The older and maybe even younger people in the local area may be familiar with Art Laboe and his Oldies But Goodies record series, now moving over to CDs. Art Laboe is STILL on the radio now, many years later, still playing those oldies with a few more additions made to the playlist as time moves on. LA Radio http://www.laradio.com/ has a series of stories about Art Laboe on its website this month, with a lot more interesting things about Art that you may not have known before.
L.A Radio added another part to the series yesterday (February 11, 2010) as part of the acknowledgement of the recipient of the "2010 LARadio Lifetime Achievement Award" last month. There are a few more entries to check out before it goes into archives.
LARP, or "Los Angeles Radio People," are the persons involved both in front of and behind the mikes in the Los Angeles radio industry. The L.A. Times finally got around to mentioning this web site yesterday in a short story that gives some insight into what the web site is all about.
Under the heading of "ON THE MEDIA," you will find "L.A. radioheads, this site's for you-LARadio.com founder is filling niche left open by mainstream media. " By James Rainey, February 12, 2010, http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-et-onthemedia12-2010feb12,0,4522006.column There you will see interpretation of the L.A. Times' reporter James Rainey of the impact that LARadio has had and what it does besides put out a daily report on radio. Ever since Rainey blasted the L.A. Weekly and editor Jill Stewart last year on a story they did on the city and the mayor, and without much of a foundation, I don't put too much credibility into that kind of reporting. Stewart refuted the story on the air very specifically addressing the critic's points and I never heard anything back from Rainey in response.
So I wonder about where Rainey's coming from, and view his stories with a lot of skepticism. However, this story is of a different nature and if anything, understates the value of the L.A. Radio. com. The web site is a free site now for basic news and a subscription site for more features. The free part has a lot for casual browsers and you can check it yourself. I have been logging onto this site since the beginning, which for me was about 1997 or 1998. Over that time, I have met personally or online a lot of LARP people from on-air people to others in a support role, and Iconsider this site important to me for things like that and many other reasons, especially the information and entertainment derived from it.
If you are among the elder alumni- or maybe let's say among "the long-term alumni" at Lincoln, you might recall Luis "Benny" Torres" from the Cl. of S'68. He was doing well in his years at LHS and I think he was on the Railsplitter school newspaper staff, maybe even the editor. Well, he became more formally known as "Luis Torres" and did a very good job in a news career at KNX Radio 1070-AM here in L.A. I know he won at least one "Golden Mike" broadcasting award, but probably more. He's one of these LARP, one of many Latinos in this media over the years and even George Lopez is among them for his morning show broadcasting for around 6 months on the air before hitting it big a little later in television about 10 years ago. If you see Luis (who has retired from that job) pass along the greetings from me. I think the last time I saw him was only briefly at a birthday party for Bobby Verdugo in Whittier about 1998. How time flies.
You can find a lot of things of behind-the-scenes on www.laradio.com from the past and the present. And as I have written before, some people on the air mentioned they check it out to see if they have been fired, since Don Barrett, the man behind it all, is really good at getting the news before others. And one other thing I like about the site is that I get my email letters published there as I occasionally submit items about something that has gotten my attention.
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