WRBH 88.3 FM

This radio station is a great service to everyone in the GNO, not just the «blind & print handicapped.» If you like being read to, then this is the station for you.
24 hours of programming a day. They read everything from local news sources (the Lens
the Advocate), National news sources (Wall Street Journal, headlines/​breaking news). You can keep up with their featured books via their website (usually one fiction & one nonfiction) and their Midday short story is a great accompaniment to your lunch.
Basically they try to have something for everyone. Most of their readers are volunteers and some are better than others, but mostly the bobbles are endearing rather than annoying.
Give this station a listen now!

I volunteer here. Over the course of years, like maybe 10 now. On again, off again. On again now. The times for off revolved around having kids. I’d rather volunteer same time, same day, with kids (x 4!) that pipe dream vaporizes. When I started, it was all periodicals, books, and clipped daily news. Today it’s still books, but the rest is iPad, baby. It’s a great service to the community that has adapted with technology. As a member of the New Orleans community I take great pride in what happens here even though I am exceptionally low on the contribution scale. In all the cities I’ve lived in I am not certain this concept translates either. Effectively perhaps it is a «naturally New Orleans» thing? Tune in and learn something!

Im pretty sure, besides that radio station in Mexico City that alternates starting each hour booming either Autograph’s Turn Up The Radio twith the Rocky Theme this is the best radio station in the universe anywhere.
I am a busy man, I have a dog to play fetch with, and these gin drinks won’t just mix themselves. Modern New Orleans isn’t an easy place to live in… do I read the comics (fun) or mop the floor (less so)? Well there’s a chance Ill bring a hot babe home (I suppose) so the floor has gotta be mopped, but damn, who knows what kinda thing Beatle Bailey may get into today. Maybe him and Sarge will actually come out together this week? I gotta check the comics… but I gotta impress an imaginary girl also, just in case she turns out to exist.
This is where WRBH comes in. 6:30 PM every Sunday, sure as the sun rises, the comics get read; for the sightless, for the illiterate, those unable to hold or afford newspapers, and me. That’s a pretty healthy slice of the city for which Haggars horribleness is described with details I sometimes miss myself; Snuffy Smiths bottle of moonshine described so clearly, I can see the 3 x’s on the label. I can mop away, with no fear of missing out on the other joys of my life, whatever is in the daily paper.
They don’t just read the comics… every morning, for 2 hours, the Times Picayune. Then Weekly Magazines, Books (fiction/​non and local), and when you are lucky, the incredibly awesome Constance McEnany. From England to Gretna and reading the hits in her unmistakable British accent at 82, the Uncle Lionel of the reading radio scene, really. If I was sitting in a bar she ordered a gimlet next to me, I would freak, I would recognize her voice anywhere. My friends neighbor named a chicken after her… she’s that awesome.
Wanna know the price of Ham? That’ll be Friday at noon when they read the grocery ads. The always odd reading of the death notices makes you just sit and ponder those others listening; are they hoping to hear a name? Not hear a name? What the heck would I do if I was listening at 6:53 PM and theymentioned someone I knew and liked passed and just jumped to the next name?
With the loss of the Times Picayune, some of the best shows will be gone… but they really do have lots of awesome programs, local authors, chef interviews, replays of old time radio, even a Vietnamese show (which I always listen too, since I can’t read Vietnamese at all).
200 volunteers, 24 hours a day. A great community resource, I am a proud donator.

WOW, I can’t believe I’m the first to review WRBH!
Maybe there’s another listing for it and I missed it?
Seriously, who DOESN’T love WRBH? They are awesome. I used to volunteer-​read for them. If it weren’t for WRBH, I wouldn’t have «read» the newspaper for the past few years (they read it to you in the morning). And I listen to the Wall Street Journal before that. It’s pretty cool, because now whenever some idiot Tea Partier tells me I need to read the Wall Street Journal instead of the New York Times, I can say, «Hey motherfucker, I actually do «read» the Wall Street Journal. Didja catch that article about such-​and-​such this morning? No? Yeah that’s because you don’t actually read (or «read») the Wall Street Journal, you just tune your radio to Rush Radio, you ignorant shitbird. And all Rush does is have some poor intern on his staff relay the highlights of that morning’s Wall Street Journal, and then he screams his fat face off about LIBERTY JUSTICE FREEDOM CONSTITUTION AMERICA VICODIN!!! into the mic for two hours and then tells you it was all in the WSJ. Well guess what? It wasn’t! Try reading the damn thing yourself. Of course, let’s not kid ourselves, nobody actually wants to read that shit, so those of us who know about and love WRBH listen to it while picking the crust out of our eyes in the morning, before our brains are functioning enough to tell us to go take a damn shower and start getting ready.
(After WSJ, I listen to the Times-​Picayune while getting dressed, doing my makeup, and generally getting my shit together for work.)
Anyway, news is only a couple hours out of the 24-​hour WRBH programming schedule. They read you bestselling novels, current fiction, nonfiction, short stories, poetry, sci-​fi, magazine articles (on various topics like pets, cooking/​food, pop culture, and local interest), and even children’s books. How cool is that? You can plop your kid down in front of the radio for a change and pretend it’s 1950 or something.
My favorite part of WRBH, though, is the old old old radio shows they play at night. Right now I’m listening to some cowboy love story (lol, not like that – I wish) and they keep interrupting it with cigarette commercials. For example, about ten minutes ago Red Skelton told me that Raleighs are the healthiest cigarettes, and just now some guy told me that I’ll get lots of compliments on the pleasant aroma of my Sir Walter Raleigh tobacco, which will never leave my pipe wet (?). This shit is awesome! And sometimes they have Vincent Price programs. And always, always, you get a healthy dose of good ol’ American sexism.
See, WRBH has something for everyone (including, but not limited to, the Blind and Print Handicapped).
OH DANG SOMEBODY JUST GOT SHOT IN THE SALOON! Oh ok, it was just two of Mr. Feeny’s chumps.
Last but not least, listen for a reader named Constance Mackeninny (or however you spell her name). She reads all kinds of stuff during the day, but she doesn’t have a set schedule. Trust me, you’ll know her when you hear her.