Articles tagged with steve chiotakis

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 …

Just a few more days before you go to the polls.  Let’s review, shall we?
We’re in the final stretch, so here’s some information you need to know about the candidates and propositions before you punch, pull or bubble-in that ballot.
KCRW’s Warren Olney, host of Which Way, LA? and To The Point joined us, as did KCRW reporter Saul Gonzalez, who’s been covering some of the campaigns …

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 …

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 …

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. …

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 …

Another week has passed in LA politics and the race for mayor is getting uglier between City Councilman Eric Garcetti and City Controller Wendy Greuel.
The runoff is Tuesday, May 21.
Both attacked each other’s integrity in Monday’s debate and now are running TV ads. Garcetti’s the newest entrant on the ‘boob tube’. (Can we even call it that anymore? There are no more tube TVs.)
But …

There’s a new poll out in the Los Angeles mayor’s race. The USC Price/Los Angeles Times survey shows City Councilman Eric Garcetti leading City Controller Wendy Greuel 50 to 40 percent,  with 10 percent still undecided.
The poll also uncovers some interesting nuggets in the race, and maybe some troubling signs for the Greuel campaign.
Greuel says she’s unfazed by the new poll, and that her …

The LA mayor’s race kicks it up another notch (apologies to Emeril Lagasse). There’s new acrimony in the campaign to succeed Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
Gene Maddaus (LA Weekly) and Jim Rainey (Los Angeles Times) joined us for discussion on all the recent debates. There was one this week. Another tonight. There’s also one coming up Monday.
The candidates started the week keeping their campaigns low-key to …

In this week’s Friday Mixer, we ask, who has the mayoral race endorsement edge? Eric Garcetti received the backing of city councilwoman and former mayoral candidate Jan Perry, while Wendy Greuel got a high-five from former LA Laker – and current part-owner of the LA Dodgers – Magic Johnson.
Could Garcetti’s vocal opposition to the Hollywood Millennium  development project end up helping him if he …

Wendy Greuel and Eric Garcetti, two long-time pro-labor Democrats, are suddenly competing over which of them will stand up to city-employee union demands. That’s one of the stories in the L.A. mayor’s race we talk about on tonight’s Friday Mixer. Joining Steve Choitakis are Gene Maddaus of the LA Weekly and Jim Rainey from the L.A. Times.
They discussed how both Greuel and Garcetti are …

The City of Los Angeles will mark a historic demographic shift sometime this year. A population expert at USC says L.A.’s current majority of transplants will give way to a populace made up predominately of native Californians.
Los Angeles has been a city of immigrants for more than a century. But immigration numbers have dropped. Latino population growth is also leveling off and the City …

It’s just over a week away: the March 5 primary election for the Los Angeles mayor’s race. And the gloves are off. The five-leading candidates have come out swinging, with more negative ads, hard-hitting mailers (pictured left and below) and personal attacks.
Will the candidates showing their bare knuckles finally draw some attention to this important race? Will attack ads help voters decide who the …

The primary election in the race for mayor is a month away – but the campaign isn’t getting much traction with voters. Is it the candidates? Is it the issues – or lack thereof? And what’s next for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa?
KCRW’s Steve Chiotakis sat down with city reporters Gene Maddaus and Dakota Smith to get some answers.
 
Steve Chiotakis: All right, happy Friday to you …

There was a quiet unveiling last month of a new logo for the University of California system. Normally, a change of design or artwork goes with little reaction. But this change has caused quite a stir in the university community. Enough so that there’s now a push to have the logo removed.  A petition’s being circulated calling for the new logo’s “quick, painful death.”
KCRW’s …

Disney is paying just over $4.05 billion to buy the production company behind “Star Wars” from its chairman and founder, George Lucas.
It’s also making a seventh “Star Wars” movie, set for release in 2015, with plans to follow it with two more episodes, and then one new movie every two or three years.
Disney announced the purchase agreement in cash and stock Tuesday.
The deal includes …

You may have heard, but the 405 freeway will be shutting down for a whole weekend later this month. Carmageddon II, as its being dubbed, will likely cause some horrific traffic jams.
But city and county leaders are hoping economic incentives will get people out of the Westside. Transportation officials are hoping drivers give up their cars and use their modes of transit for the …

People around the world today are remembering an American music icon, who died here in Los Angeles.
Marvin Hamlisch is probably best known for his score for The Way We Were and his Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway show A Chorus Line. He was only one of two people to have ever won Oscars, Emmys, Grammys, Tonys, and a Pulitzer.
His death at age 68 came as a …

Astronaut Sally Ride died today of pancreatic cancer.  She was 61.

Ride was the first American woman in space, when she rocketed into the final frontier in 1983 aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger.
When she wasn’t orbiting earth and meandering space, Ride spent most of her life in California. She was born in Encino, and attended Portola Middle School and Westlake School for Girls in Los …