Headlines

Magic 94.9 (WWRM/Tampa) held their 18th Annual Magic Toy Drive with the Marines, collecting donations for Toys for Tots, Friday, December 8, 5 a.m.–7p.m. 94.9’s Danielle, from Magic Mornings, did a live broadcast for 14 hours as four U-Haul trucks full of new, unwrapped toys were collected for local kids.

Nationally syndicated morning show Bob & Sheri once again helped make coming home for the holidays memorable for nearly 4,000 troops as part of USO’s annual Operation Exodus. Bob Lacey and Sheri Lynch show their support by welcoming troops as they transit through the Charlotte airport on their way home for the holidays. 

SOS Radio hosted a special Christmas party for children with incarcerated parents in Las Vegas. It was a partnership with HopeForPrisoners.org which helps men and women coming out of prison re-enter society. The stats show children with incarcerated parents have a higher probability of going to prison themselves unless there's intervention in that family cycle.

Spencer, Cassiday and Brando of 106.5 The Arch's Spencer’s Neighborhood delivered more than 21,000 holiday cards to the troops at the three St. Louis VA hospitals, Monday, December 18. The station hosted their second annual "10,000 Cards for the Troops" campaign.

With the first court date scheduled for Thursday in the Cumulus Chapter 11 bankruptcy case, two objections have been filed. One is from Merlin Media. Merlin states that Cumulus agreed to purchase WLUP-FM and WIQI-FM for $50 million and then, after that agreement was reached, Cumulus sought to negotiate a lower price.

Smart speakers are all the rage these days and there's no doubt Santa will be delivering quite a few around the country in less than one week. Is your radio station prepared for the smart speaker revolution? Veritone is leading the way with state-of-the-art technology and we're going to discuss that technology in a free webinar today at 1 p.m.

Skyview Networks was launched by Ken Thiele and Dave Chamberlain during the 1995-1996 NBA season. The goal was to get the games broadcast to markets outside Phoenix. They've come a long way since that idea was launched over 20 years ago.

There are now three Country stations in the Denver market with the iHeart flip from Active Rock (which was moved to 107.9). The new station is called "106.7 The Bull, Colorado’s New Country station," which will try to compete with Bonneville Country powerhouse KYGO. Kroenke Sports & Entertainment owns 92.5 The Wolf in the Denver market.

Amazon.com ran 38,478 commercials on radio stations across America last week, according to Media Monitors. That was over three thousand more than GEICO, which took the second spot. Macy's jumped from 56th to third with 33,142 commercials. Walgreens was next airing 30,761, followed by JC Penney with 30,227.

New York City Country station NASH FM 94.7 (WNSH-FM) raised $113,638 for Children’s Miracle Network during its Miracle for the Kids live broadcast on Friday, December 15. Market Manager Chad Lopez said, “This year it was critical for everyone at NASH to hit a fundraising milestone and we’ve done it. I couldn’t be more grateful to each and every one of our listeners."