Featured

Townsquare Media announced late in the day Thursday it has sold North American Midway Entertainment to North American Fairs for $23.5 million plus a 15% residual interest in any future proceeds of a sale of NAME in the next 10 years. Townsquare purchased NAME in 2015 for $75.5 million.

This is the kind of advertiser we all want to hear from. Walt Blasberg is the owner of the North Hero House in North Hero, VT. North Hero House is an Inn and restaurant on Lake Champlain. It's not the typical advertiser you're going to hear on the radio every day. Yet, as soon as Blasberg decided to incorporate radio into his marketing campaign, his business took off. (Our weekly Advertiser Success Stories are sponsored by Sun & Fun Media).

Ron Stone is the CEO of Adams Radio Group. On Friday we interviewed Stone as part of our CEO series on deregulation and whether there should be more deregulation for radio. He's opposed. Our interview with Ron resulted in a lot of reader feedback. In case you missed it Friday here's that interview again.

The United States Traffic Network continues to do damage to Entercom's revenue. As expected, USTN cost Entercom $12 million in revenue in the first quarter of 2018. Add to that what CEO David Field called a "soft advertising environment" and six format changes that have not seen the revenue upside yet, and Entercom reports a Q1 quarter down 7.5%.

A flurry of documents were filed with the bankruptcy court on Tuesday, including a schedule of trial dates that could lead to the confirmation of Cumulus' bankruptcy filing.

In a Monday court filing, Cumulus' Term Loan Lenders voiced support for the company's restructuring plan while blasting a committee of noteholders and the ad hoc cross-holder committee for objecting to the plan. The Term Loan Lenders say, "Cumulus is finally on the cusp of de-levering their enterprise by more than $1 billion and creating a trajectory for long-term success," with a plan that "delivers real economic value to out-of-the-money unsecured creditors."

Broadcast equipment from two pirate radio stations in Boston was seized in a joint operation involving the FCC, the U.S. Marshals Service and Boston Police Department. The announcement came from the Department of Justice. Boston, Miami, and New York have the greatest concentration of pirate radio activities. Here's an FCC map of all the known pirates...

Now as the owner of radio's largest radio company not in bankruptcy, Entercom CEO David Field is once again speaking out to defend the entire industry. This is not something new for Field. He's been one of radio's biggest, loudest cheerleaders for years.

A fourth extension to the negotiations was announced Wednesday morning, as iHeart and lenders continue day-to-day negotiations to restructure iHeart's $20 billion of debt. This latest extension was the second 24-hour extension. It expires at 11:59 tonight. (This story was updated at 7:35 a.m. Wednesday morning.

That's according to the 2018 Infinite Dial, presented by Edison Research and Triton Digital, now in its 20th year of providing research on digital audio, social media, smart speakers, and podcast consumption. The latest survey says 82% (12 plus) of the population continue to listen to radio in the automobile, despite the onslaught of a tremendous amount of competition.