The news is a commercial-free comedy channel is on local radio: Is the joke on us?

It isn’t the OJ trial. It isn’t even the local case of Calvin Walker, the electrician who allegedly bilked the Beaumont school district out of several million dollars. But one would think that when the programming of one area radio station for the past month consists of nothing but comedy — not even commercials — isn’t that worth a story?

This little blurb on a site called radio-info.com explains all that I have heard about “Comedy 103.3” in Beaumont, Texas. Radio mega-owner Clear Channel Radio apparently owns the FM translator in question. Just what a translator does is explained here, which makes it for the tech challenged such as me, clear as mud. In its most basic sense, a TV or FM translator allows broadcast signals into places that cannot receive the primary signal of a radio or TV station.

In older days, I might just walk next door to the building that houses five or maybe six Clear Channel stations, walk in the door and just ask those who work there what in the hell is up? Maybe I’ll go ask tomorrow. But judging the multi-stations these days — which probably has one person announcing — you are likely to get a pat on the head and a kick in the ass out of the facility.

What drips in irony is that one of only a few TV stations in the area that does local news sits next door to the building housing all of the Clear Channel stations. Of course, the Clear Channel group also has a “news-talk” station in its facility. KLVI 560 AM also does local news, though not a hell of a lot. Going local for news where I live isn’t as sure a bet as it once was.

In the meantime, I am pretty happy with the comedy I’ve heard lately on this newly configured frequency. Some of it gets played over and over, of course. But there are some pretty hilarious bits — some even raunchy and very un-PC these days — for one to hear. The bits played might range from Jerry Clower’s deep-country tales to Cheech and Chong’s hilarious “song” “Earache My Eye.”

I have no idea how far geograhically this comedy channel, 103.3 on the FM dial, reaches. I listed to it for a good 30 miles or more when I was driving on Texas 105 last week coming back from Dallas. Since they never talk on the station — too good to be true, I know — my crystal ball sees a short lifespan for this funny bidness.