When Alan Michaels signed off yet again from his morning duties at oldies format 1450 AM, he sounded like a man working very hard to maintain his composure while attempting to explain to an older demographic how they can listen to the COOL format, now banished to HD 2, piggybacking its signal on the heels of MIA 97.1 FM.

Michaels closed with "Long and Winding Road" by The Beatles, and for one of Tucson's most noteworthy radio voices, a long and winding road indeed it has been.

Michaels was a focal point of the hits-of-the-'50s-and-'60s format when it enjoyed far greater popularity a quarter-century ago. Michaels transitioned with the format from its highwater days on AM 790 to its FM signal position on 92.9, and about a decade ago during the format's downturn on 1450 AM.

He was fired during Clear Channel's massive cutback swath two years ago, then rehired in a part time capacity to handle the morning show on 1450. He'll stay on as the format transitions again.

On one hand, this makes Clear Channel the first cluster in the market to put a live voice on an HD piggyback signal. On the other hand, few people actually seem to really care about the HD piggyback signals, created a few years ago as a terrestrial-radio effort to compete with satellite radio's increased variety of formats. But the care in those HD piggyback signals has been minimal, at best, basically utilized for small niche formats operated by little more than a computer program. If anything, phone-ap options have probably rendered the technology all but obsolete.

Yet in an apparent effort to reach a bizarre compromise, Clear Channel Tucson has bumped the station with the oldest demographic in its cluster to a location that requires some technological understanding.

The new station format: Funny 1450 AM. How funny is Funny 1450? Well, after The Beatles had winded their final road, the station flipped to six minutes ... yes, six minutes ... of canned laughter, a torturously unfunny laugh track that sounded like the worst of parody morning radio, or an Adam Sandler routine. (I'd say a bad Adam Sandler routine, but that would be redundant.)

Oh, and there was intermittent burping during the laughing introduction. Because burping is funny.

Funny 1450 is basically an automated stand-up comedy format. Perhaps Clear Channel will get the last laugh if the effort gains traction.

Efforts to reach Clear Channel Tucson for comment have been so far unsuccessful. Perhaps that will change by next week's Media Watch.

Apparently, the ribbons that some attendees of the State of the Union are planning to wear to honor Rep. Giffords and the others wounded or killed in the Tucson shooting will eventually lead to a "sing-a-long" according to Rush Limbaugh.

Also, the color choice is seemingly an issue, and as best I can tell, you can't be a true Republican and wear it. But, hey, I guess the guy has to fill his airtime somehow.

[Mediaite]

Like anyone who has written in any public fashion on the internet, I've been the subject of a few hateful online comments in my day, so a CNN article where SI.com writer Jeff Pearlman tracked down a few people who seemed disproportionately angry about something he wrote was amusing to me, to say the least:

This time, I aspired to know why Matt, cloaked in the anonymity provided by the internet, felt the need to respond in such a way to, of all things, a Jeff Bagwell post.

So, going deep, deep, deep undercover, I tracked him down and, shortly after our exchange, gave him a call.

Quite frankly, I wanted to hate him. I wanted to bash him. I wanted to plaster his name, address and personal information atop a column on CNN.com, so that when someone Googled his name for future employment, they'd find the words "Sent me a link to pornographic material."

Then we spoke. And I (dammit) liked him. Without invisibility or the support of his 54 Twitter followers or the superhuman powers supplied by a warm keyboard, Matt was meek and apologetic. "I was just trying to get a rise out of you," he said. "You're a known sports writer, and I thought it was cool. That's all. I never meant for it to reach this point."

Every year, Central Connecticut State University releases a study on which American cities are the most literate. The good news: Tucson moved up from last year's ranking of 45 to 33rd place (right behind Philadelphia), which I guess means some smart people moved here or some dumb people left. My wife started a book club in 2010, maybe that helped.

But here's the catch: the metrics they use to determine which cities are literate and which aren't may or may not have much to do with literacy at all. For example, the number of bookstores per 10,000 people is a factor, with Seattle coming in number one. Seattle has some nice bookstores, but what about cities with a few really big and awesome bookstores, like Portland (which tied for fourth) or Denver which ended up in ninth? I think any book lover would be happy to live in Portland and possibly less excited to live in Cincinnati, Ohio. (Nothing personal, Cincinnati.)

