Headlines

NAB executive committee elections took place last week at the NAB Board of Directors meeting, in Washington, D.C. Beasley Media Group CEO Caroline Beasley was unanimously re-elected Joint Board chair while CMG President Kim Guthrie was re-elected to the Radio Board's major group representative seat.

We finally get a look under the hood at what the NAB's secretive ownership committee has been working on in terms of deregulation. Comments have been filed with the FCC as the Commission gets close reviewing broadcast ownership rules as part of its 2018 quadrennial review.

MIX 101.5 WRAL-FM/Raleigh has been named Radio Station of the Year in Large Market from the North Carolina Association of Broadcasters. “We at MIX 101.5 are honored to accept the North Carolina Association of Broadcasters’ radio station of the year award for 2017. We thank this amazing community for allowing us to give back..." said Program Director Michele Williams. 

(By Walter M Sterling aka Walter Sabo) "Make it sound live.” There is another approach to voice tracking: Produce spectacular. Voice tracking is often viewed as symptomatic of the sad devolution of radio. It could be perceived as a creative gift.

It's been quite a week of back-and-forth about the relationship radio has with advertising agencies. On Thursday, we posted a list of questions several advertising agency executives have for radio stations. Today, we have answers from a radio representative. Plenty of answers. And perhaps a little anger and sarcasm thrown in.

Dentsu Aegis Network has upgraded its ad-spending forecast for 2018 to 3.9% -- up from 3.6% in its January projection. Total ad spend around the world is expected to come in at $615 Billion. Dentsu predicts radio will be up 2%. In January the radio projection was 1.3%. The 2019 radio projection is plus 1.2%.

Our week-long series on the love-hate relationship between radio and advertising agencies has stirred up quite a discussion. We're hopeful it's been fair and balanced and that each side is learning about the other. On Thursday, we reached out to Ashley Chase from Independent Brands, an agency in Oklahoma. Ashley's been following the discussion and agreed to an interview.

The weekly one-hour golf talk show on WFAN-FM/New York will be hosted by golf expert Ann Liguori and air Sunday mornings from 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. ET, June 17 through September 2. The inaugural show will be broadcast live from the 2018 U.S. Open in Shinnecock Hills, NY.

It's clear Journal Communications and Scripps knew they had a superstar in Beverly Brannigan. Brannigan made it to the Market Manager level from the programming side, which is something we do not see a lot of in our business. Since 2014, Brannigan has been the Vice President and General Manager for the Scripps radio cluster in Wichita. She's also the Vice President of Programming for the entire Scripps radio group. And, of course, she's on Radio Ink's 2018 Most Influential Women in Radio list.

The discussion about advertising agencies and radio has certainly caught fire this week. Yesterday, we heard from two ad agency executives who asked to remain anonymous. They threw out the following list of questions and statements and asked us to see how you might react and answer them. Have at it...