Headlines

Will someone knock WFAN's Mike Francesa off his perch as the reigning champ of sports talkers across the country? We'll find out in December when Radio Ink's 5th annual Top Local Sports Talkers in America list is revealed. Make your nomination for Radio Ink's 2016 Best Local Sports Talker in America list by clicking HERE. YOUR DEADLINE IS THIS FRIDAY, OCTOBER 14.

We hear it all the time, 'radio plays too many commercials.' There's no denying that but radio is not alone. eMarketer reports that Millennials are turning to ad blockers to help combat that the abundance of ads they see shooting at them online. Two out of three millennials now use an ad blocker on a desktop or mobile device.

The 50th Annual CMA Awards will air live on Wednesday, November 2, 8-11 p.m. on ABC. And radio will get things rolling in advance with a two-hour special on ABC Radio, October 28.

Advertising Age has the details about the latest Magna Global report. The firm now expects 2016 to see the largest increase in ad spending in the U.S. in six years. So what are they saying about radio?

Last week Emmis CEO Jeff Smulyan said he was getting bites on the stations. Yesterday the deals were announced. Emmis will sell all of its Terre Haute station's, WTHI-FM 99.9 FM, WWVR-FM 105.5 The River, WFNB-FM B92.7, and WFNF-AM 1130AM/99.5FM The Fan for $5.2 million. Kalil & Co. brokered the transactions and here are the details.

At a special meeting Wednesday, Cumulus stockholders voted to approve a 1-for-8 reverse stock split of each class of the Company’s issued and outstanding common stock. The reverse stock split is being implemented primarily to increase the trading price of the Company’s Class A common stock to permit the Company to regain compliance with NASDAQ listing requirements and to enhance the liquidity of the Class A common stock.

It happened to WNRI in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, according to CBS Boston. 29-year-old Thomas Hill drove through the wall and an office of WNRI-AM early Wednesday morning. He was charged with OUI and possession of narcotics. CBS Boston reports that the station was able to stay on the air and nobody in the building was hurt. Picture courtesy CBS Boston.

RCS and Marketron are forming a partnership that will allow deeper integration into Marketron’s open workflow platform Mediascape. In a joint press release the two companies said, "This new interface will allow real time reconciliation and substitution of any advertising content on a broadcast station." Right now nearly 50% of Marketron’s customers use an RCS automation product.

Hubbard Radio's WFED 1500 AM (Federal News Radio) is the new flagship home for the Capitals and Wizards radio networks starting this season. Both teams were heard on CBS Radio’s 106.7 The Fan.

It's all powered by Alexa, Amazon's female technology voice that executes your commands through a cylindrical speaker called Echo you set anywhere in your home. If you have one, you already know how easy it is to use the device and how much music was already available for free before Thursday's announcement of Amazon Music Unlimited, an on-demand music service with a catalog of tens of millions of songs and thousands of hand-curated playlists.