LarryDallas

The fundamental problem with the Dome area has to do with corporate sponsorship and the influence Reliant has on what is done with what should be public buildings 100% free of corporate influence. Prior to the area being renamed Reliant Park the Harris County Sports Authority used to maintain the Dome and did so for over 3 decades.

Once Reliant came in things got bad because the area was developed fast to get that super bowl in. Sure that one weekend pumped money into Houston but look at the after effects. It just looks plain stupid to have 2 giant stadiums next to e/o. The beauty and futuristic look of the free standing dome is forever gone. I can recall going to the dome as a kid in the 90s and parking wayyyy far from the building cause there were too many cars in the lot. Now they have added a bigger stadium as well as Reliant Center which reduced parking spaces in that complex. The did buy out the people in the block west of the park to make additional parking but what good did that do?

I would speculate they wanted to get rid of the lower income businesses and motels that used to be on South Main. It was gentrification plain and simple. I'm all for progress but driving family owned business from the land by buying out the lardlord's building and lease is wrong even though it is legal. If Reliant wanted a squeeky clean new looking park developed they should have broken ground in some other area. There are acres upon acres of undeveloped lands south of loop 610 on hwy 288. Metro could have added a rail line with ease and it would be a 10-15 minute drive from downtown.

Reliant stadium is a very risky build simply because Bob McNair is no spring chicken. I don't follow sports deals much so I can't say if he signed some agreement to keep the Texans here for decades but if he didn't who is to say his family won't sell and/or move the team after he dies. Things are usually all about the bottom line in business. When trying to get an NFL team McNair said what everyone wanted to hear bout loyality to the city and keeping the NFL in town. After he is gone the future is a question.

As for the dome, it should be converted to a museum with all of the key moments in Houston history. Each floor should have the seats gutted to make way for displays. They should leave a strip of seats from the floor level to the upper decks as is to show people the famous Astros rainbow design in the seats at the top. NASA is supposedly builiding a structure around the rockets it has on display outside. A better idea would be to have them moved to the dome (at a high one time cost) and house them there permanently for climate controlled perservation.

This museum should not be art or scinece but more of a sociological one with many atrifacts from people who shaped the town. Jesse Jones and Howard Hughes should have entire floors dedicated to them. They just need to cover important stuff like the medical center, the major universities, a bit on NASA as a tie in to what they can see out in Clear Lake, etc. There are many possibilities.

The city would have to somehow buy out Reliant's claim to the dome to do this and also have some sort of divide made in the parking lot to allow for low cost or free parking to go see this museum. I'm sure the outragious rate out there would turn off everyone but tourists if museum goers had to pay what sports fans do. If admission was reasonable I think it would be world class. There is too much history in that building for it to do anything but be a preserved museum.

BTW, there is a movie Ryan O'Neil was in during the 60's which was filmed entirely in Houston. There is a shot of the dome in it during construction. Around the dome is open grassland as far as you can see. You would never recognize it if not for the done. I highly recommend this film to anyone who is a history buff. They have many great shot of homes in River Oaks, the museum district, the sidney sherman 610 ship channel bridge, etc.

The movie is called "The Thief Who Came to Dinner"

I grew up with his TV spots and do recall driving by on the freeway back when he used to see stuff from tents. We bought some tables from him in 1997 when the store was half building and half tents. It was just against all odds that his business thrived.

The location is good for being on the freeway feeder but that is not a good part of town. The tents should have leaked like crazy and and been too cold or too hot.

The key to his biz has been advertisement and spending money to make money. He made a great move back in the mid 90s when he sponsored the Rockets like crazy when they made their 2 title runs in 94 and 95.

I met Mac at a car show some years ago where he had his purple Ferarri on display. He had painted it and had company logos added plus unlike MAJOR CAR COMPANIES he left the car completely unlocked and open for anyone to get in and see what a Ferrari feels like on them. This may seem like an insignificant thing but I think it has a lot of meaning in it and is very welcoming to potnetial customers. This car was worth over 100 grand new yet he didn't care who got in.

Porsche, Land Rover, Jaguar, and some Mercedes Benz cars costing half of that were locked up to keep people out and some models were event roped off so you could not get closer than 3 feet from them.

The guy knows how to market his store!

emil76

I am working on starting a business which if it materilizes I will be driving around town all day. I would go nuts with existing Houston radio if I heard hours upon hours of it. Sat. radio is a 100% sure thing for me if I get to start this business.

Astro

I did hear that last song he played. It was very enjoyable but like you I do not know the signifinace of it. Berlin says you will know it if you lived in Houston in the 50s and also you will know the significance. Too bad for me I was not yet born in the 50s.

Sat. radio seems more divided up by decade rather than genre. Like that song "Dominic the Donkey" would probably be hard to find even on XM or Sirius. 790 had a niche that was very unique and no where have I found anything comperable. If you or anyone finds any station like that that does a web broadcast please post a link. The music will live on but the DJs will be forever gone.

