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With GEICO at number one, airing over 42,000 spots, and The Home Depot at number two with 28,952 commercials last week, Rite Aid jumped to the number three spot, up from 12, on the Media Monitors weekly chart. The drugstore chain ran 27,675 ads. McDonald's and Burger King battled it out for 4th and 5th with 27,645 and 26,508 spots respectively.

Media Monitors also tells us that from the 85 major radio markets it is keeping an eye on that Hillary Clinton For President aired 15,902 spots in the last 10 days. Gary Johnson’s campaign went from 1,827 spots to 39. And, the Great America PAC bought 15 ads, down from 124 spots.

Broker Michael Bergner fills us in on this deal. Kirby Confer and Donald Alt own Forever Media and they are purchasing WCEI-FM and WINX-FM in Easton, Maryland, from First Media. They will pay $6.5 million for the two stations.

Sports Talk 790 AM will be Innes' new home after his August firing by WIP in Philadelphia. Innes was let go by CBS after he harshly criticized competitor Mike Missanelli on the air and on Twitter. Missanelli works for Greater Media’s 97.5 The Fanatic and was caught up in a fake caller controversy. Innes will host afternoons for iHeart in Houston, the same slot he held in Philadelphia with CBS.

iHeartMedia has given up on country music in Indianapolis. After 14 months the company has flipped formats from country to Hip Hop and will now battle with Radio One for that audience. The iHeart station kicked off Monday at noon with with 10,000 songs in a row.

WAY Media President Bob Augsburg tells Radio Ink that as WAY-FM prepares to celebrate 30 years of ministry, listeners responded with a record-setting response to fund the ministry.

Valerie Kattz is the midday personality for Alpha’s 107.1 The Monkey WXYK (Gulfport, MS) and she used her hosting chops to co-MC the 5th annual “Rock N Rollover” event benefitting the Humane Society of South Mississippi.

It's the second extension Smulyan has granted in his effort to take Emmis private. The first was for two weeks, which expired September 30. This latest extension expires Friday. Smulyan is offering shareholders $4.10 per share, which amounts to approximately $46.5 million.

(By Bob McCurdy) This weeks Monday morning blog summarizes a client meeting we had last week. It's a great example of how knowledge of certain marketing fundamentals enabled us to guide the client to allocate their radio spend in a direction that will likely lead to a greater return and a more satisfied, long-term client.

Taking our early month look at radio's biggest ad category, we find out that September U.S. auto sales are forecast to fall about 1% from a year ago. Forbes is reporting that new vehicle sales will be 1.43 million. This would be the fifth month in the past seven to show a retail sales decline. A year ago, sales hit a record high of nearly 17.5 million vehicles.