Monday, August 11th, 2014 – 12 pm
Posted Aug 11, 2014 12:11:41 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The third hour of the 570 Midday Show
12:00 David DeWitt, CIGI’s VP of Programs
The Obama administration has begun directly providing weapons to Kurdish forces who have started to make gains against Islamic militants in northern Iraq, senior U.S. officials said Monday. Previously, the U.S. had insisted on only selling arms to the Iraqi government in Baghdad, but the Kurdish peshmerga fighters had been losing ground to Islamic State militants in recent weeks. The officials wouldn’t say which U.S. agency is providing the arms or what weapons are being sent, but one official said it isn’t the Pentagon. The CIA has historically done similar quiet arming operations.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the operation publicly.U.S. Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel, speaking to reporters here, said the airstrikes “have been very effective from all the reports that we’ve received on the ground.” He declined to detail how or when the U.S. might expand its assistance to Iraq, or if military assessment teams currently in Baghdad would be moving to a more active role advising the Iraqi forces.
12:30 Wendy Duff, Program Director with CHYM 96.7/Country 106.7
Once you get over the initial outrage, it actually makes perfect sense.
Our attention spans are short, four minutes seems like an eternity, therefore something designed to capture our attention – say, a pop song – should be twice as good at half the length.
That’s the ruthless logic behind QuickHitz, a radio format that launched last September in the U.S. and has, as of this month, made its first incursion into Canada, at Calgary station 90.3 AMP, as FP reported.
In a nutshell, QuickHitz doesn’t care if you’re Drake, Lorde or Lana Del Rey. Your single is going to get cut down to about two minutes, with a hard target of 24 songs – about twice the number common to a patient society – during each hour of airtime. When the format’s first terrestrial (as opposed to strictly online) station, WYDS (a.k.a. 93.1 the Party) in Decatur, Ill., launched in September 2013, a typical playlist featured Drake’s “Hold On, We’re Going Home,” Lorde’s “Royals” and Del Rey’s “Summertime Sadness” – or at least QuickHitz versions of them. None clocked in at longer than 2:20. “Summertime” topped out at a humbling 1:50.
Though the QuickHitz format was first offered to stations in 2012, the original, even more extreme inspiration was spawned seven years earlier. That’s when a feature called “The 60 Song Music Hour” – yes, five dozen songs pruned to one minute apiece – made its debut on an alternative San Francisco station, as chronicled by Billboard.biz.
Listen:
