Headlines

They're getting one of the top sports talk stations in the country, WBZ-FM. The station also carries the New England Patriots, the Boston Celtics, and Bruins Hockey. This means WBZ-FM and Entercom's WEEI-FM will continue to be fierce competitors in that sports-crazy city.

Before this deal was on the table, Bonneville only owned 14 stations in four markets: three in Seattle, three in Phoenix, four in Denver, and four in Salt Lake City. In this deal, Bonneville will add eight more stations: four in San Francisco and four in Sacramento, bulking up to 22.

Without a bundle of cash sitting on the sideline to purchase stations, in order for iHeartMedia to be in on any of these Entercom/CBS divestitures, it had to be willing to trade. And it was. So as iHeart expands in Boston and Seattle, it also exits Richmond and Chattanooga, where Entercom will enter for the first time.

Next week, Entercom CEO David Field is expected to announce all of his Market Managers, Regional VPs, and Format Captains. This week he announced some of the employees who would be playing a larger role, in senior positions, when the merger closes in mid-November. Here's who Field singled out...

This is something radio stations in Chicago have become known for...coming together to use the success of advertisers to promote the power of radio. It's still very surprising that more cities around the country do not follow their lead.

Despite a few big brand marketers stating they are reevaluating their digital ad spending, it doesn't seem to be stopping the flow of dollars to digital in any way. According to new data released by BIA/Kelsey, small and medium-sized businesses plan to spend 62.2% of their ad budget on some form of digital in 2018 -- that's up six percent over 2015.

The answer is no, not really. MediaPost has the details about a survey of 1,000 people done by Sharethrough and Qualtrics about where they get their news. Most of them do not trust social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, which comes as no surprise as more stories come out about how Russia used social media to try to influence the U.S. election.

The head of National Public Radio’s news department Michael Oreskes was placed on leave Tuesday after being accused of sexual harassment by two women who claimed he made unwanted advances toward them while he worked at the New York Times nearly 20 years ago. Here's the statement from NPR...

It's a given: More and more listeners are making user-friendly personal smart speakers (Amazon's Alexa devices, Google Home, etc.) their first choice for audio. Can the industry capitalize on this to expand radio's reach? We are going to answer that question in 14 days.

There's a national campaign to fire iHeartMedia host Bill Handel. The KFI Los Angeles host is being targeted for calling U.S. Rep. Frederica S. Wilson a whore. The group Color of Change is coming after the host. The group has 1.2 million members and has started a petition asking iHeart to fire the host.