Do You Stand Up For What You Believe In?
(By Adrian Zupp) I don’t always remember birthdays. But from the time I was 11 I’ve remembered March 8, 1971. That’s the date of the “Fight of the Century,” when Muhammad Ali, just two fights returned from government-imposed exile, fought Joe Frazier to try and grab back his heavyweight championship belt.
SoundExchange To Appeal New Web Rates
This one will come as no surprise. Although nothing has been filed with the court yet, SoundExchange has stated it plans to appeal the recently approved CRB webcasting rates that went into effect this past January.
Scripps Scoops Up Stitcher
The E.W. Scripps Company, which owns 34 radio stations in eight markets, has acquired Stitcher for $4.5 million. Over the years, Stitcher has morphed into a platform for podcasts, now providing streaming for more than 65,000 of them. Stitcher will operate as part of Midroll Media, which Scripps purchased about a year ago. Twelve Stitcher employees will join the Midroll team.
Auto Parts Category Huge For Radio
Four of the top 11 companies on the Media Monitors weekly chart are in the Auto Parts category. Last week, AutoZone was 7th, airing 22,263 spots on radio stations all across America. O'Reilly was 9th (18,930), NAPA was 10th (18,427), and Advance was 11th (18,029). The Home Depot took the top spot again (71,630) followed by GEICO (41,638) and the U.S. Department of Transportation (31,360).
WTOP Snags Eight More Trophies
Over the weekend, WTOP was honored with eight Chesapeake Associated Press Broadcasters Association Awards, including an Outstanding Website award for WTOP.com. Director of News and Programming Mike McMearty said, “We have such a great team here at WTOP and are so thrilled to be able to share in these successes together." Here's the long list of awards the station took home...
WXXI Takes First Place For News Report
At the New York Associated Press Association Awards banquet this past weekend, WXXI Radio won 1st Place in the Spot News category for coverage of shootings that took place in Rochester back in 2015.
EMF Picks Up An FM In Lafayette, Indiana
Greg Guy of Patrick Communications fills us in on this Educational Media Foundation purchase. The station, WFRW-FM in market #222, is being sold by Christian Radio Friends to EMF for $300,000 cash.
NPR Reporter Killed in Afghanistan
According to the NPR website, photojournalist David Gilkey (pictured) was killed in Afghanistan on Sunday along with NPR's Afghan interpreter Zabihullah Tamanna.
5 Questions For Joey Cohn
Last month it was announced that "The Friends of KPLU," after only five months, raised the $7 million which enabled the 501(c)(3) to purchase the license of the Seattle station from Pacific Lutheran University. That prevented the station from being sold to the University of Washington. Joey Cohn is the GM of the station and one of the many hard-working "Friends" that made this happen.
Have You Checked Your Reach Lately?
(By Bob McCurdy) While soliciting broadcast clients at Katz years ago, we used a simple diagram to highlight the importance of having a larger sales staff than whichever Interep company we happened to be targeting. Our motto was, “God is on the side of the larger army.” The point we stressed was that even if our salespeople weren’t better than Interep’s, all else being equal in terms of work ethic, training, pre-selling efforts, and closing ratio, our larger sales staff would produce better results.
Our Print Magazine: Radio Ink
Lifetime Leadership Award: Erica Farber
Leadership To Live By