If that music was from Berlin's private collection he has got to make a web site with a complete listing, album reviews, Houston stories, etc.

Did you hear that story he told in the final hour where he went to some back room of a private club in town to listen to a live violin performance. What a cool story! Ugh....it's so unfair that this type of stuff will be replaced with sports radio centered on overpaid ego-maniac athletes.

You are right! How did you know the name of that song? Maybe you should start a web site with rare music like that.

Anywho, the last good station in town is gone so I am considering sat. radio as well.

Which is better; XM or Sirius?

I've looked at their web sites and seen the selections but I lean XM because Sirius made that deal with Howard Stern and I don't want a penny of my money to go to him.

The guy was all pro-Bush and war war war but then does a total 180 when the Micheal Powell lead FCC threatens his job. You can't have it both ways. Stern then got on the radio telling his audience to be anti-Bush not because it disagreed with policy but because Bush was a threat to the Stern show. What a spineless POS!

Which service has better reception and better hardware?

I want to get a unit which I can plug into my existing car stereo via the aux. jack in the front. This will require a special antenna either way but I lean towards the one that requires less stuff to buy.

I was also listening today to the entire Paul Berlin Show and it was a time of great sadness. I felt like I lost a friend. Never have I met this guy in person but I've enjoyed so many of this Houston stories and tid bits of trivia that I kind of felt that I knew him even though I did not.

The last 5 minutes of the show were bad casue the producer came in and made some lame excuse about music radio not being viable on the AM band. What a LIAR! The shows were not about music as much as they were about the talk and anecdoes free of political slant. Well, all KBME DJs were leaning pretty right wing but it was at tolerable levels.

Astro, you are so right about their play list. I would say KBME had easily over 1000 songs on the list and most of them were unknown to me which is what I LOVED! Just this week I heard some Italian song from the 1950's with a donkey noise as a part of the song. Where can you get something like that?

The music of the eras covered in their lineup was pure gold. Today's music is nothing like it.

By what Paul has said about not ruling out a future home on Houston radio I would speculate that he has already started to make a deal somewhere. If he were calling it quits for good I'm sure he would have just told the audience that he was going to enjoy retirement and no one should feel bad about him not doing the show anymore.

I would like to see him get away from the evil clutches of Clear Channel but in the meantime his mid day show could go to 107.5 FM KLDE. The listeners of that station already like oldies so what difference would it make to make it oldies+.

The music library could go with Paul and be confined to his radio show.

Another possibility would be for him to get a webmaster and start a site to stay connected to the public. He could even do a weekly show in his home in an MP3 format and have it archived for the listeners. I'd love to get music reccomendations from such a site.

If you read this Paul do a web site either way!

I refuse to sugar coat this and add qualifiers like "Not so sound racist or they have gays no offense" but Channel 2 is very offensive to me because it seeks to hammer home that it is all inclusive but it really sort of mocks women and minorities while being anti-white male.

Just look at their lineup folks.

The women on there always act like total bimbos while wearing what would be considered street walker makeup. There was this late night ad Dominique Sachse did where she does a whole thing on Houston and how it is good where at the end 5 seconds or so she looks directly into the camera and does some eye blinking and borderline sexual eye contact. It could have been a phone sex ad if they flashed some 900 number at the bottom. No need to go into reporters casue you can figure that one out on your own.

With the Latino people they have some sort of mixed message. They want to have bragging rights in saying that Bill Baleza and Gasia are Latin but their bantering and manerism is a copycat of what would be considered being "white". They will give opinions about things from a high class historically white perspective but then pronounce Latin names including their own in a very proper ethnic way. This kind of is insulting to my intelligence. I am not a Latin person yet it is still offensive.

On gays, yes the old weather man (I forgot his name) seemed gay from what was his manerism as what is sterotypically considered being gay. The new one is the same in the AM. I don't care what the sexuality of the weather man is as long as he gives a good report. The producers have deliberatly made is policy to play on those stereotypes and make the weatherman seem all feminine and cheery and one step short of prancing and wearing a rainbow stciker on his forehead. That in your face playing on stereotypes is just low.

With Blacks they have again missed the mark in getting people on board that represent and better connect with their own community. WB 39 did a stellar job with Sherrie Williams at the anchor desk. She reads the news like someone you would know in your life. Linda Lorrel seems sort of stuck up and Khambrel Marshall is just way out there. Nuff said on Marshall.

Is it true that they lack even a single white male at the anchor desk at all times?

Rob Johnson was a great anchor guy back in the late 90's when the 4 pm news started. He's now in Chicago. A real old anchorwoman was Jan Carson in the 90s. She was classy. Also Bret Leigh was a good co-anchor back in the 90s.

I guess I would say this deliberate messing with stereotypes and what seems as purposely casting news programs based on race is what is bad.

