Brand
- Episode four of the new season of Portlandia, starring Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, will feature A Prairie Home Companion tailgating. The sketch is also being spun off into a series of four webisodes, which can be viewed online before the season premiere. Season four of Portlandia premieres Feb. 27 at 10 p.m. on the Independent Film Channel.
- If an avid blogger can’t leave a comment on your website, he’ll write about it. That’s what tech-savvy journalist Doc Searls did when he encountered issues with a story from WBUR, Boston’s NPR news station.
- Radio personality Madeleine Brand returned to the airwaves yesterday with a new show, Press Play on KCRW-FM in Los Angeles. Brand had been off the air since her high-profile departure from rival station KPCC-FM in 2012.
- Fans of the PBS Masterpiece hit series Downton Abbey can now use iTunes to watch Season 4 episodes before they air in the United States. Buying a $20 season pass now unlocks all episodes before they premiere.
- Online radio service DAR.fm announced an update to its RadioSearchEngine.com Jan. 24. DAR.fm CEO Michael Robertson said the new 1.0 version of the site doubled the number of stations indexed to 40,000, improved the user recommendation engine and added a song history for each station.