Media Frenzy

By Rob Holbert Managing Editor

WABB FM’s morning show crew recently spent 59 straight hours on the air asking women to take off some of their most private garments, but it wasn’t some sort of raunchy radio stunt. The morning crew set a goal of collecting 5,000 braziers in order to draw attention to Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

According to WABB’s promotions director who goes by the name Q Tip, morning show hosts Matt, Jay and Cherish stayed on the air for 59 hours straight to collect the 5,000 bras. At press time, they had collected almost 6,000.

Storage of so many pretty, lacey things, however, turned out to be a problem. Originally the crew had tried with no luck to find a local business willing to display the bras. Then they decided to line them up along Airport Boulevard. Eventually, police decided it was too much of a distraction for such a major thoroughfare and asked that they be moved. Finally, Colonial Bel Air Mall agreed to house and display the donated undies.

In fact, the bras were used to decorate the mall’s Christmas tree and to fill an emptied fountain, according to Q Tip. They’ve dubbed the tree, “The Tree of Hope.”

The bras will remain on display for the rest of the month, he said.

Ditman hospitalized

As we went to press, we learned that WABB owner Bernie Ditman has been hospitalized at Springhill Memorial. Few details were available. We wish Ditman a speedy recovery.

New at SHC

Spring Hill College has a new director of communications and marketing. John Kerr has taken over press duties, among other things, at Mobile’s oldest institution of higher education.

Kerr has 30 years of communications and marketing experience, and most recently held a similar position at Christian Brothers University in Memphis.

Strange bedfellows.

Television stations across the state – and here in Mobile – were forced to pull several ads blasting Republican Governor Bob Riley for allegedly handing out $1 billion in no-bid contracts recently because the ads inaccurately based their claims on a report from the Alabama Legislative Contract Review Committee.

However, in the politics-makes-strange-bedfellows department, the man funding the ads hammering Riley is also one of the biggest donors to Riley’s Republican Attorney General Troy King. Luther “Stan” Pate IV has given $25,000 directly to King’s campaign and have gotten the AG money through PACs as well.

Different perch for Crowe?

Maybe it is just my over-active imagination, but it seems the P-R has taken to moving the work of their talented-but-liberal political cartoonist J.D. Crowe from his traditional Sunday spot next to the editorial on page 2 of the Insight section when his work is overly edgy.

The latest case-in-point was Oct. 22 when the P-R ran a syndicated cartoon in what is usually Crowe’s spot. Crowe’s cartoon showing President Bush about to slit the throat of Habeas Corpus was dumped to page 4 of the Insight section, a page of mostly jumps from page 1.

It almost seems like the P-R is trying to hide its own cartoonist’s work, at times, or at least to bury it.

Rob Holbert is Lagniappe managing editor. Contact him at rholbert@lagniappemobile.com.

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