Also, then there's the matter of daily newspaper circulation. Washington D.C. comes in first, and if I lived in that city, I'd probably get the paper too, because it's a great paper. Other cities might have the papers their illiterate dullard citizens deserve, I guess, but then again, maybe some local papers aren't really worth reading? Does that reflect the people in the city or the paper itself?

So, these things come out every year and people like me report on them, but don't let our relative illiteracy get you down. We're plenty smart here and people like us, even if we apparently don't have a sufficient number of bookstores.

KQTH 104.1 FM talk show host Jon Justice called paramedics to the station this morning after concerns over a rapid heartbeat.

Justice has a congenital heart condition that led to a surgical procedure in 2009.

"I'm 100 percent fine," said Justice via e-mail. "I can never be too careful when it comes to my heart and health after the '09 heart surgery, which was basically (due to) a genetic birth defect in my aortic valve. I had a heart attack in '09, and when they went in to do the angioplasty, my valves were all clear. The theory is that my defective valve was forming tiny blood clots. They replaced the valve.

"So flash forward to today. I went to my cardiologist yesterday, and everything is great. Heart sounds great, I have lost weight, all good.

"This morning just before 7:30, my heart just started racing, and it reminded me of when I had the heart attacks. So I called the EMTs to the station. Everything checked out. After which I decided to go and get blood tests done just to be sure and the test showed nothing out of the ordinary.

"Again, just can't be too careful. I will be back on the air tomorrow."

Gawker reports that a Rush Limbaugh billboard featuring bullet holes as part of its design was pulled from a Tucson location shortly after last weekend’s shooting.

Limbaugh is, of course, denying he had any knowledge of the billboard, and blaming the liberal media for noticing it, rather than taking any responsibility for his hateful and incendiary ways. Cowards are like that.

First of all, my name is Dan Gibson, and I'm a recovering two space user. Thanks to Farhad Manjoo at Slate for giving me an extra dose of shame to (hopefully) permanently change my behavior.

What galls me about two-spacers isn't just their numbers. It's their certainty that they're right. Over Thanksgiving dinner last year, I asked people what they considered to be the "correct" number of spaces between sentences. The diners included doctors, computer programmers, and other highly accomplished professionals. Everyone—everyone!—said it was proper to use two spaces. Some people admitted to slipping sometimes and using a single space—but when writing something formal, they were always careful to use two. Others explained they mostly used a single space but felt guilty for violating the two-space "rule." Still others said they used two spaces all the time, and they were thrilled to be so proper. When I pointed out that they were doing it wrong—that, in fact, the correct way to end a sentence is with a period followed by a single, proud, beautiful space—the table balked. "Who says two spaces is wrong?" they wanted to know.

Typographers, that's who. The people who study and design the typewritten word decided long ago that we should use one space, not two, between sentences. That convention was not arrived at casually.

[HT: ShortFormBlog]

Sure, Jon Stewart needs a lesson on how to pronounce Pascua Yaqui, but he offered a great criticism of "the criticism" of Wednesday's memorial at McKale Center:

Daisy Hernandez (no relation to Daniel Hernandez), co-editor of Colonize This! Young Women on Today's Feminism, was recently featured on NPR's All Things Considered with a Latin view on what happened Saturday in Tucson. You can listen to the report and Hernandez here.

Takeaway:

It's safe to say there was a collective sigh of brown relief when the Tucson killer turned out to be a gringo. Had the shooter been Latino, media pundits wouldn't be discussing the impact of nasty politics on a young man this week — they'd be demanding an even more stringent anti-immigrant policy. The new members of the House would be stepping over each other to propose new legislation for more guns on the border, more mothers to be deported, and more employers to be penalized for hiring brown people. Obama would be attending funerals and telling the nation tonight that he was going to increase security just about everywhere. ...

It's painfully ironic that a gay Latino man came to the aid of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in the storm of gunfire. Daniel Hernandez, an intern with the congresswoman, ran to Rep. Giffords and helped to stop the bleeding. If a judge hadn't blocked provisions of Arizona's SB 1070 law, the intern's surname would have easily qualified him as a target for police under different circumstances on Saturday. As Sheriff Clarence Dupnik of Pima County, Ariz., told reporters: "The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous, and unfortunately Arizona has become sort of the capital."

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NBC News' Savannah Guthrie introduces America to her hometown.