The station also has this slime ball way of trying so say everything and everyone is trying to rob, rape, kill, beat, molest your kids, etc....and you need channel 2 to help you and be on your side. Nevermind that they do not hvae a problem with stikcing a mic in the face of crime victims after the ordeal.

I just want to know the news and I could care less on what the opinion of it is by channel 2 employees. They always paint a picture of trgaedy or danger on everything. It's just sick.

Some of the best now defunct Houston Anchors:

Bob Nicholas (channel 2 Am show)

Claire Casademont (KHOU 5 and 6 pm)

and Steve Smith (also of KHOU)

Sylvan Rodriguez was not a great journalist. It was a bad thing that he died from cancer but how people make him out to be the greatest journalist that every lived is dumb.

IMHO the best news person of all time in Houston was Janet Shamlian. She worked for KHOU in the early 90s and took a break from it all to start a family I guess. She came back to KPRC for a few years in the late 90s but you coud tell on air she despised the trashy environment. She subsequently quit and went into something else. I admire and respect her for placeing her standards above "being on TV".

I would have said Dave Ward #1 for longevity and credibility but now he is just used as a tool to add some "this is really news" to the garbage on KTRK. When I heard Dave so stuff like the before we go segments I knew he was past his prime.

Anyone else here a 790 Listener?

I'm 26 so I am not really in their demographic but I am so sad to see this station go. If you have never had a listen to them you have just until 12-17-04 to check out a part of Houston history that will go for good. They mostly play the real classics like Sinatra, Streisand, Dean Martin, etc. They also had a great show on Sunday nights called "When Radio Was" which was a broadcast of what people used to listen to before television. It was sci-fi stories, plays, etc....radio dramas were their main thing.

The thing I will miss most will be the Paul Berlin show. This guy is on 10:30am to 2 pm M-F. I first heard Paul on the now defunct Unforgettable 102.9FM back in 1995. It was the last station in town which still had class and dignity. They never had completely idiotic radio stunts like using cell phones to call some guy on Westheimer to wave to women with big breasts and see how many will honk at them as other "mainstream" FM programs in town do.

On a side bar, how do you feel about the Rula and Ryan show on 96.5FM?

I can't stand them anymore. Both are married adults who put on this cheesy show where they still pretend to be 20somethings that are "hip and cool" and are having fun dating and such. Their focus on the men vs. women thing is so played out. It is the least common denominator on the show at all times. And fo God's sale can that woman stop making reference to how she is Greek and her life is like the movie "My Big Fat Greek Wedding"? Ugh....makes me want to puke to have to lsiten to someone day after day pretending some movie is about them.

Anyway, if you have never heard 790 AM take a few minutes to check them out. I have found that even their commericals are not annoying to listen to. They don't yell and scream about zero down payment. There are NO LAWYER commericals! In fact, Paul Berlin does the commericals like in the old days when the DJs gave the word from the sponsors. Very cool stuff I will miss a lot.

I hope the music of 790 and the DJs find a new place in Houston radio which is free from the influence of Clear Channel because that corporation seems to care little about what the people want. A locally owned and opperated ownership is the way to go for these guys. 790 goes to sports radio on Sat. YUCK! We already have 2 major sports talk station in town!

As for other stations here is my 2 cents:

104.1 FM - Used to be "power 104" in the glory days of INXS playtime. These days they are so into trying to be teenie bopper that it is disgusting. The morning show is sort of like a Howard Stern wannabe w/o blue language. Sam Malone just rants on a middle aged man thinking he is a twentysomething as Maria Todd laughs at every dumb joke like Robbin on the Stern show.

Their night show is much more disturbing. The Atom (or Adam is it?) Smasher guy seems to be a bordeline pedophile making sexual remarks to high school female callers. The whole show always come down to horny teenagers trying to score and this DJ trying to be in the backdrop. Pathetic!

99.1 FM - Generally good but they talk too much in the morning show. Their X-mas programming is ridiculous. I won't go back until after the holidays. I'd give them a 4 of 5 excluding what they do with X-mas.

95.7 FM - I LOVED them when they first came out cause the music was so great for driving. No annyoing DJs and okay commericals. Their play list is too small. For God's sake can they stop saying Mindy Abear this that and the other? On the weekend some realitor by the name of Karen Duhr advertises heavily. I dislike that very much. The commericals are not so bad but the woman's voice sounds very snooty and eliteist. She pronounces montrose "montross" and says terrace "terrrece". It drives me crazy.

107.5 FM - Great music but they don't have equal play time on the songs in their list. Frankie Valley and the Carpenters get no respect there. The commericals are trashy and loud which I hate. The DJs are entertaining. I love the southern flair they have to them. Just hearing someone say "I'm Coronel St. James" is funny. Barry Kay is also a riot. Listen to how this guy says "elvis".

I'll add to this later. Wanting to get a chat going on this was the plan so take this thread where you want it to go.