I’ve listened to and enjoyed Charlottesville’s 91.9, WNRN since the beginning of time. According to our poll, it’s cVillain’s radio station of choice and narrowly beats out 106.1 The Corner.  It’s #1 for a good reason, the music selection is varied, the programming is excellent and you can discover new stuff on there more frequently than anywhere else in town.

The problem is WNRN claims to have “no commercials,” as you can see from the slightly modified graphic. While it’s true they don’t have advertisments produced out of house, the DJs still read aloud the message from the sponsor/advertiser.  It also sounds like they are reading the script for commercials that would air on TV or other radio stations.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary a “commercial” simply means a “television or radio advertisement” and if advertising means to promote sales or to make a fact known, then it looks like the “No Commercials” claim is false, *COUGH* advertising.  Personally, I think they should change this claim.  What do you think?

From a birdie named Cathrine…

Greetings! I’m a producer for “BackStory With the American History Guys,” a public radio show about American history that is based here in Charlottesville at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and hosted by the historians Ed Ayers, Peter Onuf, and Brian Balogh. The show tries to provide the historical background of contemporary news headlines. So for example, we’ve done recent shows on the history of voting, presidential transitions, and energy consumption.

We’re a call-in show and we’re currently looking for callers for our “Just the Facts?: Partisanship and the Press” show, which will examine how the American media has negotiated the line between partisanship and “objectivity” over time. More specifically, we’re out to call into question listeners’ assumptions about how bias has operated in American journalism in the past (for most of our history, partisanship was the major driving force rather and something to be avoided). »Read More

This is the second feature “Charlottesville Deathmatch” where we put two or more similar businesses, places, restaurants or things into a sealed cage of pain, suffering and death. Ultimately only one contestant lives and it’s up to you to figure out who that is.

This week we put all the contestants into an electrified cage of exploding nails and booby traps.  In one corner, we have the 40-headed hydra, Saga Communications, which pretty much has the exclusive on commercial radio stations in Charlottesville.  In the other corner, we have a pack of baby velociraptors with claws so sharp, your eyeballs fall out just by looking at them.  Let’s get ready to RUUUUUMBLE…………….