It’s not every day that a radio station executive cries on the air while relaying the details of a major staff shake-up. But that was indeed the case Friday afternoon at WBAI-FM in New York as Pacifica Foundation interim executive director Summer Reese confirmed a huge downsizing at the public radio station.

Although she said on the air that 75% of WBAI 99.5 FM staff was being dismissed, she later clarified in an interview with the New York Times that starting today, it is in fact 66% – or 19 of the station’s 29 employees – that are gone. Radiosurvivor.com columnist Matthew Lasar was struck by another aspect of the drastic WBAI cutbacks:

What I found most surprising about this impromptu [on-air] press conference was that Reese announced that she has tapped into former interim KPFA general manager Andrew Leslie Phillips as WBAI’s new interim program director. Last we checked, the Pacifica National Office had put Phillips under “paid administrative leave” at Pacifica station KPFA pending an investigation of complaints against him. According to Phillips, the probe involved charges of racism at the Berkeley signal.

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This is just too funny.

Proving that you can bend a tired bureaucratic rule with some delightful 21st century PR, Toronto radio station Indie 88 (CIND FM) decided that for the length of a mandated one-week CRTC radio signal test, it would play just ONE song. Over and over again, until the station’s official launch at noon on July 31.

We’re listening to the Indie 88 Web stream right now and you know what? Rick Astley‘s “Never Gonna Give You Up” stands up pretty well five times in a row. From a Canadian Press feature item by Nick Patch:

“It’s one of those jokes we think is timeless,” said Indie 88′s general manager Megan Bingley in a telephone interview Friday…

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Wow. We’ve watched, listened to and read a ton of media coverage over the years about the Church of Scientology. From our perspective, there’s no doubt an interview given this week to Minneapolis-St. Paul radio station myTalk 107.1 FM by Leah Remini‘s older sister Nicole belongs at the top of that crowded list.

For a whole bunch of different reasons, it’s very rare when a story like this breaks to hear from an immediate relative of the celebrity in the middle of it. Let alone this quickly.

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The satellite radio service is all over the news wire this morning with coverage from David Lieberman (Deadline), Georg Szalai (The Hollywood Reporter), James Rogers (TheStreet.com) and others. The reason: a press release announcement by CEO Jim Meyer that SIRIUS has crossed the magical mark of 25 million subscribers.

What’s most interesting about all this, besides the morning stock bump if you’re a SIRIUS XM stakeholder, is the main source of the larger-than-expected Q2 2013 subscriber increase. From Lieberman’s report:

Most of SiriusXM’s new customers are auto buyers, and the company attributes much of its recent growth to the continued strength in that market. Sales in June were up 11.2% vs the same month last year, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 15.98M, Automotive News reported.

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Much like Ryan Seacrest, Carson Daly seems to have an unlimited capacity for radio and TV work.

Starting this weekend, alongside The Voice, Daly’s weekday morning KAMP-FM radio in Los Angeles and Last Call NBC sit-down duties, he will be hosting a new nationally syndicated radio program. The Daly Download with Carson Daly – This Week’s Top 30 can be heard locally Sunday at 7 a.m. on WNOW 92.3 FM. From the recent CBS Radio/Cumulus announcement:

Two versions of the program will be created by Daly and offered to stations for broadcast on Saturday or Sunday. The four-hour and three-hour shows will complement programming on Contemporary Hit Radio or Hot Adult Contemporary formatted stations, respectively.

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Alec Baldwin, currently among the leaders in the race to become the most annoying celebrity of 2013, wants to interview Edward Snowden for his WNYC podcast. The 55-year-old actor told Vanity Fair that he’s doing everything in his power to make it happen:

I want to try to interview him [Snowden] for my podcast on WNYC. I’m pressing all the buttons I have in London with friends of mine who know [Julian] Assange. I’m going to fly to Russia and try to interview Snowden.

That sounds great.

Baldwin also said that he’s never going to use Twitter again because “It’s just another chink in your armor for people to come and kill you.”

One could argue that if you’re not an idiot, people don’t try to “kill you,” but hey, what do we know? Other than there’s no way Baldwin stays away from Twitter, we mean.

As EW managing editor Jess Cagle recently explained to us, the magazine’s brand new 24/7 SIRIUS channel kicked off with a Hugh Jackman town hall discussion, moderated by Cagle. This weekend, the town hall fun continues.

This time, the discussion is with Tina Fey and husband Jeff Richmond. It was taped June 27 at the satellite broadcaster’s Avenue of the Americas studios and is hosted by SIRIUS XM’s Seth Rudetsky. The program will premiere on the Stars Channel (#106) at 9 a.m. ET Saturday July 6 and then repeat at various times on both that channel and EW‘s.

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Larry King has done a lot of media since scooting over to Ora TV. Still, FishbowlNY is a little surprised at the relatively minimal coverage generated by this week’s appearance on The Howard Stern Show.

The broadcaster and bagel meister covered a number of topics including – in a blunter way than we typically recall – the Piers Morgan transition. From the interview, as transcribed by the good folks at classicallite.com:

“I always had four-year contracts. Well, three years ago, CNN came to me and said ‘Hey, we’re going into a new direction and we’re only gonna give you a one-year contract.’”

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The latest name to grace KCRW’s “Guest DJ” project is actor Val Kilmer. If you’ve never heard of this series from one of LA’s two public radio flagships, it’s essentially Desert Island Discs re-imagined.

Among Kilmer’s song picks is Bob Dylan‘s “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding).” He took the opportunity to tell a great story about the singer, who it turns out is a huge fan of the actor’s 1993 Western Tombstone. Thanks to a mutual friend, Kilmer was able to welcome the singer to his NYC apartment:

“He shows up and sits down and he wants to talk about Tombstone, but I just can’t, you know, nor can I talk about any of his stuff. Eventually he says, ‘Ain’t you going to say anything about that movie?’ and I said, “Do some “Blowing in the Wind” and I’ll…”

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The “In His Own Words” piece in Radio Ink magazine by George Bouloukos (pictured), a senior VP market manager with CBS Radio here in New York, positively drips with cigar-smelling nostalgia.

It’s all about his early career days in Chicago. He used to make sales house calls from 7 a.m. to midnight. And just as he was gaining a foothold in the radio sales business, there was this memorable poker table experience:

I found myself in a Liars Poker game at the Corona Café, a restaurant and bar frequented by agency buyers and radio and TV AEs and managers. There were about six of us in the game and after about five or six calls, I called 11 sevens and I was challenged by Larry Divney, whom I didn’t know but quickly learned that he was the sales manager of ABC-owned WLS.

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