Posted by Bud on March 25, 2010 at 12:05:47:
On Thursday April 1st, a wide variety of Chicago media stars from radio and television will be lending their voices to The Chicago Lighthouse's CRIS Radio -- the Chicagoland Radio Information Service station. CRIS' "Celebrity Day" is a popular annual tradition for the Chicago Lighthouse, where local media personalities volunteer to be part of this important service that reads news and other information for the visually impaired and handicapped.
For this year's "Celebrity Day," the guest readers that have volunteered to help so far are Roe Conn from WLS-AM, Greg Brown from WLS-FM, Felicia Middlebrooks, Mary Frances Bragiel & Bart Shore from WBBM-AM, Mike Kendall from WLIT-FM, Joe Collins from Shadow Traffic, Andy Avalos & Lee Ann Trotter from WMAQ-TV, and Janet Davies from WLS-TV.
Bonnie Barnes, program director at CRIS said, "We're delighted that so many distinguished Chicago area broadcasters will take time from their busy schedules to join us on "Celebrity Day" so we can give our regular readers a well deserved day off."
Ms. Barnes also noted that volunteers are always welcome, be they "celebrities" or not. Those interested in lending their voices can contact her at 312-666-1331, ext. 3678, or via email at bonnie.barnes(at)chicagolighthouse.org.
The Chicago Lighthouse for People Who Are Blind or Visually Impaired is a non-profit organization that was founded in 1906. CRIS, Chicago Lighthouse's nationally acclaimed radio service, was founded in the early 80's. Each weekday, the service provides readings of newspapers and periodicals including news stories, sales circulars, and classified listings for listeners who have a wide range of disabilities. CRIS broadcasts verbatim readings of the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, Daily Herald, Southtown Star, Chicago Defender, and many more local newspapers and magazines, as well as readings from national publications such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and Newsweek. It also broadcasts audio-described movies and produces special interest programming dedicated to serving the interest of Chicago's visually impaired and disabled communities.
Those in need, listen to CRIS on special SCA receivers, which pick up the programming coming from a subcarrier frequency of WBEZ-FM. More than 40,000 listeners tune in from these special radios which are placed in private residences, schools, libraries, hospitals, nursing homes, retirement centers, hospices, low vision clinics, and community centers, allowing these listeners to have access to the same printed information available to the sighted.
In addition to the being able to be heard on the SCA receivers, CRIS also broadcasts on CAN-TV, Channels 19 & 21, to a potential one million cable subscribers in the Chicago area, can be heard via the Internet from the link below and heard via the Telephone Reader.