Interviews

After a less-than-spectacular end to the season, the Los Angeles Clippers are dumping Coach Vinny Del Negro. Clippers owner Donald Sterling waited until almost three weeks after the season was over to tell Del Negro that he wasn’t getting a contract extension. The Clippers’ season ended with a loss to the Memphis Grizzlies in the first round of the NBA playoffs.
Del Negro guided the …

Musician Ray Manzarek, keyboard player of The Doors, died today in a hospital in Germany. He was 74.
Manzarek’s chance meeting with Jim Morrison at Venice Beach in 1965 led to the band’s formation.  Manzarek, a Chicago native, moved to Los Angeles to study film at UCLA.  He met Morrison on the Westwood campus while the future Doors frontman was briefly studying there.
“[Manzarek] was the …

Fans of the cult favorite TV show Arrested Development already have this Sunday blocked off the calendar. That’s when Netflix will release all 15 episodes of the latest season. FOX canceled the show seven years ago, yet it has only grown in stature.
While the program is a comedic masterpiece, far more interesting is its choice of setting: Orange County, California. What statements does Arrested …

This Tuesday is the Los Angeles general election. Thousands of paid canvassers have taken to the streets to get out the vote. And there have been lots of TV ads that have been increasingly negative.
Much of the money for these efforts isn’t actually coming from the campaigns. They’re coming from outside expenditure groups – PACs. They can pretty much say and do whatever they …

Voters will head to the polls on Tuesday to vote for the next mayor of Los Angeles and several other key offices. But will there be a flood of ballots, or merely a trickle?
Used to be, a lot more votes were cast in L.A. during big city elections. Here we are on the cusp of selecting a new mayor for the second most populous …

L.A. is a profoundly Latin American city, with countless historical and cultural ties to the Spanish-speaking world. Those ties include a common language. Spanish is spoken by over 40 percent of L.A. residents, making it the second-most spoken language in L.A. after English.
Remember, even saying the words “Los Angeles” (or if you want to get fancy and historical about it, El Pueblo de Nuestra …

This week in New York, television network executives are presenting their offerings for the fall season – and pitching those shows to press and major advertisers. The goal? To allow marketers to buy commercial airtime “up front,” before the fall season begins.
About $9 billion in advertising revenue is expected to be raised at the Upfronts.
Kim Masters hosts KCRW’s The Business and spoke with KCRW’s …

On today’s Mixer, we welcomed Gene Maddaus from the LA Weekly and Howard Blume, the education reporter from the Los Angeles Times.
There are a couple of new polls that came out this week. One comes from the Pat Brown Institute of Public Affairs at Cal State Los Angeles, showing 46% of likely voters backing Wendy Greuel and 45% who back Eric Garcetti.
Nine percent are still undecided.
The Cal State survey shows Greuel polls …

The UCLA-USC crosstown rivalry took a new turn today with a major case of academic poaching. USC has lured away two prominent neuroscientists from UCLA with a promise to expand their internationally renowned lab.
Their research uses brain imaging techniques to study Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, autism and other disorders. Arthur Toga and Paul Thompson will move to the USC Keck School of Medicine campus next …

What do you do with the rest of your life when you’ve become a TV star and an icon for a generation at age 23?  Tabitha Soren and MTV news were to the 90s Presidential campaigns what Twitter was to Obama.  After running around covering President Clinton, she married a superstar writer (Michael Lewis), won a prestigious journalism fellowship at Stanford (the Knight), and had three …

Computer scientists and tech companies have been for years engaged to make more gadgets that are human-like.  That not only respond to humans in a life-like way, but also think like a human.
But tech companies are researching and designing and advancing – everyday – algorithms that will make computers as smart, and complicated, and quiet, as the human brain. This month, Wired magazine reported …

Normally Hollywood’s favorite game is figuring out who will be nominated, and who will win, in the big awards ceremonies. But right now the biggest guessing game in Hollywood is figuring out who will be tapped by President Barack Obama for some plum diplomatic posts.
KCRW’s Steve Chiotakis handicapped the odds with Matthew Belloni, executive editor at The Hollywood Reporter.
A White House announcement on the …

The peer-to-peer file sharing service BitTorrent is introducing a new gated system that could, in theory, allow studios and record labels to charge users for access to movies, music and shows. They’re calling it the BitTorrent Bundle.
“The Bundle format allows creators to require an action before users can download. That means creators can require a payment, a pay-what-you-want fee, or email registration, for example. …

Raymond Frederick Harryhausen created one of the earliest successful forms of stop motion animation. He and pioneer Willis O’Brien won an Oscar for their work on the film “Mighty Joe Young.”  Harryhausen also created one of the most famous screen swordfights ever between Jason and a group of skeletons in “Jason and the Argonauts.” Harryhausen died today in London at the age of 92.
KCRW’s …

More than a 1,000 guns were surrendered at this past weekend’s gun buyback event, held throughout Los Angeles.
The city collected 516 handguns, 381 rifles, 226 shotguns and 49 assault weapons.  Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa says during his administration, the anonymous gun buyback program has removed more than 11,000 guns from the street.
But is it doing anything to reduce crime? City officials believe so. But a …

The L.A. mayor’s race is entering the final-stretch run, with Monday being the final day to register  to vote in the May 21 election. In today’s mixer: union money, endorsements, and the dangers of texting.
Our panelists: Hillel Aron, a contributing writer to the LA Weekly, and Kate Linthicum from the Los Angeles Times.
So what happened this week? Candidates Wendy Greuel and Eric Garcetti, are …

The legendary trumpeter Herb Alpert is best known for his Tijuana Brass.  But all the while he’s been making music, he’s also been making fine art.
Tomorrow night, you can see a sampling of his paintings and sculptures on display at the Robert Berman Gallery at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica.
Coincidentally, you can walk around the corner (be careful!) to Olympic Boulevard and see three …

In a culture where a tawdry book like “50 Shades of Grey” makes it to the bestseller list, it’s hard to imagine that there are books that are still banned.
Each year, in the interest of promoting free speech, the literary group PEN Center USA selects books that have been banned over time or censored.
To garner support and momentum for Banned Books Week from Sept. …

We’re hearing a lot today about Washington Wizards center Jason Collins, a native Angeleno, who announced to Sports Illustrated that he’s gay. He’s the first player in one of the major men’s professional sports leagues to come out.
Collins wrote on Sports Illustrated’s website today – “If I had my way, someone else would have already done this. Nobody has, which is why I’m raising …

Congress is in the midst of debating a proposed bill that would grant some type of amnesty to the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants.
Meanwhile, a different debate is happening in some of Orange County’s major evangelical churches. Pastors are joining other Christian leaders to push for immigration reform. But they’re finding resistance among their congregants, some of who are actually leaving their churches in …