live video of a "Game of the Day" and play-by-play radio broadcasts of games, including those during spring training.

HILO SAID GOODBYE. The Good Hands People dropped him like a hot potato, and he was rejected even by the Cleveland Cavaliers. But will the swirl of controversy surrounding Rush Limbaugh - the most-listened-to radio talker in America - and his recent remarks calling a female law student and activist a slut - cause local advertisers to abandon ship here in Philadelphia, where he airs on WPHT (1210-AM) weekdays at noon? And could Limbaugh actually leave the airwaves in the City of Brotherly Love - as happened with conservative yakkers Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity about 14 months ago?

EVER WONDER how an all-news radio format with commercials would sound on FM? Looks like Philadelphia will soon find out. Merlin Media, headed by controversial former newspaper executive Randy Michaels, announced Tuesday that it had won the bidding for WKDN Camden, situated atop the dial at 106.9-FM. If Merlin follows the same course it took this summer with FM outlets WWWN, in Chicago, and WEMP, in New York, then Camden's current home for nondenominational Christian "Family Radio" will soon be a news/talk rival for CBS Radio's long-mighty KYW NewsRadio (1060-AM)

STOP BLAMING Andy Reid! The reason The Eagles stink so bad is because of bad karma. Send dog-killer Michael Vick packing and the Eagles will be a great team once again! Karen Morrissey Philadelphia We are coming to the tail end of the worst season since 1999, and the most poorly managed season since Terrell Owens and the 2005 season. As fans of the Eagles, you don't want to put up with this stuff for another day, let alone another season. After 13 years of close-but-never-a-cigar, we are all huddled into a large group similar to those medieval days when the crowd stormed the castle with their battering rams and torches, with a taste for blood.

COMEDIAN GEORGE LOPEZ says he is creating a family-orientated sitcom where he will play a father and husband, vowing to return to television less than two months after TBS canceled late-night's "Lopez Tonight. " Lopez told the Associated Press his now untitled show "will be the opposite" of "George Lopez," in which he also starred as a father and husband. Lopez also plans to star in his third live HBO standup special next year. One thing Lopez will not be doing is watching the new version of "Charlie's Angels.

WHYY announced Tuesday that it had completed its seven-year capital fund-raising campaign by going $2 million over the $50 million goal. The campaign ended June 30. The total of $52 million includes $3.5 million - the largest single gift to the campaign - from the Dorrance H. Hamilton Charitable Trust for an addition to the public broadcaster's Independence Mall headquarters, which opened last year. WHYY uses the Dorrance H. Hamilton Public Media Commons as a training studio for audio and video production and as a site for community events.

WKDN-FM (106.9), a Camden religious radio station owned by Harold Camping's nonprofit Family Stations Inc., has filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission to change its license status to commercial from noncommercial. The application was dated July 7. An official from the California nonprofit did not return a phone call seeking comment. Camping made news earlier this year with his doomsday prediction for May 21, 2011. - Bob Fernandez

Gunmen overrun Nigerian vote site IKOT EFUM, Nigeria - Gunmen fired Kalashnikov rifles in the air and others brandished machetes while storming a polling place Tuesday, as voters in Africa's most populous nation struggled to cast ballots after the presidential election sparked riots killing at least 500 people last week. The attackers made off with the yet-to-be-voted ballots, the ballot box and the youth volunteer in charge of this village's election in Akwa Ibom state, witnesses said.

LOCAL celebri-philes, rejoice! The Sheen has officially landed. Charlie Sheen 's nonstop Magical Meltdown Tour made a couple of stops in Philly when the actor called in to radio station Wired 96.5 on Thursday and yesterday to chat about what he knows best: Charlie. Wired got ahold of Sheen by hiring a plane to fly a banner over his Beverly Hills pad that read "Charlie Sheen Philly's Wired 96.5 u - Call us 4 ur next role. " He did, providing us with another glimpse of a rare phenomenon: a celebrity working without a net. On Thursday, he called Kannon , who holds down the mic at Wired 96.5 during the afternoon shift and serves as the station's program director.