LIVE...
* KCRW Presents
* Save the Date: A Sounds Eclectic Evening
* StoryCorps Comes to Santa Monica
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ON AIR AT KCRW. . .
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KCRW TO VIDEO PODCAST MORNING BECOMES ECLECTIC SESSIONS

A year ago, "podcasting" was a concept we could hardly explain to ourselves.

In December, "podcast" became the New Oxford Dictionary's Word of the Year for 2005.

And today, you can watch radio on your video iPod!

Beginning January 10, KCRW will offer video podcasts of live sessions performed by unsigned, independent, and select established bands on our signature music show, Morning Becomes Eclectic, hosted by Nic Harcourt.

The first video podcasts made available from iTunes, AOL Music and KCRW.com will be performances by Kate Earl (recorded and originally broadcast on September 27, 2005) and Si Sí (recorded and originally broadcast on June 28, 2005). On January 23, KCRW will post the video podcast of the Arctic Monkeys live session (recorded and originally broadcast on November 19, 2005). Each Morning Becomes Eclectic podcast will be available for a two-week window.

KCRW began offering podcasts of Morning Becomes Eclectic live sessions in August 2005, with the unsigned Los Angeles band Goldspot. The exposure quadrupled traffic on the band s website, not just on the day they performed at KCRW - a common occurrence - but in the weeks that followed.

Since then, KCRW has podcast guest DJ sessions with such notable musicians as Robbie Robertson and Ry Cooder, as well as 40-minute live performances from critically acclaimed buzz bands SONS & DAUGHTERS, CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH and THE LIKE, among many others. At present, the Morning Becomes Eclectic podcasts receive upwards of 20,000 downloads weekly.

For the past four years, our dedicated web team has been filming those performances and archiving them on KCRW.com. Of the 50,000 hours a week of On Demand Archive listening to just the music programs, KCRW's Video On Demand accounts for half. From a rudimentary one-camera shot of bands in our studio when we started filming, to a sophisticated four-camera, live-edit shoot now, the KCRW video podcast will make music fans feel like they are in the basement studio with the band and Nic.

There is nothing currently available on iTunes like KCRW's video podcasts. Consumers can buy commercial music videos, but KCRW's intimate, unique live sessions will be available for free from the Podcast section of the iTunes Music Store.

Now music fans and KCRW listeners worldwide will be able to see where it all starts.

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January 2006 Bookworm Schedule

January 5 * TED THOMPSON, editor, contributing writers JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER and KELLY LINKNoisy Outlaws, Unfriendly Blobs and Some Other Things... (Mc Sweeney's)
McSweeney's has assembled a sublimely playful anthology of stories for YAs (young adults as they're called in the booksellers' trade). Here, we'll talk to an editor and some of the writers about how the stories were chosen, who the target audience is, and how it feels to be associated with the very hip folks at McSweeney's.

January 12 * MARY GAITSKILL , Veronica (Pantheon)
Michael Silverblatt confesses that he is frightened by Mary Gaitskill's intensely forward work. Gaitskill confides that sometimes she is frightened by the world she writes about. In this exploratory conversation, they attempt to arrive at an understanding of the deceptive role that point-of-view plays in transgressive writing, such as hers.

January 19 * ANNIE PROULX, Brokeback Mountain (Scribner)
Annie Proulx expresses her passion for accuracy of detail and truth of character. She is one of the lucky few writers to see those qualities brought to the film adaptation of her work. We discuss Ang Lee's film Brokeback Mountain and the ways in which it reflects the author's vision.

January 26 * JOAN DIDION, The Year of Magical Thinking (Knopf)
How does a writer handle personal tragedy? In this conversation, Joan Didion explores the possibility that writing about her husband's death and her daughter's illness was an essential activity, enabling her to both grieve and mourn.

Bookworm host, MICHAEL SILVERBLATT, interviews writers of fiction and poetry -- the established, new, and emerging -- with insight and precision. Bookworm airs on KCRW 89.9 FM and KCRW.com on Thursdays from 2:30 to 3:00pm. Each program is archived online and On Demand at www.KCRW.com.

KCRW.com Presents...

KCRW Concert: A Sounds Eclectic Evening

Saturday, March 25, 2006 At The Gibson Amphitheatre

SAVE THE DATE for A Sounds Eclectic Evening on March 25th at the Gibson (Universal) Amphitheatre

This March, KCRW will hold its 5th Annual live benefit concert, A Sounds Eclectic Evening, at the Gibson Amphitheatre. Each year, the concert brings together incredible musical talent and more than 6,000 KCRW listeners. Past shows have featured performances by Coldplay, Beck, Damien Rice, Café Tacuba, Norah Jones and Jurassic 5.

In addition to the show, the evening will feature an intimate backstage party for Platinum ticket-holders on the patio, and an exclusive After-Party for Platinum and Gold level ticket-holders at The Gibson with special guest deejays.

Tickets go on-sale exclusively to KCRW members on Wednesday, February 8 at 11 AM, from KCRW.com and to the general public on Tuesday, February 21 at 10 AM through all Ticketmaster outlets.

The latest information about the concert, artists, and ticket prices can be found at www.kcrw.com/see5.

