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Anyone looking to better understand the importance of the $1 trillion African-American consumer market, and the best way to connect with African-American consumers, might want to attend the 16th Annual Power of Urban Radio Forum in Washington, D.C. being held Thursday.

It would be fair to say that the station’s 15th Annual Food Drive was a success. The food (1,400,000 pounds, to be exact) was raised over a 12-hour event, and will go to 10 pantries in the Decatur/Macon County area.

Eric Mastel has taken what we are told was a struggling cluster for Cumulus and turned it into one of the company's top performers. You cannot do that without getting people to follow you into battle.

In the latest Nielsen report, in the Hispanic 18-and-over demo, radio runs away with the audience. Approximately 96.7% of the Hispanic population is reached by radio on a weekly basis, 7 percentage points higher than television. The smartphone is a distant third at 81.5%. That 96.7% number, according to Nielsen, translates to just under 35 million Hispanics reached every week by radio.

eMarketer reports that US marketers will allocate an average of 11.6% of their ad budget and inventory to digital audio by mid-2017, doubling what they spent two years earlier. The research suggests the money will go to streaming music services and podcasts, and most likely be done through programmatic buying.

The RTDNA handed out its prestigious Edward R. Murrow awards last night in Washington, DC. ABC News Radio won the top honor for Overall Excellence in Radio, Breaking News- Radio and Hard News- Radio. VP for ABC Radio Steve Jones accepted the award and here's what he had to say.

If you don't know the answer to that question, you need to be at Radio Ink's Forecast 2017 in New York City. Is the brain replacing the heart in digital media buying? As it’s now tracking, digital will soon make up half of all agency revenue, yet only one of the top five digital agencies is an established, traditional advertising company. The new players come from technology and digital placement is a science dictated by equations and algorithms.

As more public companies report earnings, it certainly will be interesting to see how well they are doing with political advertising revenue. Last week, Emmis CEO Jeff Smulyan said he was disappointed so far, and the report from Media Monitors each week isn't very encouraging.

The exact dollar amount was not revealed but it was big enough for NABOB to issue a press release. The release states that the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters "is very pleased to announce that the Democratic National Committee has placed an exclusive ad buy in support of the Hillary Clinton campaign with NABOB member stations." Forty stations will be part of the buy this month.

While The Home Depot (56,168 spots) and GEICO (39,708 spots) switched places on the Media Monitors chart this past week, Walmart made a huge jump from 56th to 7th by airing 20,000 commercials on radio stations all across the country.