Headlines

Christmas was a lot more joyful for many Salina, KS, kids thanks to KSAL-AM and Y93.7. The Alpha Media stations collected hundreds of toys through on-air donations, and several community toy drives at Target, November 28 through December 13, to benefit the Saint Francis Community Services “Christmas for Kids” campaign.

(By Bob McCurdy) Lately there’s been a lot written about “fake news” on the Internet, with Facebook mounting an aggressive effort to address it. Similarly, there’s a lot of fake news and erroneous perceptions surrounding AM/FM that we must also address. We need to look no further than the Q3 2016 Cumulus/Westwood One/Edison Share of Ear study to confirm some of these misperceptions.

Gearing up for his annual visit to CES in Las Vegas, Beasley Media Group Vice President of Programming Buzz Knight recently interviewed Jim Barry, media spokesperson for the Consumer Technology Association. Another year of fascinating technology is up ahead and here's what Barry expects to be hot in tech in 2017.

Twenty-seven-year-old Kevin Ozoria was originally charged with leaving the scene of an accident resulting in death and tampering with physical evidence. He was suspected of driving the vehicle that killed SBS New York Jean Paul Guerrero, also known as DJ Jinx Paul on La Mega 97.9. Ozorio turned himself in this past Friday. Police later dropped charges against Ozoria, after it was decided there was no evidence that Ozoria was actually behind the wheel during the crash

After dumping Bubba The Love Sponge in Tampa, Beasley's former "No Rules Rock" website is now being branded "Donald 98.7 FM." The station is also running promos promising to "Make Radio great Again." For now the station appears to be playing all music about money.

Joey Boots, a frequent caller to Howard Stern's radio show, died at the age of 49 over the holidays. No cause of death was immediately released. Boots, whose real name was Joseph Bassolino, was found unconscious and unresponsive with no apparent trauma. Boots popularized "Baba Booey" by shouting it behind reporters during live news broadcasts in New York City.

Radio Music License Committee Chairman Ed Christian has written a letter to radio stations about a deal the RMLC has put together with Irving Azoff's Global Music Rights organization. In November, the RMLC filed an antitrust complaint against GMR for what it called anticompetitive behavior. GMR then filed its own lawsuit against the radio industry, calling it a “cartel” and alleging that more than 10,000 U.S. radio stations wrongfully colluded to underpay songwriters to play songs on the radio.

The road has been especially rocky between the radio industry and its primary ratings firm over the past several months. Wednesday's announcement that Nielsen would increase PPM panel sizes may have filled in a few potholes. It's no secret industry executives are quite upset to have Portable People Meters malfunction the way they did in November, especially with the amount of money radio doles out to Nielsen.

That was one of the questions we asked Chris Kampmeier, iHeartMedia's veteran programmer who's retiring New Year's Eve. In the final installment of our interview with Chris, we asked him for his thoughts on the Portable People Meter technology, whether programming a radio station is easier today than it was decades ago when he started, and the skills the program director of 2017 will need to win. Here's what he had to say...

According to a fourth-quarter survey of advertising agencies, STRATA reports that confidence among agencies heading into 2017 is high. Forty-three percent of agencies report their business will increase in the first quarter, while only 11% expect a decrease.