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National Storytelling Project, Storycorps, Comes to Santa Monica

StoryCorps to spend a month in Santa Monica
As it continues its U.S. tour,
Capturing stories of everyday Americans

Santa Monica, CA (December 15, 2005) StoryCorps, the acclaimed national initiative to document everyday history and the unique stories of America, is coming to Downtown Santa Monica s Third Street Promenade beginning Monday, January 9 to Sunday, February 5 to collect stories from Southern Californians as part of its tour across the country.

The StoryCorps MobileBooth a state-of-the-art recording studio, housed inside a silver Airstream trailer will be located at Wilshire Boulevard and Third Street, at the north end of Third Street Promenade, a world-class shopping and entertainment destination.

StoryCorps is partnering with KCRW-Santa Monica 89.9 FM (KCRW.com) to create special programming exclusively for the station, based on the stories collected here. Select segments from StoryCorps air nationally on Friday mornings, during National Public Radio's Morning Edition (heard weekdays from 3 to 9am on KCRW). KCRW will air select, locally recorded, four-minute interviews from the project on Mondays at 4:44pm.

At the StoryCorps MobileBooth sound studio, people participate in pairs, often times friends or loved ones and one interviews the other. A trained facilitator guides the participants through the interview process and handles the technical aspects of the recording. At the end of a 40-minute session, participants receive a CD of their interview. With their permission, a second copy is sent to the American Folklife Center (AFC) at the Library of Congress where it becomes part of a high-quality, digital archive that will eventually grow into an oral history of America.

StoryCorps was created by award-winning radio documentary producer and MacArthur Genius Award recipient Dave Isay. StoryCorps has been traveling across the country since May 2005 instructing and inspiring individuals to record one another's stories.

With more than 2,000 stories already recorded, StoryCorps, the largest storytelling project ever undertaken, will collect more than 250,000 interviews over the next ten years. In Santa Monica, StoryCorps anticipates recording at least 125 stories.

StoryCorps opened its first StoryBooth, a freestanding soundproof recording studio, in New York City's Grand Central Terminal in October 2003, and in June 2005 opened its second StoryBooth at the site of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. Over the course of the ten-year project, StoryCorps plans to open StoryBooths both mobile and stationary across the country. Beginning January 2, at 10am Pacific Time, individuals can visit StoryCorps.net to make interview reservations; the website offers tips on how to prepare for the interviews, as well as opportunities to listen to excerpts of other stories told in the booth.

Over the past two years, we've seen the profound effect StoryCorps has had on the lives of those who have participated in the project, and we've seen the power that these stories have had on the millions who have heard them on NPR and on the Web, says David Isay. We believe that listening is an act of love. StoryCorps will engage communities, teach participants to become better listeners, foster intergenerational communication, and help Americans appreciate the strength in the stories of everyday people they find all around them.

Ruth Seymour, KCRW's General Manager, says, "Everybody has a story. And StoryCorps gives individuals the sense of affirming their life experience. Memorable moments, tragic moments and joyous ones all make up the human drama that StoryCorps helps memorialize. We're delighted to be able to bring StoryCorps to Downtown Santa Monica's Third Street Promenade, a place that celebrates the intermingling of people in a lively, vibrant way."

"We're thrilled to serve as the Southern California venue for the StoryCorps MobileBooth and be part of this historic storytelling project," says Kathleen Rawson, Executive Director of the Bayside District. "Downtown Santa Monica and Third Street Promenade draw as many as 100,000 visitors throughout the week from across town and across the country, so we believe Santa Monica will be a terrific location to collect a varied set of American stories."

The StoryCorps national tour is sponsored by NPR, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and Saturn Corporation, the automobile company. StoryCorps in Santa Monica is made possible by KCRW, The Bayside District and Hard Tail Clothing Company on the Third Street Promenade.

Beginning January 2nd at 10 am, reservations for interviews can be made at StoryCorps.net, and reservations fill up quickly. For more information visit www.KCRW.com -- click on StoryCorps. More information on the hosting venue is at www.DowntownSM.com.

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KCRW-FM, licensed to Santa Monica College, is National Public Radio's flagship station for Southern California. The station serves Los Angeles and Orange Counties at 89.9 FM, Ventura County at 89.1 FM on KCRU/ Oxnard-Ventura, the greater Palm Springs area at 89.3 FM on KCRI/Indio-Palm Springs and Kern and Northern LA Counties at 88.1 FM on KCRY/Mojave/Antelope Valley. Translators carry the signal to the Twentynine Palms and Yucca Valley areas at 90.7 FM, Gorman at 89.7 FM, Banning at 90.9 FM, the Ridgecrest area at 107.1 FM, the Santa Paula, Moorpark, and Fillmore areas at 102.3 FM, Ojai at 102.1 FM, and Lemon Grove/Spring Valley in San Diego County at 89.9 FM. Every week, more than 500,000 listeners tune to the station for its eclectic and innovative non-commercial program schedule. KCRW can be found on the World Wide Web at KCRW.com, Radio@AOL, Radio@iTunes, and Shoutcast.com. KCRW can be found on the World Wide Web at KCRW.com.

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