Radio Stations

One banner-dragging plane buzzing Beverly Hills generated two phone calls from Charlie Sheen to Philadelphia's Wired 96.5. Sheen spoke about a new understanding with CBS about his hit show Two and a Half Men , and said the rumors of an imminent arrest were based on a misunderstanding. The station-commissioned streamer unfurled Thursday morning, reading, "Philly's Wired 96.5 (heart) u - call us 4 ur next role" and listed a phone number. Sheen, whose recent spate of rants on all sorts of media outlets have included having "tiger blood" and living with two "goddesses," phoned in Thursday night, and then talked even longer to Chio and his crew this morning.

The electricity flickered in the basement offices at the Calvary United Methodist Church at 48th Street and Baltimore Avenue last week, and the heat wasn't so reliable either. But Brandy Doyle and Maggie Avener of the Prometheus Radio Project, bundled in heavy clothes, weren't complaining. After about a decade of lobbying and community organizing from these humble poster-filled rooms in West Philadelphia, Prometheus Radio finally had scored with federal legislation that will legalize hundreds of, and perhaps as many as 2,000 to 3,000, low-power FM radio stations in cities and rural markets.

Predictions are tricky business. Unless you're Nostradamus or a Vegas oddsmaker or an old man with an arthritic knee that can feel storms coming, forecasting the future should be avoided. NFL Network color man and former Redskins quarterback Joe Theismann isn't the shy type. Ask him a question, get an answer. In advance of the Eagles-Texans game on Thursday Night, Theismann talked to Page 2 for a while. Michael Vick came up. You're shocked, I'm sure. Theismann said Vick has had a remarkable year and should sign a new contract in Philly, but added he doesn't think Vick is the leading MVP candidate, partly because he's missed some games, partly because there are other worthy candidates (such as San Diego QB Philip Rivers)

THE REV. Peter T. Manzo has a wooden sculpture of Jesus on the cross, which he keeps by the door of his office. Its purpose, he says half-jokingly, is to protect him from any evil influences that might come through the door. The foot-high sculpture was carved by Thomas T. Primavera, a parishioner of St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church, in Cherry Hill, N.J., and a man of many talents, not the least of which was that of a skilled woodworker. Tom Primavera, who had his own marketing-consulting business in Cherry Hill, a longtime ad salesman for Philadelphia radio stations, Army veteran of World War II and a loving family man, died Monday of cancer.

Vincent M. Raimondo, 57, a radio advertising sales executive and musician, died of colon cancer Friday, Aug. 13, at his home. Since 2006, Mr. Raimondo was vice president of marketing for Radio Direct Response and RDR Promotions in Media. Previously, he sold advertising for several radio stations including WMGK-FM, WPEN-FM, WYSP-FM, and WNTP-AM. As director of sports marketing at WYSP in the 1990s, he headed sales for radio on-air advertising for Eagles football games and was a committed fan. Mark Lipsky, president of Radio Direct Response and a friend since the 1980s, said Mr. Raimondo understood the market and was an excellent sales manager.

John E. Irving, 78, who helped turn his family's lumber business into Atlantic Canada's largest conglomerate, died Wednesday in St. John, New Brunswick. No cause of death was given. Along with his father, K.C. Irving, and his brothers James and Arthur, John E. Irving helped direct an expansion of the family's business after World War II that led it to dominate the economy of their home province. Today the family is among Canada's wealthiest and controls about 300 companies, with interests in oil refining, retailing, and distribution as well as lumber, paper, steel, hardware, trucking, shipbuilding, shipping, railroads, printing, and consumer products.

BILL WEBBER often said that he didn't look forward to retirement. He said that he wanted to continue working until they put him in the ground - "and maybe longer. " William W. Webber, known as "Wee Willie Webber" to countless TV and radio fans in Philadelphia for more than half a century, longtime officer of the Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia and a man who never turned down a request to do a fundraiser, telethon or other charitable benefit, died yesterday. He was 80 and lived in Center City.

Awash in nostalgia and amped-up male camaraderie, Richard Curtis' Pirate Radio takes a great story - the hugely popular offshore radio stations that illegally broadcast pop and rock in 1960s Britain - and turns it into an aggressively irritating floating frat-party romp. Bobbing on an ebullient soundtrack of the Kinks, the Who, "I Feel Free," and "A Whiter Shade of Pale," Pirate Radio plops a gang of misfit DJs down on a red-hulled ship in the North Sea, where they spin vinyl and speak naughtily to schoolgirls, nurses, and university students - all of them listening giddily to the rock-and-roll the government doesn't want them to hear.

William J. Henrich Jr., 80, of Lafayette Hill, a preeminent real estate and trust lawyer and an adviser to the publishing magnate Walter H. Annenberg, died Saturday of heart failure at his home. Mr. Henrich spent most of his career as a senior partner at the Center City firm of Dilworth Paxson L.L.P., where colleagues remembered him as "the very definition of a partner. " "He was a first-rate lawyer and a first-rate business executive," said Stephen J. Harmelin, Dilworth's managing partner.