The year 2003 in radio involved some significant events. __TOC__

Events

* October 10 – Facing an investigation surrounding allegations of illegal drug use, American right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh publicly admits that he is addicted to prescription pain killers, and will seek treatment.

Debuts

*March 3 – '' Skratch 'N Sniff'' debuts on

San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United States ...

area alternative rock station XETRA-FM (91.1 FM, "91X"). *March 31 – " NBC News Radio," an hourly service of one-minute news updates anchored by

NBC News NBC News is the news division of the American broadcast television network NBC. The division operates under NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, a division of NBCUniversal, which is, in turn, a subsidiary of Comcast. The news division's ...

and

MSNBC MSNBC (originally the Microsoft National Broadcasting Company) is an American news-based pay television cable channel. It is owned by NBCUniversala subsidiary of Comcast. Headquartered in New York City, it provides news coverage and politic ...

personnel (but written by

Westwood One Westwood One is an American radio network owned by Cumulus Media. The company syndicates talk, music, and sports programming. The company takes its name from an earlier network also named Westwood One, a company founded in 1978. The company w ...

staffers) is launched. Westwood One still maintains production of the unrelated five-minute long "NBC ''Radio News''"-branded newscasts in morning drive (which had been produced and anchored by

CBS Radio CBS Radio was a radio broadcasting company and radio network operator owned by CBS Corporation and founded in 1928, with consolidated radio station groups owned by CBS and Westinghouse Broadcasting/Group W since the 1920s, and Infinity Broa ...

personnel since 1998) for one more year; they were one of a few remaining connections to the original NBC Radio Network. *April – KJOC in Davenport, Iowa dumps its all-sports format and switches to talk, hoping to compete with the market's WOC. Some sports programming – mainly, the Chicago Cubs and

Iowa State University Iowa State University of Science and Technology (Iowa State University, Iowa State, or ISU) is a public land-grant research university in Ames, Iowa. Founded in 1858 as the Iowa Agricultural College and Model Farm, Iowa State became one of the ...

athletics – are held over, and (except for a few brief interim periods with ISU sports) remain to this day. *June 20 -

KOCZ-LP KOCZ-LP is a non-commercial low-power FM community radio station in Opelousas, Louisiana, United States. The station operates at a frequency of 94.9 MHz and features a mix of cajun, rhythm and blues, hip-hop, gospel and local public af ...

Opelousas, Louisiana :''Opelousas is also a common name of the flathead catfish.'' Opelousas (french: Les Opélousas; Spanish: ''Los Opeluzás'') is a small city and the parish seat of St. Landry Parish, Louisiana, United States. Interstate 49 and U.S. Route 190 ...

, begins broadcasting as the third

community radio Community radio is a radio service offering a third model of radio broadcasting in addition to commercial and public broadcasting. Community stations serve geographic communities and communities of interest. They broadcast content that is popul ...

" barnraising" initiative of the Prometheus Radio Project. *October 12 – Billboard unveils the Hot Dance Airplay chart. "Just The Way You Are" by

Milky Milky is an Italian dance music production group consisting of producers Giordano Trivellato and Giuliano Sacchetto, with Italian singer Giuditta serving as their lead singer on their album ''Star''. is a Nordic country located on .... Gi ...

is the first number one single on the published chart. Original panel: WKTU/New York City,

KDLD KDLD is a commercial radio, commercial FM radio, FM radio station in Santa Monica, California, broadcasting to the Greater Los Angeles area on 103.1 Hertz, MHz. KDLE is a commercial FM radio station in Newport Beach, California, broadcasting to t ...

/Los Angeles, KKDL/Dallas-Fort Worth, WQSX/Boston, WPYM/Miami,

KCJZ KCJZ (105.3 FM, "Bob FM") is a commercial radio station that is licensed to Cambria, California and serves the San Luis Obispo County area. The station is owned by Robert Adelman, through licensee Adelman Broadcasting, Inc., and airs a variet ...

/San Antonio, KPTI/San Francisco and KNRJ/Phoenix. All stations have since left the Dance format and panel.

Closings

*KMEO in Flower Mound, Texas ended their ''Memories'' format and began their Country format as KTYS. *

Art Bell Arthur William Bell III (June 17, 1945 – April 13, 2018) was an American broadcaster and author. He was the founder and the original host of the paranormal-themed radio program ''Coast to Coast AM'', which is syndicated on hundreds of ...

semi-retires from '' Coast to Coast AM'', remains hosting weekends

Deaths

*January 17 - Richard Crenna, 77, American

motion picture A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmospher ...

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication Media (communication), medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of Transmission (telecommunications), television tra ...

, and

radio Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transm ...

actorCox, Jim (2008). ''This Day in Network Radio: A Daily Calendar of Births, Debuts, Cancellations and Other Events in Broadcasting History''. McFarland & Company, Inc. . *January 25 -

Robert Rockwell Robert Rockwell (October 15, 1920 – January 25, 2003) was an American stage, film, radio and television actor. He is best known for playing the handsome, but awkward biology teacher Philip Boynton in the radio and television sitcom '' Our Mis ...

, 82, American stage, film, radio and television actor *March 17 - Alan Keith, 94, English actor and longtime classical music presenter *July 4 - Larry Burkett, 64, American

evangelical Evangelicalism (), also called evangelical Christianity or evangelical Protestantism, is a worldwide interdenominational movement within Protestant Christianity that affirms the centrality of being " born again", in which an individual exp ...

Christian author and radio personality *August 27 - Jinx Falkenburg, 83, who (with her husband, Tex) popularized the talk-show format, first on radio and then in the early days of television *October 27 - Rod Roddy, 66, American top-40 disc jockey and announcer, better known for his work announcing television game shows

References

{{reflist Radio by year

Events

Debuts

Closings

Deaths

See also

References