No more of the foamy stuff at WYES’s fundraisers. (Photo: k.ivoutin via Flickr/Creative Commons)
• After 30 years, WYES-TV in New Orleans is ending its annual beer tasting fundraisers, reports the local Times-Picayune. Rising costs of the events plus changes in state liquor laws, which now ban volunteers from serving alcohol, are what finally shut off the tap.
• Bill Moyers, who retired from public television with his last show Jan. 5, “distinguished himself as a journalist by refusing to be a stenographer for the powerful,” writes in a farewell tribute in the Washington Post. Moyers participated in an online chat on his website Tuesday reminiscing about his long career, which included working alongside President Johnson.
• Should Chicago’s WBEZ-FM have allowed the repeated use of the term “jagoff” on its airwaves? The slang term, common in Pittsburgh, isn’t as vulgar etymologically as it sounds, but that didn’t stop an arts critic with Chicago’s WFMT from complaining about hearing it on ‘BEZ. Chicago Public Media’s president defended the usage, and the Chicago Reader‘s Michael Miner recaps the back-and-forth. Jagoff “does not mean what people think it means,” wrote CPM President Goli Sheikholeslami. “It is a word that describes a personality trait not a crude action.”
• Radio lives. A survey conducted by Morgan Stanley of over 2,000 American adults in November found that AM/FM radio was the most used audio service among the group, Quartz reports. A total of 86 percent of the respondents said they currently use radio. The second-ranked service by popularity, YouTube, is used by 62 percent of the survey’s participants. AM/FM radio is the audio service that respondents were most familiar with, as only 2 percent said they had “never heard of” AM/FM radio.